Pursuit of Happiness - Blog 4 - by Lindsey Marlin (Jodi)

Hello! This is Lindsey Marlin, and I play Jodi in The Pursuit of Happiness. Ron asked us to blog, so here's my first installment.

Enjoy, ruminate, go and get some snack food.

We are officially one week away from opening and three days away from the start of tech. Are we ready? Sure we are! Granted, we are still working out some of the minutiae (I love this word), but that is to be expected. One thing I love about all of this pre-tech stuff is the notes. Lots o' notes. Notes occur during tech, too, but pre-tech notes seem to be a little more juicy. So, we just keep playing with new things and seeing where that gets us. It's a funny show. It'll be great to have an audience.
As for the rehearsal process, the entire thing has been nothing short of wonderful. First off, behind the rehearsal table, you have the dynamic duo of April and Ron. April is our fearless stage manager or stage LEADER, as Katie likes to say, and Ron is our brilliant director.

The amount of insight pouring forth from this table is seriously palpable. I mean, it's scary. In a good way, of course, but it's so nice to know that you're being both challenged and taken good care of.

Now, I'm not sure if I should be ending sentences with "of," something about that is striking me as B- work, but I'm going to let it slide for the sake of blog-dom. But I digress. As I was saying, Ron is so insightful, it's scary, April is so on-the-ball, it's scary, and Joe is just scary. HAHAHA. Kidding. Only when he's teaching us things that we never wanted to learn (man-toe?). Or did we :)? Kyle and Gene share with us the highs and lows of real estate, and Katie brings us laughs, stories of Childsplay, and Skittles. Rehearsal is a little like home! We've created an amazingly talented little 6-week family!

So...let's talk happiness. It's a good word: Happiness. It's not as good a word as sphygmomanometer (bonus points if you actually know what this is), but it’s close. Contrary to Jodi, perhaps, I think that happiness is something we actually have to pursue everyday, and I think this is because it is ultimately so elusive. If you don't choose it, if you don't go searching for it, you're not going to find it, I think, with any regularity. You may find it on occasion, "happy accidents" as it were, but it's going to be difficult. Very difficult. Especially if you're negative a lot! Like me :)! Well, I’m Italian. Not that all Italians are negative. But I'm working on it, the happiness part, and thus the daily pursuance!

So...the things that make me happy?

Well, there's the usual fare: my family, friends, and dogs. But as far as other, more esoteric things that make me happy, let's break out the bullet list...
-The fact that my February birthday is no longer freezing since I now live in the Southwest
-Heroes, on NBC, Mondays at 8PM
-The "clicky" thing that locks and unlocks my car doors
-Bowling!
-OSU Football (Go Buckeyes!)
-Gene Ganssle's patented, "Slam, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle," hand gesture as he slams the imaginary front door and imitates the most likely still moving door frame of our set...
And I'll stop there. :)

Come and see the show. It'll make you happy.

PEENT!

Lindsey Marlin