Julian Matthias and I: Withdrawal?

I've come fresh out of a dress rehearsal but I'm already thinking about withdrawal.  It's not that I want to withdraw from the show, but that I'm preemptively feeling for the actors and the production people involved.  I don't know how long they've been working on this production-- for weeks at least, maybe a month or two.  This week has probably been the most joyous and stressful, since this Friday marks the very first show.  All that hard work and rehearsing will be on display and it's showtime, quite literally.  And before we all know it we'll be performing the last show, and then it'll be over.  There will be no more "next rehearsal" or "next show" to make it better or amend mistakes or relive the thrill of receiving applause after that particularly exhausting yet thrilling show-stopping number.  It's a relief once it's all over, but then immediately there's also a feeling of nostalgia and mourning, almost, that it's all over and it's gone, it will never happen quite that way again. 

I know "nostalgia" is usually used in reference to childhood memories; I don't know what the prefix "nost-" means, but "-algia" refers to pain-- think myalgia (pain in muscles) or neuralgia (nerve pain).  Nostalgia means "to look back with pain", and I think that it's very fitting for the feeling of After The Show's Over.  Withdrawal, too, feels like an apt description, as theatre is like a drug: there are very high ephemeral highs, and there are very stressful, dark lows when everything is going wrong and it doesn't seem like there's a chance that the show will go on or be presentable in any way.  There's a lot of sturm and drang that goes into putting on a show, but the people involved think that it's all worth it in the end, that all the energy and money and emotion that goes into it is of value, just as a junkie will sell everything s/he owns to get just one more hit.

Ach, I didn't intend for this post to be so depressing!  It's just that I'm anticipating this feeling for others.  As a pit orchestra musician I have probably the least amount of involvement for someone involved in the production.  I just have to show up and play, and it's someone else's problem if the sound doesn't work or the music cues don't match up.  I'm heard but not seen, and I like it that way.  But I've been on the other side of the stage, I've been a performer on stage in a theatrical production before, and I wish nothing but the best for everyone else who's worked literally day and night on this production.  The dress rehearsal was fraught with technical difficulties, but I stand by the superstition that if a dress rehearsal goes badly the actual run of the show will go well.