Monday is Tarot Day: I auditioned for "A Little Night Music" - and can't figure out which character I like best ...

... or which one I can delve most deeply into. Or which one I'd most want to commiserate with, gossip with, have tea and butter cookies with, get tipsy with. Or who's the moodiest.  Or which one I'm moodier than.

The play is all about romance and unrequited (and requited) love.  It's a waltz in twilight.  It's sensual and emotional.  And I often play funny ladies who pull funny faces.

So on the audition form, I wrote I'd like to be the funny lady most (dry, droll, kinda bitchy - but most of that comes from covering up and coping with emotional pain).  And I'd never done that before - actually specified a role preference like that on an audition form.  It felt presumptuous, but it also felt presumptuous to put the larger role first as I have some schedule conflicts.  Thing is, I like them both - they're spectacular and complicated and wear frilly dresses, or maybe even floor-length velvet (which is a big thing for me).

Anyway - then I read for the less-than-funny lady, the larger role  Actually, I sang her main song.  The big song.  And I cried.  And I can't remember ever crying during an audition before (I can remember crying sometimes after), but cry I did.

I'm not entirely sure where this post is going, other than I entered the worlds of two women this evening who have very different agendas, needs, and wants.  And I ended up liking them both equally.  And I felt their pain.  And excitement.  And desires.  And souls.

And that rarely happens during an audition for a show.  And what I'm realizing right now is that not only am I embodying the emotional, watery nature of The Queen of Cups, but the characters I read for show the full gamut of aspects (both upright and reversed) of this marvelous Queen: sensual, nurturing, caring, sensitive, a little crazy-in-love, a little too nervous, jealous, a little manic even.  Entirely desperate and incalculably strong.

And I've never had that happen to me before; to see so clearly how a tarot card can act as the significator for not only myself, but two fictional characters.  All in the course of one twilit night.