68 Ivona, Princess of Burgundia by Witold Gombrowicz dir Kirsten Kelly for Strawdog Theatre. So on Sept 8, 2001, my mind broke. I mean that almost literally. Something happened in my life (we’ll call it X) and I was completely unable to function as a person. I was unable to sleep or to eat. I could NOT stop crying. I was a godawful mess. And because of that, I did the thing I am most (professionally) ashamed of, I stepped away from a show. During tech. Just thinking about doing that makes every nerve in my body spasm. At the time, it appeared as if I was upset about X, and what I didn’t have the capacity to explain was it wasn’t X, it was A thru W that I had been carrying around for my entire life and X was just the trigger. I couldn’t explain it, because I didn’t know it myself. So aside from being broken I was also plagued by the fact that I was unable to come to terms with why I broke. Luckily for me, my Strawdog family, if they didn’t understand, at least they supported me. And Tom Hickey, giant among men was gracious enough to step up and take over my role and was even more gracious to let me have it back eventually during the run. Because three days after my mind broke, the world broke. And everyone else kept going. Which of course made me feel even worse about my decision. The silver lining about all of this was this event finally got me into therapy where I was able to establish a sturdier foundation and rebuild. So thank you again to everyone in and on that show. Your kindness and generosity I still hold in my heart. Anyhoodle, Ivona is the story of Prince Philip, who to shake things up marries a strange, mute woman (Ivona) and her silence and mere existence drive everyone mad and eventually they murder her by getting her to eat a very bony fish, and she chokes. (It’s a difficult fish) My character was The Innocent, Ivona’s previous fiance, who of course, is also a scumbag. I think this was the top earner at Strawdog for a while, since Chicago has the largest Polish population outside of Poland, and Ivona is taught as their Hamlet. #retrospective #2001 #ivonaprincessofburgundia #WitoldGombrowicz #kirstenkelly #strawdogtheatre #theinnocent (at Chicago, Illinois) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6dbQhGps6F/?igshid=c9chh1ulg1hr