All the world's a stage.
I had today off from work, which was great because I worked eight hours yesterday, during which our credit card machine went down and I sold about seven hundred dollars worth of candy, which, if you divy that up at about four to six bucks a person? Is a lot of fucking people. Many of which had somewhere in the neighborhood of three to five children with them.
So suffice to say, I was really grateful for the day off.
I went with my mom to see a performance of The Twelfth Night that she got tickets to through work. When we arrived, our first pleasant surprise of the evening was that the seats were quite good: right up in the front on the floor, house left, center of the row and only one row back from the stage. And this is at a modestly-sized theatre, so "second to the front row" means you can see the sweat beading on the actors' faces.
It was a full house, too, which is always nice to see. Before the show began, the director came on stage to deliver the typical opening speech, hello, welcome to the theatre, the actors have put on a great show for you tonight, please turn off your cell phones, etc. Only instead of immediately launching into that, he started with "I'd like to introduce you all to a friend of mine," indicating a man that had followed him up the aisle and was now standing by the stairs leading up to the stage on our side. And he had his back to us, so me and Mom are like "Who is this guy? Is he another director? Why is the rest of the audience cheering?" And then he turned around.
It was Tom Hanks.
Not...some guy who looked just like Tom Hanks. Not some guy who happened to be also named Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks. You know, the actor? Standing not three to five in front of me.
Not counting that time I meet Terry Zdunich, this is easily the closest I have ever been in my entire life to a real live famous person. And it was pretty damn close.
After the applause and standing ovations died down (during which Mom excitedly whispered to me that she remembered just now, she'd read in the paper that Tom Hanks was in town for...something), the director continued what he was saying. Apparantly when Tom Hanks was just starting out as an actor, he worked as an intern with that very theatre company (the director joked it was about twenty-two years ago "or so", and Tom Hanks made a big show of looking skeptical and, as the audience laughed, holding up his fingers to indicate it was a lot more than that) and since he was in Cleveland he wanted to stop by and see what was going on, talk to some of the actors that were around now, and so on.
Tom Hanks gave a little speech about how he's been all over the world, and there isn't a single better space for performing live theatre that he's been in than the Hanna Theater. He also talked about how great it is to support live performances, and he encouraged everyone in the audience that could to make a gift of a ticket to a show of some sort to someone they knew that had never been before, because in doing so they'd not only be supporting the theater but they could also be introducing the joys of going to the theatre to someone who might then continue to do so the rest of their life.
I'm not sure if he stuck around after that or not; it looked like he went back and was sitting in the sort of VIP section toward the middle back of the floor, but by the time later when the curtain dropped and the lights came on for intermission he had somehow disappeared himself.
But still, man. Tom Hanks.
The play itself was a great performance. It was hysterical and all the actors were wonderful in their parts; I'd be hard-pressed to pick anyone out who outshined the rest. We'd already seen the same company do a performance of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a musical with an audience particpation ending based on Charles Dickens' unfinished murder mystery, so it was fun and interesting to see the actors in different roles. The costuming and set pieces and even the music were also very welldone, adding an exotic air of captivation to the whole thing.
Also, during intermission I went to the gift shop and bought a Shakespearean insults coffee mug ("I do desire we may become better strangers.") and a t-shirt that says "Bad to the Bard". Did I mention that this is all during the theater district's Shakespeare festival? ;)
The same group is also doing a run of A Christmas Carol in winter, and an adaptation of A Midsummer Nights' Dream in the spring. I'd really like to go back and see both of them.
So suffice to say, I was really grateful for the day off.
I went with my mom to see a performance of The Twelfth Night that she got tickets to through work. When we arrived, our first pleasant surprise of the evening was that the seats were quite good: right up in the front on the floor, house left, center of the row and only one row back from the stage. And this is at a modestly-sized theatre, so "second to the front row" means you can see the sweat beading on the actors' faces.
It was a full house, too, which is always nice to see. Before the show began, the director came on stage to deliver the typical opening speech, hello, welcome to the theatre, the actors have put on a great show for you tonight, please turn off your cell phones, etc. Only instead of immediately launching into that, he started with "I'd like to introduce you all to a friend of mine," indicating a man that had followed him up the aisle and was now standing by the stairs leading up to the stage on our side. And he had his back to us, so me and Mom are like "Who is this guy? Is he another director? Why is the rest of the audience cheering?" And then he turned around.
It was Tom Hanks.
Not...some guy who looked just like Tom Hanks. Not some guy who happened to be also named Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks. You know, the actor? Standing not three to five in front of me.
Not counting that time I meet Terry Zdunich, this is easily the closest I have ever been in my entire life to a real live famous person. And it was pretty damn close.
After the applause and standing ovations died down (during which Mom excitedly whispered to me that she remembered just now, she'd read in the paper that Tom Hanks was in town for...something), the director continued what he was saying. Apparantly when Tom Hanks was just starting out as an actor, he worked as an intern with that very theatre company (the director joked it was about twenty-two years ago "or so", and Tom Hanks made a big show of looking skeptical and, as the audience laughed, holding up his fingers to indicate it was a lot more than that) and since he was in Cleveland he wanted to stop by and see what was going on, talk to some of the actors that were around now, and so on.
Tom Hanks gave a little speech about how he's been all over the world, and there isn't a single better space for performing live theatre that he's been in than the Hanna Theater. He also talked about how great it is to support live performances, and he encouraged everyone in the audience that could to make a gift of a ticket to a show of some sort to someone they knew that had never been before, because in doing so they'd not only be supporting the theater but they could also be introducing the joys of going to the theatre to someone who might then continue to do so the rest of their life.
I'm not sure if he stuck around after that or not; it looked like he went back and was sitting in the sort of VIP section toward the middle back of the floor, but by the time later when the curtain dropped and the lights came on for intermission he had somehow disappeared himself.
But still, man. Tom Hanks.
The play itself was a great performance. It was hysterical and all the actors were wonderful in their parts; I'd be hard-pressed to pick anyone out who outshined the rest. We'd already seen the same company do a performance of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a musical with an audience particpation ending based on Charles Dickens' unfinished murder mystery, so it was fun and interesting to see the actors in different roles. The costuming and set pieces and even the music were also very welldone, adding an exotic air of captivation to the whole thing.
Also, during intermission I went to the gift shop and bought a Shakespearean insults coffee mug ("I do desire we may become better strangers.") and a t-shirt that says "Bad to the Bard". Did I mention that this is all during the theater district's Shakespeare festival? ;)
The same group is also doing a run of A Christmas Carol in winter, and an adaptation of A Midsummer Nights' Dream in the spring. I'd really like to go back and see both of them.