Because everything old is new again.

From the journal I wrote in 2003.


Way back when this Company met in May, with our hair much shorter and stubble on our faces (and those were the girls), seventy-five percent of us were new, wondering what this Lost Colony deal was about. We called them Virgins. They were given little tasks to perform, got gifts from their Gods, went through a ritual that welcomed them into the very special extended TLC family and had the time of their lives at a party called Slaughter. They thought that was the end of it. They were in. They were Slaughtered.
Wrong.
Then came the next eleven weeks. There was freezing cold, crushing humidity, energy-draining heat, terrifyingly dangerous thunder and lightning storms, drenching rain that always miraculously stopped before show time, light rain that didn’t stop the performance. More sweat produced than can be believed; and what’s that smell?
There were mosquitoes chomping on them, more mayflies than I’ve ever seen, which don’t bite but never fail to fly into your mouth, or your ear, or down your shirt. Bees (we had a girl out for allergic reaction to a sting the other night), and some dillies that we don’t know what to call.
Cramped living conditions, crappy water (when there was any). Roomates you either came to like or despise. Love, hate, sex, frustration (sometimes all in the same day). Too much drinking. Sleeping all day. Going to work hung over.
They got sick, and the plaque spread through the Grove and the Show. As soon as they got better, a new plaque started its rounds. It was a bad year for a certain job-related affliction that I won’t mention except to say that the Company has gone through a lot of Gold Bond this year.
The PTW monster swallowed them, giving a microcosm of all of the above, and on top of all of the above.
Here, take these brochures, get into costume and stand out in the sun handing them out to tourists for several hours. You don’t mind, do you?
And doing the pageant. Endlessly. Waking, sleeping, sober, hung over, sick, itching. Do it till you know everybody’s lines, till you know every second of every scene and it goes off like clockwork – this, and this, and that, and (2…3…4)that! And you know it so well that you really only are aware of what’s happening on stage if the sequence is off. Love the Show one night. Be indifferent the next. Hate and despise it the next. And if you have to listen to that jackass make that bad adlib one more time you’ll scream!
Now it is the end of eleven weeks. The run is finished.
Slaughtered yet?
Nope. Now they have to leave here, get back to their lives; be it school, the next job, auditioning, or unemployment. Wherever they end up, in a few days or weeks they’ll suddenly be overcome with homesickness for this goodliest place.

Slaughtered.

I couldn't have said it better myself.