Reminders...

We're in transition phase for Rainmaker. The original actor playing Starbuck watched the show this afternoon. He came back after the show and said: "My friends are awesome. I'm so thrilled to have watched that show. You have no idea how great this show is." Okay, I may be paraphrasing a TINY bit, but he was gushing.

That was humbling.

We're halfway through the run, and it's been going very well. It's kind of hard to keep that all in perspective.

This morning, I was chatting with a couple while working the box office. They bopped in to ask a question and had seen both THE RAINMAKER and THE ODD COUPLE. She noticed me from the show and smiled: "You're doing what you love. That's great."

I am. What's surprising is that I kind of needed that reminder.

There's things I could wish to be better. I wish I had more money right now. Blah Blah Blah. But when it's all said and done, I'm doing what I want to do. What a blessing!

Adjustments and Notes

I made it through two shows, understudying Speed in THE ODD COUPLE. The first time (Saturday night) was for a sold-out house. We had over 210 people, which was a record (to have this many people come to a single night for a five-month run in a town of 788 people is pretty remarkable). The theatre is a small thrust space and gets around 100 or so, depending on the show and the night, of course.

I ended up slipping on some water that spilled on the stage. It received some laughs--all due to the fact that all of the characters are nearly hysterical. The poker players are all trying to help Felix who claims to have taken a whole bottle of pills. We're all trying to cure him, which includes spinning him around and rubbing his wrists to keep his circulation going. Prior to that, Oscar splashes a glass of water on Felix's face, and it gets all over the stage--usually on the actor playing Felix and the rug. Well, it went a little too far downstage. And I slipped. People laughed. I wasn't injured or hurt in any way, thank goodness.

The next day, a woman stopped me and wanted to know if I had meant to trip on purpose. If only....

-----------------------

ON THE RAINMAKER FRONT
We've reached the halfway point of the run. The artistic director observed a number of performances and sat us down before our matinee on Saturday to give some notes. For whatever reason, I was apprehensive about the whole thing. But I had to keep telling myself that if there were major issues with anything I was doing, I'd get some kind of note immediately. By the time the meeting began, my paranoia was put at ease.

I've always felt a bit "eh" about the first scene of the show, but I could never pinpoint why. It took an outside eye to say that we've been missing the whole point of the play (which sounds more harsh than it was, honestly).

The brothers and father of Lizzie need to hear Lizzie's news from when she visited Three Point. We attempted to set her up with a cousin so that she could get married. So when she comes downstairs for breakfast, we have to know whether or not she's going to get married--if not, we have to resort to an agreed-upon plan B (inviting the deputy sheriff for dinner). Everything else that happens in the scene (and there's a lot of other conversations) is cover for the fact that we're really anxious for Lizzie. Needless to say, the first scene plays much better now and has real urgency.

I got some notes about volume at the beginning, which really befuddled me. This is when I wish I had more technical vocabulary about the voice. I have a feeling that the accent I use (which is this western/southern twang, I don't know the official dialect) may not be sitting in the right places so that I'm not quite on voice. What's odd is that I feel like I'm shouting and overpowering anyone else who's on stage--especially the more reserved qualities of H.C. and Noah. Jimmy (my character) bursts on stage with a bang. I sometimes worry that things are TOO exuberant or loud, but that may not be the case at all. The artistic director saw the show again last night and said a general "good work" to us. I'll have to ask him if volume was an issue or not.

Other notes were more about specific moments that just needed to be tightened. But a caveat was that speed for speed's sake is no good. So it's a tricky balance. Intent and meaning always have to be at the foreground--the speed of a scene or act or play will fall into place after intentions are established.

All of the reminders were great. It wasn't as if these notes were revolutionary (although the opening scene bit was significant), but it was good to hear from an "outsider" in a sense.

We've done one show with a new Starbuck. He'll be a permanent change in a couple weeks and stay with us for the rest of the run. The original Starbuck has to return to the Cities for work and such. This is a different situation than understudying. It's my understanding that an understudy must do everything as close as he/she can for the originally cast actor. But in this case, we've got an arrangement for a whole new actor to do, essentially, what he would do with a role. Does that make sense? In this role shift, the new actor has much more time and space to play with since he is owning the role in a way that an understudy wouldn't. Apologies if this is confusing. I also realize that no actor can completely mimic another actor's performance--understudy or not.

Needless to say, this run of the Rainmaker has been one of constant adjustments on small and large scales. It's rewarding, gratifying work.

"great theatre great show...."

The theatre I work at has chalkboards in their bathrooms. It's so cool. In fact, the whole lobby is quite a piece of art. I'll have to post other pictures in the future.

Anyway, I walked in one evening after a show and found this on the board:


That was fun. I may start a series of board photos. Some people doodle. Others say: "__________ was here." I wonder what the women's room has for messages and doodles. I'm tempted to put up "Jimmy Loves Snookie" with a heart around it in the guy's stall one of these days. You'll just have to see The Rainmaker (or read it, I guess) to know what that's all about.



IN OTHER NEWS
I'm understudying on Saturday. That's also my birthday. Here's the schedule:

10 am: Put-in rehearsal for actor replacing Starbuck in The Rainmaker
12 pm: Mid-run check-in (the Artistic Director watched the show last Friday and will sit down with the cast to make sure we're still hitting the points that need to bit hit and so forth)
12:45 pm: fight call
1:28 pm: places
1:30 pm: The Rainmaker
4 pm: Changeover for The Odd Couple (switching one set with another)
6:45 pm: The Odd Couple call
7:28 pm: places
9:45 pm: sigh of relief
then: birthday time

The Weather Outside's Delightful

The pink eye is all gone. Well, I've got a couple days left of eye drops. Thank goodness it wasn't anything serious. I'll probably do one more show without contacts, but it's not something I'd like to do. We'll see how I feel on Monday.

For whatever reason, last night's (Friday) show was extra long. We added about 2 minutes, which is pretty significant. But then we got a nice pep talk from the stage manager and managed to have one of the fastest shows ever for Saturday afternoon's matinee (and the house was one of the lowest attended ever, so it's odd that we zipped through). That, my friends, is the malleability of theatre.

In other news, it's beautiful outside. I hope I can get on the bike and enjoy the weather. It feels like mid-September. I love the fall. It's my favorite season. But I wouldn't mind a nice humid heat wave before the leaves start changing colors. That may be wishful thinking. It's been an extremely mild summer.

I received a phone message from a friend that said next year's season posters/brochures from school are out. There's a claim that I'm pictured on it four times, which is ridiculous. I wasn't even in four shows last year. Typically, different shows from the previous season are displayed.

I'd write more, but I've got an early serving shift at a restaurant tomorrow. I've been working a lot of hours there, which means less time to finesse lines (for both a ten-minute play and an understudy role in "The Odd Couple"--which I'm going in on Saturday). So this week is going to be a bit stressful.

Have a good one.

Conjunctivitis...

I wrote a medium-sized entry, and then it got deleted.

Here's the gist:

1. I've got pink eye or something.
2. I can't wear contacts for the next week. This means performing with fuzzy vision.
3. I made some new realizations/discoveries about my character last night and started to play with them. I think it works.

Sorry to spare you all the glorious details and wry wit. But I'm not in the mood to rewrite it all over again.

Picture Time!

Here are some photos that give a glimpse of what I've been doing since graduating in May (egad, summer's winding down).



This is one of several tortoises that live in a backyard of a home near the theatre. I see these guys on a daily basis. This guy, in particular, responds like a dog and will waddle up to the fence, crane his neck, I think he just wants someone to pet him or something.




Downtown


Snapshot of dressing room. I've got items for both THE RAINMAKER and THE ODD COUPLE sitting here. I took this when I was understudying in THE ODD COUPLE. One day I did both shows.




After every performance, this little report is posted on the callboard. The night of this show, there was some strange interactions between myself and Starbuck. I won't go into details, because it's rather technical and won't make much sense. But it required us to do a tad bit o' ad libbing so we could get back into the scipt. It only affected four lines, but you can imagine the stage manager freaking out. Thus, the "WHAT HAPPENED?" note.



Here's a glimpse of the cast and the set for THE RAINMAKER. I'm having a blast.

Understudying and Food Acting

Understudying is something else. Acting on stage with an understudy is a whole other ballgame. I’ve experienced both in less than a month. I went on for an actor in The Odd Couple about a month ago. I survived. By the second performance, I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of things. The first performance was insanely nerve-wracking. But I had four, sometimes five other actors helping me out. There was only one moment of panic. I had the cue and KNEW it was my turn to speak, but I couldn’t figure out what the heck the line was. I panicked (this feels like ten minutes), and then remembered the gist of the line. That was that! The other actor was able to understand and kept the scene flowing along nicely. Crisis averted.

When stuff like that happens, you can’t run off stage. There’s no where to hide. You just maintain an understanding of trust—that’s especially heightened when the understudies are around.

Then the tables turned and the actor playing H.C. was on vacation (which is allowed at this company because our runs are very long and the actors also have administrative duties on top of the artistic assignments). So we had a put-in rehearsal and then two performances with a new “Pop.” The actor does different things and the ensemble had to be more malleable with blocking and cues. Nothing major happened. There were some dropped lines here and there, but I think we all carried the story along quite well.

Of course other strange things still happen. The first scene centers around H.C. and his grown men having some eggs for breakfast. My character devours a plate of scrambled eggs (“I guess five or six’ll do,” says Jim). They’re not actually eggs—just dyed mashed potatoes (cold mashed potatoes). The latest night they were particularly cold and crumbly, more like eggs actually. At times, I spit out lines with bits of food in my mouth. I don’t have a set schedule of when I take bites and how large the portions are. I probably take more than I should, but it’s a lot of fun to act with food. It heightens the believability for me and makes every scene that much more spontaneous.

Anyway, I became a little overzealous and bits of mashed potato went flying over to the actor playing Noah. He saw it and so did half the audience. We’re not talking projectile vomit kind of stuff, but little morsels of yellow mashed potatoes did manage to catapult across the table. It was pretty obvious.

No matter the situation—understudies or not—things remain interesting and fresh. I’m delving into an interesting period of acting with the same show for an extended time. I believe I’ve done over 20 performances of one show. Prior to this, the most performances of any one show had been around 12. There’s no rut forming (granted, this isn’t a Broadway type run where I’m doing 8 shows a week) and it’s very energizing.

I just wonder what will change once the run treks along. I’ll be living with this show until the end of October. We’ve still got a ways to go.