15 minutes from now, Hamlet will be open. I have two days of summertime left before the day job starts back up.
And what am I doing with my fading rays of summer sun? Shoe shopping. Sort of.
I used to have a tradition to get myself a new piece of clothing or accessory on every opening night. After all, I wasn’t an actress– I didn’t normally receive flowers for opening night, and I figured there should be more of a celebration than just having a few drinks with the people you’ve just spent an 80-hour week with. And so, I bought something (usually shiny). There were only two rules to the opening night “gift”:
1) It couldn’t be something I would normally buy myself.
2) I had to love it.
I still have all of the pieces I bought. Skirts and jewelry and funky scarves. I wear most of them very rarely (if at all). Sometimes, maybe ironically, I wear them to opening nights. They tend to be fancy. But even though they rarely come out, I still love each piece. And not just for the memories–but because they’re really, really cool.
Maybe because they’re the sorts of things my alter-ego would wear? They’re often too flashy, too gaudy for my everyday, practical (maybe a bit boring?) self.
Somewhere along the line I left behind the tradition. Probably when Kyle was in grad school and we were poor. Maybe when I started having 10+ opening nights a year instead of only 3 or 4. Either way, it’s not a celebration I practice anymore. But sometimes, when I’m bored and have time, and it’s right around an opening, I’ll toy with the idea of starting back up the opening night tradition for myself.
Today I found myself, between errands and cleaning the house, surfing Amazon and Zappos and Modcloth, looking at all the really cool (sometimes hipster) footwear I would never, ever buy.
These are the shoes I found that I love:
Would you have guessed this is what I’d pick?
Don’t ask me to explain why I love them. I have no idea. They’re gaudy and a little bit ugly and a whole lot of way too much, but I think they’re great. (It might help that they’re peacocks, which are unlucky/forbidden in theatre and thus, one of my favorite motifs ever…that whole forbidden fruit thing…)
I also found two different pair of really cool Cinderella shoes (because once the designer brain is turned on, it takes awhile to shut back down):
For the most stylish Cinderella evah.
Would these make the cutest teenage hipster Cinderella shoes ever?
Jessi Cole Jackson 
