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"Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me."

Sarah Bernhardt

When I was a toddler, my father called me "Sarah Bernhardt", perhaps invoking the actor-who-was-to-be.

My Mother would go to church on Sunday morning - her one time away from her then-five-children, and I would bemoan her absence with deep, loud, mourning.

And as soon as she was gone from earshot... the car down our steep driveway, I would wipe away my tears and find something more interesting to occupy my time until she came back home.

My Mother was my everything back then - in exactly the beautiful way Bernhardt describes it.

I am watching "I Wait for sleep" unfold and I see the deeply romantic being that I am... and how much I have held that aspect of me at bay, thinking I was keeping it undercover. Ha!  My writing students would reflect "You are such a romantic, Julie!" but I never believed them.

I see my actors portraying the story I have lived and written and I realize, "Yes, I am a romantic"... and I see how just recently I lived these words from Sarah Bernhardt... and instead of feeling a sense of mourning because it has taken on a different form, I feel a sense of gratitude and aliveness... and appreciation for myself and the art I create as a result of the gratitude and aliveness.

Ahhhhhhhhhh, passion. So sweet.

I have been completely enjoying watching the unfolding of this entire One Act Festival.

The new actors, or actors new to the Community Theatre stage - to me, that is especially wondrous. Add to that the diversity within the cast and crew and it increases my enthusiasm. I can't help but feel like I want to tell the world to come, support these hard working folks.