Balance

Last Show at the Ranch Mucho Denaros

Hey Folks,

Nick here. This weekend we finished one of our longer running shows, Murder at the Rancho Mucho Denaros. It was an amazing show. The audience was right on point. They followed the story so closely that when they asked questions during the "Gallery of Guilt" portion of the show, we had to reach deep into our acting quivers to figure out how to hit the mark. The audience participants were some of the best I've had in my career, and definitely the best I've seen in my time at Dream Players Theatre.

Blurry picture of the 80+ person audience

There were flubs on our part, though, but we all had each other's backs and improved some of our best bits right on the spot. One of the audience participants, who really was awesome, couldn't read the letter she had to read loud enough for the whole audience to hear. Michael and I impovised a short version of the Telephone Game from when we were kids. The audience member would read a sentence or phrase fairly softly, Michael would repeat it, changing it a bit, and I would repeat it for the other side of the audience. It was great fun and one of the highlights of the night for me personally. These moments- when we make mistakes- are some of my favorite things about theatre. Working together fluidly, without words to pull off an on the spot correction or adjustment is just such a thrill when it works well.

Telephone Game, but cuter than Michael and me

It was a great high, but now we're done with it, and who knows how this next show, The Great American Family Road Trip, will turn out. We had over 80 people come to this last night of Rancho, but before that we had a solid month of difficult ticket sales. We cancelled a total of five shows because we couldn't sell enough tickets to make the show break even. It was a low point. There is a lot of work that goes into a show. More, there is a lot of time away from my pregnant wife. The day or two in between shows, when I have some time with my beautiful wife, I start to wonder if all this time away from her is worth it. We have a little girl, Eloise Mae, on the way and I also wonder how long I can keep this up, and juggle my full time day job, my practically full time Dream Players job and still be the kind of father and husband I want to be.

Temporary poster for next show until we finish the real one

Don't get me wrong, I love what we do and I wrote the next show- so my ego helps me to be more excited and optimistic about it. The doubt comes in as I come down from the amazing high I got from our Chumuckla audience and start to think about whether or not we're about to have another awesome high, or another low. I want my daughter to be happy and follow her passion. I want to set a good example for her by finding the right balance. I've done it so far. I'd like to keep it up.

I found this online, under the right balance

Here's hoping!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has to balance work, family and their passion. how do you do it? Do you have any advise for others trying to do the same?

Does this really need a caption?