There are exactly 427 things to potentially stress out about when directing a play. No, wait… 428. And if you’re also producing said play, you can go ahead and add a few more.

After a year’s hiatus from the helm of my theater company, also known as a Sebbastical (hee hee, get it? like sabbatical?), we decided it might be safe to venture back into those murky dramatic waters. But which play to do? I stressed about that. And what if I didn’t get enough actors to show up for auditions? That was stressful. And then who to cast? Stress! When to start rehearsals? When to rehearse? And where? And what to actually do in rehearsals? And who’s going to stage manage? And build the sets? And design the costumes? And where are those costumes going to come from? We need a couch? And a bed?! And six doors?!! Where are we going to put this play on? Is the stage big enough? Do they have enough lights? What’s their sound system like? Microphones? Who’s designing the publicity? How many flyers do we print? How many posters? And where do we hang them? Where can I get recordings of opera songs without the vocals? Will my current plan leave the actors under-rehearsed? Over-rehearsed? Do I have to pay for the performance rights? Who’s funding this whole thing? And how can we possibly sell enough tickets to an English-language play in Spain to cover the costs from this whole thing?

These are just a few of the things that I can thank for my current stress levels. The easiest part of directing a play is directing the play.

Yes, many of these “challenges” have been resolved. Many have not. And then there are the other 399 stressful things that I have spared you. But just this week we took care of a doozy. We had reserved a small theater downtown for an early June run. After just one week of blocking rehearsals, I quickly realized that the play would not fit on the stage that we had reserved. We would need a bigger stage. About twice as big! And June was only a few months away. Most (respectable) theaters program their lineups way more than three months in advance. So I asked around, made a bunch of phone calls, sent a bunch of emails, and scoured the city. Long story short: I found one! I cannot begin to describe the tremendous weight that has been lifted from having this massive item removed from my to-do list.

Oh, there was only one catch. The new theater was only available for mid-May. That basically means that, instead of the 16 rehearsals I was counting on, we now have 10. Great, one more thing to stress about.

And in case you were wondering, here are the answers to some of the previously asked stress-inducing questions:

Lend Me a Tenor
I did
They’re perfect
Beginning of March
Every weekend
In the small theater
Improv, choreography, and character-building exercises
Siavash
Ed
Rosa
Don’t know(!)
Yes
Yes!
Yes!!
Hostafrancs
Yes
Barely
Decent
Yes, but do they work?
Joe
700
50
Don’t know(!)
Don’t know(!)
Don’t know(!)
Don’t know(!)
Maybe
Me
Don’t know(!)