Creating in the Chaos

It is 8:00 a.m. and opening week at the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC). My daughter comes into my room with two double espressos because we have a premeeting for the production I am in, Tipi Tales from the Stoop, before the first run through today. There is an emergency (there is always an emergency!). Did I mention that I am also the artistic director of Safe Harbors New York City, which is also producing the show? Yeah, well, I am.

After our meeting, I put the cold compresses on my eyes because I was up all night going over my lines. My granddaughter comes busting into the room and yells “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” over and over in my ear. My daughter screeches, “Don’t bother your Gammy!” And my granddaughter hides under the covers of my bed. She is dragged out by her mother as she yells, “I want my Gammy!” Thank God no phone calls from my mother or any of my family because we don’t call each other in production week.

I finally get dressed and start to head out, and damn I am late! I call my Uber, and of course they cancel four times because they don’t want to go from New Jersey to New York City. Finally, an Uber comes, and as I say goodbye, my daughter and granddaughter are arguing. I race out and put on my fur coat because it is, of course, the coldest time of the year.

The uber driver has on Fox News. I ask him to change the station, but he won’t. I don’t want to fight and put on my Chanel sunglasses so I don’t have to look at him. I see there is a rip in my mink, not exactly the Judy Garland moment I thought I would have today. As we drive into the city, the loneliness kicks in: My husband is not with me. I swallow that pain down. I go to call Morgan Jenness, but I remember that she passed away last month. The loneliness starts to trigger me, but I swallow it down. I finally get to the theatre. I get dirty looks from some people on the street because I have on a mink coat. Dear God, grant me patience!

At the theatre there is an army of PAC staff waiting for me. (Did I also mention that my phone just went out because I forgot to pay the bill last night, so no one can get a hold of me?) I am hysterical at this point, but I am a professional damn it, and the show must go on! Very Judy Garland of me. I get to my dressing room and tell the associate director, Nic Billey, about my phone drama. He does his substitute husband duty and gets it turned on for me.

After the dress rehearsal, I get a note from my director that I looked tired. Of course I looked freakin tired!

The stage manager informs me that the director wants to do two run throughs today. Dear God, help me! Thankfully, it’s only a stop-and-go for tech this afternoon. Dress rehearsal is tonight. I forgot to eat and send my stylist, Jaden-Avery Love (she is really a singer, but for now she is my stylist), to get food. She comes back without any because the pizza place is transphobic—so no pizza! I go out myself in my fur coat to Whole Foods. I get into it with some hippie woman who smells of patchouli: “You realize how many animals died for that coat?” I reply, “You realize how many Native people died for you to be on this land?” The cashiers of color all try to hide their laughs. I finally get my chicken tikka marsala that was thirty-five bucks and inhale it in my dressing room.

I have an hour before the full dress. All the producers and the production team are there, including my daughter. Did I mention she is also the managing director for Safe Harbors New York City/ensemble member/creative producer/singer? Yeah, all of those things, and I wonder why she is always in a bad mood! I am backstage getting myself ready to go on, and I hear a little voice from the darkness: “Hi, Gammy. What you doing?” Apparently, my daughter couldn’t get a babysitter. My daughter yells, and my granddaughter is dragged off, and I hear “I want my Gammy!” Her cries echo into the darkness backstage, and she is locked in a dressing room with my stylist. After the dress rehearsal, I get a note from my director that I looked tired. Of course I looked freakin tired! Tipi Tales from the Stoop is a one woman show, so there is nobody on stage but me. Yeah, I am freakin tired.

I get home, and the loneliness sets in again; I collapse and cry. I say to myself this is what Judy Garland went through—if only I had some vodka and a Xanax. And it’s not even opening night yet!

*****

Five months later, I am having lunch with Bill Rauch at PAC. I tell him about the drama of my life since opening Tipi Tales from the Stoop. My landlord sold my house and didn’t tell me, so I had only two months to vacate and find a new place. Then, we start to discuss the politics of the country and the politics of the American theatre. It’s same conversation that probably even Judy Garland had about how much longer we can stay in this racket and maybe it was time to stop and do something else.

And then he says, “Murielle, you are an artist to your core, and you will never stop.” I blink, stunned, and say, “I am?” Oh, so that’s why I keep doing this? Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, me and Van Gough, except I have both ears—well, for now. Never thought of it that way. But sure. Whatever. I hope he is getting lunch, since I am $17,000 in the hole because of the move.

*****

The question I have asked myself during these last six years is how you create within the chaos. The only answer I have is to continue the work. It is the only way I know how to keep my head above water and breathe. It is there that I find my sanity, my quest, my joy, my love and the only way I know how to really fight. It is the singular act of defiance to me.

When someone you love dies and that chaos ensues, there is not one size that fits all grief.

I have been thinking about the many people in my life who are no longer here on this Earth with me, who aren’t here to celebrate the joys or hold my hand during an opening night or make me come out of the rabbit hole when I sink into writing and research. When I got those devasting phone calls that certain people in my life are gone, I knew my life would be changed forever. There was the death of my aunt, the death of Tonya Gonnella Frichner, the death of my friend Ingrid. Then, there was the death of my husband and, most recently, the death of my friend Morgan Jenness. Yet the consistent thing that was always there was my work in theatre or just writing. During the COVID-19 shutdown and after the death of my husband, it was what made me get up in morning, breathe, walk, cry, and sustain that single morsel of sanity that I needed to have just to exist. Yes, the Prozac did help. But it made me gain forty pounds. That is another story.

When someone you love dies and that chaos ensues, there is not one size that fits all grief. How you deal with it, or at least how I dealt with it, is a personal choice. When my aunt died and when Tonya died, it was like a door that slowly closed. Then, it was over. With Ingrid and Morgan, it was a door that slammed shut and had no handle. With my husband, it was a glass door. I could only look through and see what was there, but I couldn’t enter. It was the journey he took without me. Our journey on this Earth together ended, and he was on a journey that I could not go on. That was devasting. It made me feel my mortality. It is an amputation with a phantom pain, a wound that is scabbed over, and when it heals a scar will always remain. That became my reality.

I dragged myself to my bed and looked up and whispered in prayer to those that are no longer here, “Why am I still doing this?”

After the mists of anguish lifted a bit, I asked myself what I could do with this new life that has been given to me. Death can bring out the worst and sometimes the best. For me it brought out the gratitude, the rage, the anger, and the family drama. It made certain people hold me up when I couldn’t stand. Friendships were strengthened and some broken. Surviving was picking up my life one piece at a time in small fragments. It made me think about what my ancestors did to go on so I could be here on this Earth today. They had to believe in their prayers for me to be here. That is what I had to remember to go on and create. But my very faith in life was tested, as was my faith in the Creator.

One time, when my husband was alive, I watched him sing at his traditional drum. It was after his brother died. I asked him how he did that. He told me that singing is what made him closer to his grief, and he couldn’t stop because it was what he did. I realized that this is what I also do. My work is my solace and the medicine that healed me.

*****

As I sit at my desk in my new house and my new office that I designed in a Hollywood Regency style, something I think Judy Garland would have, I hear up above me the sound of granddaughter’s little feet—and then the yell of my daughter and the cry afterward. Did I mention that we all still live together? Yeah, well we do! We are two racoons and a cat away from being Grey Gardens over here, not to mention that my son-in-law is named Travis.

Jaden Avery Love knocks on my office door asking for a cigarette (she knows I have one!). Did I happen to mention that she is also my daughter’s best friend and my granddaughter’s part-time babysitter? Nic Billey has texted me three times about our upcoming festival for Native American heritage month. Joy! I got back to my work to finish up the two grants that are due, finished my new piece, outlined my new play, and worked on my novels. I dragged myself to my bed and looked up and whispered in prayer to those that are no longer here, “Why am I still doing this?” The answer I got in whispered silence was, “Because this is what you do.”