Guest blog by Jaimelyn Gray

I just realized I am Superman. Sort of. There is the life I live Monday through Friday when the sun rises, but after sunset on Thursday evenings, I morph into a completely different person. The person I really want to be.

After coming off an amazing weekend of sold out shows, I had to return to "real life" on Monday morning. At 5:30am. Oh, yeah, mmmmmm, 5:30am rocks!..... When you're not a thespian night owl. And even then I truly think 5:30am sucks for most human beings. I have the (unfortunate) honor of working in a coffee shop for my day job. Well, my first day job. The second day job I have is reorganizing files to make a private business run more efficiently. Ah, the glamorous life of an actor!

Let's rewind to Sunday evening and those sold out shows shall we? The audience is LOVING The Wedding. As an actor, you can just feed off the pure sense of joy that our audiences have been giving back to us night after night. And that's kind of reciprocity you long for as an actor: for the audience to enjoy the show as much as you are. I mean, because honestly, this is the most fun I've had in a role (no offense to those funny parts that have come before.) The Bride's Sister, or what I have turned her into, is just a rollercoaster of emotion. So by the time Sunday comes around, I get a little sad that I have to wait a whole four days for the fun to begin again.

The reality of my life is that I work 11-12 hour days Monday-Thursday - with half days on Friday - in two jobs that just barely pay the bills. My husband works in construction, so I am sure you can imagine in this economy how many jobs he's getting nowadays. We are not unlike the social class featured in The Wedding, although I will say my husband and I are not the kind of people who put up a false front. And we certainly don't try to "make mousse" in the kitchen at wedding receptions. All we really strive for in life is a little happiness, a chance to pay the bills, and hopefully the ability to take a vacation one of these days. VEGAS BABY, YEAH!!!

What I would really like more than anything is for my weekend life to be my all the time life. And have THAT pay the bills. But for now, I arrive at work on Monday mornings, with hair pulled back into a small bun, and brown eyes hiding behind pink-rimmed glasses. When my regulars ask how the show is going, I tell them that everyone is having a lot of fun with it, and that if they want to come, they better get their tickets early, because this one may completely sell out. I then point to my right where I have Chris Jones' review of The Wedding from the Chicago Tribune hanging above some advertising postcards for the show. My regulars usually walk over to look at it, start reading a little bit, and then look at the photo. They pause, get a quizzical look on their faces, and then ask,

"Is that…? Wait, no. That's not…. Is that you?"

"You know it," I respond.

"Wow. You look different with your hair down," they almost always comment.

And I reply, "Yeah, I kinda got this Clark Kent/Superman thing going on, huh?"

As they grab their Lattes and house coffees, I remind them that it's a gamble to wait to get their tickets at the door, so they better order them ahead of time.

That is, if they (or you) really want to see Superman.

-Jaimelyn Gray