on monday cassidy fell off of a table (he liked to jump from table to table in our rehearsal room, no matter how many times everyone told him not to) and hurt his arm. they took him to the hospital but couldn't x-ray it at the time because he was in too much pain; they finally did it today, and it turns out that his elbow is broken, and in a very strange way, apparently. we were all sure that it was just a sprain. nope, broken, and he hasn't really been able to sleep because he's a restless sleeper and when he moves, it hurts, so he wakes up.
melanie warned us today that there is a slight possibility that she may need to take cass home early. which i guess would leave me in charge. hope that doesn't happen, and don't think it will, but there's a possibility still, especially since we found out it is broken after all.
the rehearsal that i ran went well. the scene, which is one of the two trouble scenes, improved a lot. it was fun. this is always how i am with directing...i tend not to look forward to rehearsals, but once i'm in one, i have fun. at least, when i'm in charge. i'm kind of awkward and not-knowing-my-place as an assistant director at the moment. but i feel like i've contributed a lot to the show so far and that's good.
we had an american dinner on sunday, where we decided we wanted to introduce everyone here to a typical "american" meal...we chose grill-style, made hamburgers/hotdogs, potato salad, deviled eggs, chocolate cake, drank beer, caused a small ruckus. the burgers were delicious.
today (the 21st) we went to dachau. this is one of those things that one has to do as long as one's here, i guess. saw the famous "arbeit macht frei" gate; it's smaller than i thought it'd be. it all felt surreal. i get self-conscious in situations like that...same reason i don't usually cry at theatre or movies. i feel as if i'm supposed to be feeling something, and so i feel nothing. hollow. it's a frightening place. there were lots of german soldiers there, touring. lots of loud american tourists, too. i didn't take pictures. it doesn't feel like a place where you take pictures. i'll remember what it looked like. wide, and open, and sterilized. without meaning. like a stable. it's a huge stable; though it was one of the "work camps," you can't imagine anyone actually working on anything there. it's too huge and empty of anything productive. there are just flat, hard wooden bunks like stalls, a huge gravel courtyard like a pasture in drought, and the crematorium. two, actually, the "old" and the "new." i grew up reading about these things. it was almost as if i'd been there before.
also, dachau is the name of the town as well as what the camp's known as. i never thought of that. what must you feel, if you're a german born in dachau? living there? you know what the name means now to everyone -- it may never mean anything else. auschwitz, dachau, birkenau. and the people who come through to gawk at your shame. it's a sad-seeming, industrial place that reminds me of a lot of places in the states. one of those areas where it's not really a suburb, or a city, just businesses, outlets, fast food, no culture, no feeling of location, an inherent nowhereness, where you can't get around without a car.
tonight, we had a sushi and movie night with a lot of the cast/friends of the cast. i made sushi. my first roll was awful...then i got a little better. we watched two days in paris, which i liked a fair amount. except we had german subtitles on, and a lot of the movie's in french, so i had to try to read the german. i did ok.
