Cowgirl Heaven @ the Wildish Theater

seen in: Springfield, Oregon, two nights ago.

So yes, I'm really in Oregon (again, for the second time on this trip). I spent the last three nights in a motel in Eugene across from campus.  I had come back up to Oregon for the second time on this trip after getting a call from a guy in Portland who works for an educational publishing company, about possibly doing some contract work for them. It's exactly the kind of thing I was looking to do. I took three days to drive up from Fresno, and camped in view of Mt. Shasta on the way. It was a much better trip than the one through Nevada a couple weeks before.

It was weird being back in Oregon again, of course, but the difference this time compared to just last month felt like heaven compared to hell. Like night and day.

Eugene surprised me. Frankly I'd come to think that I wasn't capable of living in Oregon, that there was no place that appealed to me. Whenever I told people I was going there, and might relocate there, they would say, "Oh, Portland is nice, I hear." I would tell them that I don't like Portland much. It makes me feel lonely and isolated. I prefer smaller towns and cities, but none in the Portland area made me feel comfortable at all. I drove through a couple of them, but I am giving a wide berth to one of them for now, out of respect for a good friend.

But Eugene, well, that's a place I decided I could actually live. When I was here a couple weeks ago, I had stopped in Eugene and found myself checking my email at a Starbucks at the corner of Broadway and Pearl. How ironic, I thought. Where have I heard of that intersection before?

I'd only spent one night in Eugene, in 1993 during a road trip. It didn't much appeal to me then. But things change. I felt almost instantly at home there, even if it is still for now second best in my heart to another college town I won't mention. I loved walking around the city and the campus, even though at times I felt the sympathetic pain of a good friend's bad memory from that place. I tried to think of happier things, like playing go. After a day it worked, and I was even able to finish the first chapter of my manuscript in my motel room. This morning I didn't want to leave and drive north on I-5. But work calls---gotta make a living.

Of course one of the first things I did was put into motion my plan to start attending community theater again. I picked up a copy of the weekly newspaper and scouted for some possibilities. Fortunately I hit the jackpot. On Saturday night there was a one-time encore performance of Cowgirl Heaven, a little musical I'd never heard of. It was playing across the river in Springfield. It's about five women who work the rodeo circuit in the 1920's, a time when it was almost unheard of for women to perform stunt work. It had about ten interesting musical numbers, following their lives and careers, starting in Pendleton and going all around the country, even to New York.

The Wildish Theater is very nice, with plenty of comfortable seats. As I like to, I sat by myself in one of the upper rows, higher even that the crew running the lights along the side.

As I was watching the performance, I couldn't help think of how, on Saturday night, if I were out seeing a movie by myself, I would leave the theater after the credits had rolled (as I ALWAYS do---it's part of the movie, after all) but would feel tremendously lonely going back to my room.

But in the Wildish, I felt connected to everyone in audience. It was a truly shared experience with everyone there, and everyone on stage. I can't believe it took me this long to rediscover this. The best fifteen bucks I ever spent.

Rick kept insisting in Fresno that I find an audition for a show and try out. I told him that for now I just wanted to be an audience member and a blogger about theater, but after a couple days, I relented and told him I'd give it a go, if and when an opportunity came up.