Washington D.C.

The Kennedy Center.  What the festival is all about.  It was kind of surreal walking into the Hall of Nations.  Surrounded by young actors, directors, and dramaturgs in a big strange place was oddly comforting as we were all feeling the same way.  Whispers of "Oh that is Mark Bly!  Look, Matt McGeachy is talking to Gregg in a serious tone." as we were making our way up to our first breaking of bread made us look like a bunch of giddy school girls I am sure.  My role was that of the girl that was freaking out because I was the only one not to get the script that we were working on emailed to us.  Needless to say, I was asking everyone if they had theirs.  After dinner I met the director I was assisting, Freddie Ashley of Actor's Express, and Mike Lew, the playwright.  They send me the script, Bike America, that night and I get underway in reading it and catching up.  The second day is a free day as it is Sunday and not everyone has gotten in yet.  So Jeff, myself, and a bunch of the guys strolled the streets of D.C. and hit up the World's AIDS March.  And then later that evening attempted to bar crawl to the Lincoln Memorial...unsuccessfully. These first two days did nothing to prepare us for what would be an intense week of critical thinking and theatre making.