he whistles and he runs

I haven't been as excited about a script since maybe The Runner Stumbles in 1999. I'm convinced that Copenhagen is among the very best scripts in contemporary drama. My original copy is still bookmarked with the boarding pass from my Newark-Hamburg flight last September, when I knew I had to sleep some ("all those dark and frantic transatlantic miles") but I couldn't because I was so amped up from reading this masterpiece.

I haven't been as prepared for the start of rehearsals since, well, ever (not counting directing something for the second time). I've been enthralled by the script and planning the production for over a year, and in the last few months I've given myself an introductory lesson to quantum physics to really get at the heart of some of the science the play deals with (I now have great party tricks for if I'm ever at a party with a bunch of geeks).

So what is it, then, that made me - that always makes me - dread getting into the rehearsal room? I know I love it, and I know I've done good work in the past and I tend to get better with every minute I spend doing it. But every. single. time. I'm on my way to the very first rehearsal, I secretly hope for a flat tire or any such excuse to keep me from having to actually show up. It's the strangest fear of being found out as a fraud, even though I have the training, I have the preparation, I have the experience. I know I'm not alone in this; I've read several accounts of very well-established directors having the same sort of trepidation before rehearsals start. I also know to expect it, as it happens without fail. But it's just so strange to me, now that I'm into the delicious "meat" of the work - the script has been worked around the table, the stage movement blocked, we're finally digging into the action and finding out what's really going on - to imagine that in the days before we started up I'd considered, almost seriously, getting a job with my sister's company and calling it a day with this whole theatre thing.

And because of how good it feels to be doing what I'm doing every day now, I keep coming back to this whole strange rollercoaster process.

Anyway, immediate theatre project's production of Michael Frayn's Copenhagen runs 20-30 September, and I hope you will see it if you have the chance.