Of sugar plums and diapers

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, my career in solo performance. First of all, I was supposed to be young -- lean, catlike, my hips like a knife’s edge in Eric Bogosian-like black jeans. But there I sat, at 25, and the phone refused to ring.

Now I’m 40, I’m married, I’m tired, I’m flabby ... and the work comes to me. Now I’m doing a three-month stint at Seattle Repertory Theatre in the premiere of my new show, “Sugar Plum Fairy.” After a short respite, it’s back out to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., to open “I Worry” at the Kennedy Center. The schedule at both places: eight shows a week, including five a weekend, with Monday off to do laundry.

And hey -- did I mention my two small kids who go everywhere with me? Sometimes I forget, what with the sleep deprivation, the 8-month-old’s nursing, my 2-year-old’s frequent need for reassurance at 3:42 a.m. because, as a kindly pediatrician noted recently, “Two-year-olds love routine -- what they hate is transition.”

Which is not to say that I’m the first woman to balance performing with motherhood. Consider the glamorous and in her heyday always-on-a-film-set Demi Moore, mother of three. Of course, Moore famously had four nannies. I work in regional theater: “Demi Moore’s kids on Karen Finley’s budget” is how I describe my lot.

Still, I count myself lucky because I have my husband to help and, by the grace of God, my sister -- or as I call them, “Red Leader One” and “Red Leader Two.” Mike and Tatjana plot their visits around the lives they have in other cities -- hers as a photographer in San Francisco, his as a musician in, well, last month it was Detroit, Florida, New York and London. They meet each other in airports, strap kids into car seats, exchange a stream of rental car keys, apartment keys, children’s museum memberships, diaper bags and, of course, hilarious complaints about how badly I’m cracking up, often to my face.

That’s the price of not being able to afford professional help. MC Hammer paid his posse top dollar. My posse is my family, and, believe me, you feel the difference. Still, overall, I have to say that it all works as smooth as ... well, as incredibly chunky peanut butter with leaves and twigs in it.

Here’s a sampling.

Week 1. Joyous arrival in Seattle.

It’s always heaven coming to Seattle, even if it took me and the kids nine hours to fly here due to an emergency Alaska Airlines grounding in Eugene because the man behind us kept insisting, no kidding, that he “smelled something funny.”

Anyway, touchdown’s always a treat because Seattle Rep is no Equity-waiver hellhole like the kind my scrappy director David Schweizer and I have cut our teeth on for so many years in New York and L.A. Seattle Rep -- well, I think of it as a glowing ocean liner of delight in the Pacific Northwest gray, bursting with friendly staffers, zippy guest computers, track-lighted wall art, gourmet food baskets, flowers, baked goods, welcoming and more welcoming.

Indeed, there is so much welcoming, I think this is as close to a career in politics as I’ll ever experience. A typical moment at Seattle Rep is being walked into a lovely dinner party, handed a glass of wine and told: “This is a special event for donors of $3,000 or more. That man over there? That’s Leonard P. Jones. He’s a VP at FirstCorp. They’re underwriting your show. Mind saying a few words?”

You do the math and think, “For $33,000 a minute, I think I can!” And soon, whether you’re gazing into the hopeful faces of 11 board directors, 40 staff members or 200 volunteer ushers ... well, it’s moments like this when you’re glad you’re no longer at the point in your life when you’re trying to be tragically hip.

I mean, thank God we don’t have to say: “Yes, it’s about incest -- but it’s a surprisingly light and entertaining take! And yes, I do think your 14-year-old daughter ... would enjoy it.” Nope! This year we get to say: “It’s a story of girls auditioning for ‘The Nutcracker’! At Christmas! And what do you know, it’s running through Christmas! What a coincidence!” Life is good!

Week 2. Problems.

My 2-year-old, Madeline, has a runny nose. Greenish. In a city where I tend to get laryngitis.

A tension falls over the cramped apartment containing me, my kids and my sister. This is life on a ship, an Antarctic expedition ... i.e., if someone stubs his toe, just throw the body overboard, because that toe is going to gangrene, that person’s going to go lame, soon everyone else will be carrying him, causing them to stub their toes, husky dogs will be offed for meat, the mission is over.

“Don’t catastrophize” is my sister’s command when I get to thinking this way. But indeed, even the glowing ocean liner of joy seems to be smacking up against a few bergs. The continuing theme of the story: money.

In these shaky economic times, what regional theaters like about one-person shows is that you only have to pay ... one person.

At the same time, my director’s motto -- and why I love him -- is: “More is more.” David’s not a stool-and-a-glass-of-water guy.

His conception of “Sugar Plum Fairy” is less monologue than two-character play of me battling a runaway set -- one that contains an exploding Christmas box, flying tutus, mirror walls, mirror balls

She’s a neurotic pre-pubescent girl having wild Walter Mitty-esque fantasies to Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. Can anything be “too much”? Apparently they’ve run some numbers in the scene shop, and the answer is yes. New York designer David Zinn is hysterical.

Week 3. Thanksgiving: Feast of gratitude.

Two days off! Sinuses cleared! Husband’s in town! Design issues resolved! Flying back to San Francisco, Red Leader Two triumphantly hands keys to Red Leader One ...

Week 4. Meltdown.

... who wakes up vomiting with a mysterious stomach flu. And now we’re deep in the bowels of the tech schedule -- the dreaded 12 to 12. At dinner break, I rush home to bolt food over the sink and then, still in costume, feed the kids ... at which point I’m vomited upon by Madeline.

Which prompts a metaphysical meditation I call “The 2-Year-Old and the Diva -- One and the Same.” Compare. Madeline has a dresser; I have a dresser. She has food brought to her; at the theater, food is brought to me -- or at least tea. She throws tantrums.... I don’t throw them intentionally, but the next day, after another night’s sleep wrecked by having to pump milk at 3 a.m. (the 12 to 12 plays havoc with every routine), I suddenly burst into tears and run offstage while a horrified crew watches.

It’s dreamlike -- I feel like a gigantic Christmas tree toppling, taking everything down with me -- which, by the way, is the exact costume I am wearing at that very moment, complete with lights, sleigh bells, coconuts! More is more! When word comes that Seattle Rep’s telemarketers’ spirits are flagging and they could use a pep talk.... Not to be melodramatic, but this sounds absurdist, dark, Pinteresque!

And yet, the telemarketers ... ya gotta love ‘em. After all, it’s their grisly task to call Seattle residents during dinner and ask them to renew their subscriptions. If some “visionary” director has proffered an all-mime version of “King Lear,” it’s the telemarketers who pick up the pieces. Says one telemarketer: “If I call people in July and they’re screaming my ear off, I just wait and call back in October -- by then they’re usually over it.” They describe their work with gallows humor, even cheer. And of course, I’ve brought baked goods. Spirits unflagged.

Seattle Rep throws a great opening night party. By then I’ve slept, the show’s working, and everything is gravy. Over champagne I joke to David Schweizer that a family is the great disadvantage of being a heterosexual in the theater. Perhaps I’d be better off with the home life of a fab diva like a Liza Minnelli.

“Yes, and a coterie in which no one is biologically able to reproduce anything,” David agrees.

We clink glasses and are grateful for the family we have, in the theater and beyond. Tomorrow’s a day off, isn’t it? Life is good. (Or is the day off Wednesday ... ?)

*

Sandra Tsing Loh is a writer-performer based in Los Angeles.