Theatre Musings
Tonight is dress rehearsal. Hopefully there will be some people there to see the show. Most of the theatres around here charge $5 or less for people who want to come in the night before the show opens. It’s a good deal - you get to see the show, usually pretty close to perfect, before everyone else and for a whole lot less money. Of course, it IS a dress rehearsal so sometimes things go wrong, but then you get the “behind the scenes” peek that few others get to see. Back when I first started doing shows one of the big theatres had a regular crowd that would fight for those dress rehearsal seats. I never knew if it was because of the cheap tickets or the possibility of seeing a pre-show disaster.
This little theatre doesn’t have that kind of pull though, so I don’t know if there will be anyone there or not. I hope there is. The actresses desperately need to hear some laughter tonight to know where the comic breaks are - we’ve all listened to this show so many times we don’t find any of it funny anymore.
Last night the director and I were sitting on the stage, waiting for the cast to get into their costumes; taking a moment before everything got going. It was so peaceful. All the seats in the auditorium were empty and there were just a few of the stage lights on, throwing gold shadows across the stage. In the quiet, I looked around: at the bare stage, the pieces of the set not yet added, the speakers, silently waiting for the first sound cue. And I just thought how magical this all is. Sometimes I get tired and frustrated - right now I am running on fumes from too many late nights and too many long hours, but there are other times when I just think how lucky I am to be involved in something this magical.
I think of all the amaxzing things I’ve done on stage - ran pyrotechnics that involved creating 10’ high columns of flame, filling a naked girl’s bathtub with specially made soap bubbles so she could “take a bath” on stage, draining the glowing poison out of Peter Pan’s “medicine” as Tinkerbell “drank” it, rigging fly harnesses for the Ghosts of Christmas Future and Past, running fog machines and operating trap doors, doing a quick change that stripped an actor dressed as a baglady (complete with nylons and wig) and redressing him as a man in a three piece suit in under 60 seconds, creating a full tropical rainstorm on stage with torrential rain, blowing tress and lighting, making it snow on Christmas morning, and so, so much more - even a little acting. When I think of it I am so grateful for the girl in my sophomore art class who looked at me and said,
Hey! Why don’t you try out for the school play?
This little theatre doesn’t have that kind of pull though, so I don’t know if there will be anyone there or not. I hope there is. The actresses desperately need to hear some laughter tonight to know where the comic breaks are - we’ve all listened to this show so many times we don’t find any of it funny anymore.
Last night the director and I were sitting on the stage, waiting for the cast to get into their costumes; taking a moment before everything got going. It was so peaceful. All the seats in the auditorium were empty and there were just a few of the stage lights on, throwing gold shadows across the stage. In the quiet, I looked around: at the bare stage, the pieces of the set not yet added, the speakers, silently waiting for the first sound cue. And I just thought how magical this all is. Sometimes I get tired and frustrated - right now I am running on fumes from too many late nights and too many long hours, but there are other times when I just think how lucky I am to be involved in something this magical.
I think of all the amaxzing things I’ve done on stage - ran pyrotechnics that involved creating 10’ high columns of flame, filling a naked girl’s bathtub with specially made soap bubbles so she could “take a bath” on stage, draining the glowing poison out of Peter Pan’s “medicine” as Tinkerbell “drank” it, rigging fly harnesses for the Ghosts of Christmas Future and Past, running fog machines and operating trap doors, doing a quick change that stripped an actor dressed as a baglady (complete with nylons and wig) and redressing him as a man in a three piece suit in under 60 seconds, creating a full tropical rainstorm on stage with torrential rain, blowing tress and lighting, making it snow on Christmas morning, and so, so much more - even a little acting. When I think of it I am so grateful for the girl in my sophomore art class who looked at me and said,
Hey! Why don’t you try out for the school play?