Drugs, nerves & violence

Run-through of HEART SHAPED HOLE this morning (would have done it last night except my dog went and lost herself in the darkness over the road for an hour and a half). Exhilirating, anyway, in a scary sort of way. The main character Stanley is constantly on such a manic high, alternately from drugs, nerves and violence that the performance has to be accordingly manic: I just have to engage my white bread strait-laced self wholly with his craziness and go all the way with it. Even rehearsing here at home, I'm soaked with sweat by the end: what will I be like under stage lights? Think of throwing a bottle or basin of water over myself at significant intervals. But it's a high in itself, performing this piece: vertiginously so. The narrators of Falling For The Ushers & Ligeia - This Is (Not) A Love Song are cooler, more urbane, ostensibly respectable members of society, which Stanley (Ran-Dan-Stan-The-shiverin'-Man) very definitely is not, he's in the Badlands from the get-go... the craziness is there with the other two, but you build to it more slowly. This craziness, this aggression, so far removed (I think) from my own temperament, somehow make this (thus far) the easiest of the three stories to perform. I just let the alienness of this character possess me, like a demon. The other two... well, they're closer to me to begin with, so there isn't this same sense of leaping beyond itself, which maybe makes it scarier when THEY get scary.

But anyway, as Stan, if I gel my hair up Eraserhead-style like I intend, and then play this manic, won't I wind up with sweat AND gel seeping into my stinging eyes?