I was in rehearsals for a play called, "A Write to Heal"...it's a series of monologues performed by a group of women based on the stories of real women who are survivors of domestic violence. (I wrote a complete blog on this back in February of this year).

The last time I performed the play was in Philly, during one of the worst snowstorms of the season. Yet we had a decent size house and my son, my mom, my friend Ali and my friend Dale literally weathered the icy storm to see it.

This time around the play was closer to home...it was in Manhattan and was part of the Culture Projects Women Center Stage, 2007 festival. The Women Center Stage is a place known for putting on projects by women that effect social change in many arenas. Some work is serious, some is funny, but all are thought provoking.

The play itself had to be accepted into the festival and with that comes the festival assigning a director to the piece, to help hone it...shape it...make it a better product.

One of those shaping moments came during my one on one rehearsal with the director, Karen Kohlhaas. Karen has worked on a ton of actor projects and has a real eye for how to develop a piece.

So on the Friday two days before the play (mind you we were only in rehearsals for two days) she made a couple of small changes in the lines...taking out some lines here, a paragraph there, ...nothing too major that is unless you memorize things the way I do...with images. So for example if the last word in the paragraph talks about an elephant and the next paragraph has a line about a moustache...in my minds eye, I see a tiny elephant with a huge moustache...Now if you take out the moustache...all of sudden, my elephant no longer has facial hair...and I have to figure out what image to put in next...but of course...getting an image out of your head, especially one like that isn't easy to replace...but it's either the replacement method or the "I'll burn it in the tracks of my brain method" through rote repetition.

So there I am all Friday night and Saturday morning repeating the new order of lines like it was a Gregorian chant. Now it wasn't like I was going to get horse whipped if I said the wrong lines (especially in a play about domestic violence)...but I wanted to challenge myself to stick as close as possible to the revised script. After all Karen didn't delete them to test if her white out was working...

But in the process of repetition you get into the groove, especially when you are doing full rehearsals with the cast all doing their very moving monologues about vicious men.

Add into the mix that in my real life I just broke up with my boyfriend again, so to say the least, liking men at the moment wasn't a top priority. I knew however I had reached the turning point when I was ready to plunk down $15 bucks on a shirt that said, "Explain to me again why I need a man?"

Anyway, my head was in that zone for a full two days...and would actually have to be there until the show on Sunday night. That was, except for two minor details.

I needed to make a pit stop to see my mom in the hospital (Yes, she is still there since March 26th but she is getting better.) She asked if I could swing by and bring her something she was craving. What was it? A white Castle hamburger – that alone says it all.

And then there was the fact that I had a comedy show on Saturday Night for a bunch of Veterans in the country club section of The Bronx. (I bet you didn't know a country club section existed, well quite frankly, neither did I.)

Anyway, my friend Jeannie came with me to both my mom and the comedy show.

I sat in my car for a few minutes, looked over my act...took a deep breath and was ready to change modes. The fact that the gig was on the outdoors and on the water was calming...

The show consisted of Rick Morgan, a good friend, comedy booker and Emcee, Ventriloquist Vince Dantona, Les, Johnny Rizzo, a Roseanne Barr Impersonator and myself. (Only four of us are in this picture obviously).

After Rick did some jokes to warm up the crowd he read a letter from a soldier in Iraq...again my head changed gears...Oh boy, could the crowd shift from this letter to comedy? Or would we all be up there singing "God Bless America?" It took a few beats...but the audience shifted. They knew the night was for laughter. All the comics looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief. We could now do our jobs.

When Rick came off the stage he asked us all permission if he could tape our acts...you see in addition to this being a fund raiser for the soldiers, he was just told that the Vets also wanted to send a copy of tonight's show to our troops in Iraq. We were all touched, and of course it put our heads in yet another state. A state of "Damn we better do good. Last thing we want is to be sending a comedy DVD to the soldiers and then have them think we suck."

With my final head change I heard my name announced. Here she is...Fran Capo" Honestly, at this point if they called me Sybil I would have run up there.

Lucky for me, comedy is my natural zone...so the second I jumped onto the stage...the jokes flowed...the laughter flowed and it felt like home.

At that moment, the present moment, I didn't ever want to leave the stage...who would want to with a high like that coming from the audience? There is nothing in the world that fills the soul like heart felt laughter...it penetrates all wounds and for a brief second makes the whole world seem a whole lot brighter.