La Ronde and Release

"La Ronde" is a play by Arthur Schnitzler about morals in 1890s Vienna.  Written first in German, it found a more accepting audience with the French, due to in each of 10 scenes a succession of couples...well, couple.  The characters in the various scenes are as follows:

1. prostitute/soldier
2. soldier/maid
3. maid/young gentleman
4. young gentleman/young wife
5. young wife/husband
6. husband/young gentlewoman
7. young gentlewoman/poet
8. poet/actress
9. actress/count
10. count/prostitute

This was another play performed by students at Westminster college in the early 1990s.  In our production, the lights went out during the middle of each scene, where the audiences used their imaginations as to what took place in the meantime (*wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*).  I do not remember very much about the production, really.  We used the same set that was used by the TWW (TheatreWorks West) production of "A...My Name is Alice", so some of the staging was rather ... creative.  

I portrayed "the actress" in the play.  In one of the scenes, I had to step behind a screen (on stage) and change into a nightgown while maintaining the dialogue with my scene partner.  It was a jade colored spaghetti strap gown with black lace and beads at the neckline.  I remember it partly because it was one of my own, and not provided by the costume department, and it came from the Avon catalog.

The next paragraph may make some people uncomfortable who do not like open discussions of things "adult" in nature.  If you are such a person, please skip the next paragraph.

Both my scene partners were gay.  Well, the poet hadn't come out yet; in fact, at the time, he had a live-in girlfriend, who had been involved over the internet previously to the man who eventually became my second husband..  The actor who played the poet and his girlfriend lived with a man to whom they introduced me after a performance of "Bell, Book and Candle" for which I had given them comp tickets.  We went out a couple of times until I found out he was married.  How did I find out, you ask?  When his wife came home from vacation toting her 19-year old boyfriend!  And THEN it got weird.  I tell you, I could write a book!

I hope I have not shocked anyone too much.  I am not the person now I was then.  But it happened, and I believe it really is a waste of time to try and hide things, even if they could be embarrassing.  Of course, I have the lens of a 20-year time span between then and now.

Time is not on my side - yet - in the recent fracas with our neighbors.  I would like to release the events of the last week or so that happened between us and them, and written about in my "P" and "Q" posts.  I want to diminish and eventually erase the emotional hold it has had on me and would appreciate any tips of methods that have worked for you, as well as any prayers, good thoughts and wishes, you would care to send my way.  I am ready to be done with it.

Thank you.