I went with the gentle diversion. He got in his car and left, I walked to the subway, and the next day we all had lunch with Charles, the Artistic Director of the company. The purpose of this lunch was to discuss the project -- this was something Charles did with every one-act in the festival: dine with the cast and creative team in order to casually bounce some ideas around. I'm betting it was also a way to gauge the overall tension, positivity vs. negativity, or whatever else might be going on with any one project. Thing is, the cast and creative team -- with one notable exception among the actors -- pretty much got along. The only major issue was that the playwright refused to rewright.
So we all went out to lunch. And some ideas were bounced around, most of them useless because they didn't take into account the biggest problem in the piece -- which I will address soon. I was actually somewhat embarrassed for a couple of the actors, because their main ideas stemmed solely from the notion that the size of their roles, and thus their stage time, should be increased. This is not a quality in the heart of every actor, but it is definitely present in some. They count their lines, some even count the words, they actually seek ways to upstage everyone else in the play; these are the actors who will hide your props, move your costume, possibly even poison your makeup -- though that seems relatively rare. I haven't often encountered them, but the funny thing is that every one I've ever worked with has always shown her or his hand pretty early on in the process. The first sign is always greed for more lines, more stage time. Which is not to say that every actor who wants more stage time is a theatrical sociopath -- just as every person who likes weaponry is not a mass-murderer -- but the angling, wheedling, grasping desperation for more lines that some actors display is a clear and bright red flag. That moment in Rivendell comes to mind, in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, when Bilbo sees the ring on its chain around Frodo's neck and for a moment transforms into a scary grasping greedful creeper: that's what this kind of actor can't keep hidden away, and when she or he sees whatever represents her or his personal One Ring, greed and desperation take over and the actor will engage in behavior that ranges from the ridiculous to the deplorable.
We all met at the theater and walked down to a diner on the corner past Playwrights Horizons (was I the only one who looked with longing at those doors? Victor saw me and nodded as if to say, "You are right to be looking at those doors. It's only a matter of time." Alas, it would seem that the gift of prophecy does not rest among Victor's other talents.) Victor stood outside checking his voicemail as we got a large booth. He'd quietly insisted to me that he and I sit next to one another opposite Charles and the playwright, so I quietly arranged it thus; when Victor came in, it was with the news that our playwright would not be joining us for this mandatory lunch because of unforeseen personal obligations. To which Charles responded, "Translation: I'm a fucking pussy and I'm afraidseys to rewritseys my widdow babbow scwiptseys."
This was a refreshing revelation, because it meant several things: first, that Charles was aware of the playwright's unwillingness to fulfill his side of the deal. Second, it appeared that Charles was thus laying the groundwork for open and honest discussion of the project. Those were the most important things, but an added detail was that it seemed that Charles had met this kind of resistance before and was impatient with unprofessionality. I asked him about it:
Edward: Charles, this can't be the first time you've worked with a stubborn playwright.
Charles: Oh my God, no. It's the entire reason we have that contract with all of our playwrights now: the first two festivals we did, we got people who thought collaboration meant refusing to allow us to do their play if we didn't cast it to their satisfaction, things like that.
At this point Charles opened the discussion to the table, and, while the main issue the actors had with the play was one of repetition and pointless lines, these important notes began to get bogged down as the more covetous actors began to work their dark charms. Victor and Charles were having none of that, and wanted more to focus on the clogged dialogue. Eventually, Victor even went so far as to say something to the effect of, "Hey, listen, we all want more to do. But until we get the issue of clarity across to our playwright, asking him to add more confusion will only make our work harder." This prompted the greedies to scrabble backwards, protesting that it wasn't about more lines. But it totally was.
The leads were thus able to get their concerns across to Charles, who noted everything carefully in preparation for an e-mail and then meeting with the playwright. Finally, Victor asked the question I had been waiting to hear: "Does anyone have any thoughts about the overall structure or plotline?"
Silence.
I looked around, then raised my hand. Victor said, "Yes, Edward, O King of Structure?" Here is what I said:
Edward: Okay, here's the thing: this guy, our main character, he's a bestselling novelist, right?
Group: Uh-huh.
Edward: And the conflict in the play is rooted in his wife's fear that he's in danger of losing his job as a Biology professor -- and not getting tenure -- because he's focusing so much on his writing. Correct?
Group: Yeppers.
Edward: Then here's my question: if he's a bestselling novelist, what the fuck does he need to worry about a teaching job for? He has already made more money as, to quote page one of the play, " ... a New York Times #1 Bestseller," than he ever will teaching Biology.
Group: [silence]
Edward: This premise, that a bestselling novelist would be so scared of losing a job that is only a miserable distraction from what he loves, is essentially flawed. And because it's the main support beam upon which the play stands, we are essentially presenting something that no half-intelligent audience member is going to buy.
Professor: Well, Edward, we don't know how successful he is ...
Edward: [pointing to script] Page One: "Honey, I am a New York Times #1 Bestseller, you'd think I could spend a Sunday afternoon working on my novel." I think it's pretty clear.
Wife: I always thought he was joking with that line.
Edward: Why?
Wife: Because otherwise, why am I so worried about his job?
Edward: You're proving my point.
Wife: Huh ... yeah, I guess I am.
Charles: You know, I hadn't even caught that. I think it's an excellent point, and I'll make that the thrust of my discussion with the playwright.
Professor's Fat Sister: I don't know ...
Victor: What don't you know?
Professor's Fat Sister: We're sitting here talking about rewriting his entire play ...
Victor: You were just arguing to bulk up your lines by half, Fat Sister.
Professor's Fat Sister: I just ... it feels wrong. All I'm saying.
Wife: Well, I can keep assuming he's joking if that's what needs to happen, but it's shit acting on my part and I know it. I can't invite an agent when I know I'm doing poor work.
Victor: What about you, Ballerina?
Ballerina: If the central conflict were no longer about not getting tenure at the university because of his relationship with his muse, what would it be about?
Edward: It would be about his relationship with his muse. His wife already as much as accuses him of cheating on her; the tenure thing is a pointless diversion -- this is a play about a love triangle between a writer, his wife and his muse. Getting rid of the tenure bullshit clarifies all of that, gives you all stronger wants and -- hopefully -- less confusing dialogue.
Victor: Thus Spake Edwardthustra.
Charles: Edward, do you want a job as a reader?
Edward: Yes, indeed.
Charles: We'll talk. As for the rest of you, this has been very fruitful and informative. I will run all of this by the playwright and, fingers crossed, I will succeed in --
Professor's Fat Sister: I still don't know ...
Charles: What is it, Fat Sister?
Professor's Fat Sister: It feels so underhanded, meeting like this. If I were the writer, I wouldn't want everyone rewriting my script without me being there. I don't know if I can be a part of it.
Charles: Are you backing out of the show? Because I have another actress ...
Professor's Fat Sister: Oh, no! No! Just ... y'know, concerned.
Victor: Fat Sister, this is a mandatory meeting of which the playwright has been aware for months. He knew this was the lunch in which his script was likely to change. We are doing our jobs, according to our contracts. He is not doing his.
Professor's Fat Sister: But Professor didn't even bring any of this up, the -- who are you, Edward, the "assistant director"? The "assistant director" brought this up. You're not -- he's not even a real member of the team, he's a gopher. Since when do gophers have opinions? I'm just sayin', is all. He's not an actor. He's an assistant.
[Long silence. Waiter passes, ignoring us; probably not the first time he's heard an exchange like this. Not gonna lie: everything she said hit home.]
Charles: Thank you for making your feelings so clear, Fat Sister. Edward, I apologize.
Edward: Yeah, no. Fine.
Charles got up to pay the bill and we all headed outside. I had plastered a pleasant smile on my face and, by some miracle, maintained it all the way back to the theatre. I think I let it slip once Victor and I parted at 8th Avenue, and I may have found a very tight corner to face on a very packed train back to Corona. For the first time in my life, I was looking forward to the numb soullessness guaranteed by a day of work at Restoration Hardware.
Victor called me the next day to tell me he'd had a long phone meeting with the playwright, who felt like we were "cutting his balls off." This affected Victor deeply. He began to back off. So, by the next week when Victor made a nice speech and handed the cast over to me, the wrighter had basically been given carte blanche and was using it to not rewrite anything in his play. My job had become very simple: shepherd the show through this last week of rehearsals and two days of tech, making regular reports to Victor, then attend all performances. I inquired later with Charles and Victor about pushing some rewrites, and the consensus was that it might be better for the company to avoid pushing a playwright into a nervous breakdown over a 30 minute play. I agreed, and everything ahead appeared to be clear skies and smooth sailing. None of us had reckoned, however, with the vengeance of the Professor's Fat Sister.
Showing posts with label Theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theatre. Show all posts
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Oakenboard Theatrefest Festival's 2012-2014 Season
Starting off with a bang, Oakenboard Theatrefest has decided to save a lot of money by letting go of the majority of its technical staff. This leaves two people in the shop: the Technical Director and the Assistant Technical Director. Not enough people to build the sets (as originally designed) for the season, which includes the following shows:
ANNIE
A FLEA IN HER EAR
THE MUSIC MAN
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
THE PRODUCERS
THE MOUSETRAP
OKLAHOMA
THE CIDER HOUSE RULES
Yes, there is actually a stage adaptation of The Cider House Rules, and it is superb. I would like very much to direct it. I spoke to The Powers That Be at OTF about directing it, and of course Mitchellson Mitchellson immediately called his friend Plato Silmarillion with a wonderful idea: Plato should direct The Cider House Rules and set it in a post-apocalyptic downtown Los Angeles. I say, "immediately," when I probably mean something more like, "He picked up the phone and started dialing before my words had finished echoing in the shop." We weren't in the shop, we were in his office; maintenance crews had been repairing a leak sometime in 2009 when they found dry rot and removed the ceiling from his office, which is in a loft in the shop. Owing to the peculiar accoustics of the building, every word uttered in Mitchellson Mitchellson's office has been completely audible everywhere in the shop ever since. For the record, maintenance has no record of the leak repair request, the dry rot or the ceiling; they did such an excellent job of removing it that now they question whether it was ever there to begin with.
Fortunately or un-, depending on the situation, Mitchellson Mitchellson frequently forgets that he has no ceiling and in closed-door meetings with colleagues or friends or both, he is in the habit of making grand pronouncements about this or that member of the company, the crew, the staff or the Administration. "Oh, that hag -- she looks like the Crypt Keeper was caught masturbating in hell," is the most recent mystifying cloud of bombast to come floating down from his aerie. I don't understand it any more than I understand his decision to give Cider House to Plato. But that's what Mitchellson Mitchellson does: he hires his friends. In the case of Plato, Mitchellson Mitchellson hires a friend who then hires his own friends and the show turns out to be not-very-good. But Mitchellson Mitchellson goes on hiring Plato and just can't seem to figure out why a) few people flock to Plato's auditions and, b) the shows don't make any money.
The simple fact is that in this day and age, nobody except recent SF State grads will go to a play set in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Walking Dead on TV may herald the beginning of the end of America's current obsession with road sagas (though frankly I love them and can't get enough), and why should anyone pay good money to sit through two boring hours of what they could see done better in the comfort of their own homes? Once family and friends have seen one performance, I predict near-empty houses except for matinees -- which will empty during intermission when Plato's gratuitous rape scene upsets the blue hairs.
Plato always puts a rape scene in his shows. He's notorious for a production of A Christmas Carol in which he insisted on playing Marley's ghost. He told everyone they must come see his show, that he was "ripping the pants off of" Charles Dickens (?) and that his interpretation of Jacob Marley was "a revelatory tour de force." Revelatory indeed: when Marley's ghost appeared, it was Plato leaping onstage from down left in a deerstalker cloak, wearing a rather accurate and expensive rotting-face mummy mask, shouting his lines into a wireless handheld microphone. Because the mummy wrappings covered his mouth, and because the sound designer had followed Plato's instructions to the letter, the audience was treated to something that sounded like this:
ANNIE
A FLEA IN HER EAR
THE MUSIC MAN
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
THE PRODUCERS
THE MOUSETRAP
OKLAHOMA
THE CIDER HOUSE RULES
Yes, there is actually a stage adaptation of The Cider House Rules, and it is superb. I would like very much to direct it. I spoke to The Powers That Be at OTF about directing it, and of course Mitchellson Mitchellson immediately called his friend Plato Silmarillion with a wonderful idea: Plato should direct The Cider House Rules and set it in a post-apocalyptic downtown Los Angeles. I say, "immediately," when I probably mean something more like, "He picked up the phone and started dialing before my words had finished echoing in the shop." We weren't in the shop, we were in his office; maintenance crews had been repairing a leak sometime in 2009 when they found dry rot and removed the ceiling from his office, which is in a loft in the shop. Owing to the peculiar accoustics of the building, every word uttered in Mitchellson Mitchellson's office has been completely audible everywhere in the shop ever since. For the record, maintenance has no record of the leak repair request, the dry rot or the ceiling; they did such an excellent job of removing it that now they question whether it was ever there to begin with.
Fortunately or un-, depending on the situation, Mitchellson Mitchellson frequently forgets that he has no ceiling and in closed-door meetings with colleagues or friends or both, he is in the habit of making grand pronouncements about this or that member of the company, the crew, the staff or the Administration. "Oh, that hag -- she looks like the Crypt Keeper was caught masturbating in hell," is the most recent mystifying cloud of bombast to come floating down from his aerie. I don't understand it any more than I understand his decision to give Cider House to Plato. But that's what Mitchellson Mitchellson does: he hires his friends. In the case of Plato, Mitchellson Mitchellson hires a friend who then hires his own friends and the show turns out to be not-very-good. But Mitchellson Mitchellson goes on hiring Plato and just can't seem to figure out why a) few people flock to Plato's auditions and, b) the shows don't make any money.
The simple fact is that in this day and age, nobody except recent SF State grads will go to a play set in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Walking Dead on TV may herald the beginning of the end of America's current obsession with road sagas (though frankly I love them and can't get enough), and why should anyone pay good money to sit through two boring hours of what they could see done better in the comfort of their own homes? Once family and friends have seen one performance, I predict near-empty houses except for matinees -- which will empty during intermission when Plato's gratuitous rape scene upsets the blue hairs.
Plato always puts a rape scene in his shows. He's notorious for a production of A Christmas Carol in which he insisted on playing Marley's ghost. He told everyone they must come see his show, that he was "ripping the pants off of" Charles Dickens (?) and that his interpretation of Jacob Marley was "a revelatory tour de force." Revelatory indeed: when Marley's ghost appeared, it was Plato leaping onstage from down left in a deerstalker cloak, wearing a rather accurate and expensive rotting-face mummy mask, shouting his lines into a wireless handheld microphone. Because the mummy wrappings covered his mouth, and because the sound designer had followed Plato's instructions to the letter, the audience was treated to something that sounded like this:
MARLEY
EEMMMMEEENEEEMMMOHHHH SSCHOOOOOOOOOOOOSHJ!
SCROOGE
... Marley, can that be you -- ?
MARLEY
MMMMOOOOOHHHH MOOOHHH FOOO MOOOOHHHH HOOOHHMMM FOOOHHM FWWOOOM FWOM MMMMMEEEEEEEE!!!!!
At which point, Plato as Marley's ghost "raped" Ebeneezer Scrooge. I have to use a lot of quotes around words when describing Plato's "work" because none of it ever seems to fulfill his unfortunate predictions. His oversize deerstalker cloak shielded anything he did to hapless old Scrooge, and the whole thing looked as though Jacob Marley had become, in the afterlife, a remarkably enthusiastic mummified Chiropractor.
Honestly, I wish you could have seen it (stoned), because I don't know if I could couldn't make it any clearer if I were to strap you down (drunk) to watch the bootleg Plato insisted I take -- all furtive and sly like I Spy -- because "they" were trying to "shut [him] down" because of his "dangerous vision." The only dangerous vision I had seen was the clear fact that he was wearing neither glasses nor contacts in the performance I attended, and he stumbled, legally blind, into the middle of young Ebeneezer's love duet with, what's her name, Elizabeth? Doesn't matter, I think Plato changed her name to Brittney. Anyway, he literally opened a door and walked onstage, peering about at the bright lights, confused, then tripped on a bench and tackled Brittney, who, I forgot to mention, spoke with an incredibly thick and inaccurate Cockney dialect. Plato has some inner ear issues, and as he was still wearing his ghoul makeup, several children in the audience began screaming when the zombie man got the nice princess lady. While Marley's accosting of Scrooge had just been weird and mildly discomfiting, this thing with Brittney was somewhat more disturbing. It appeared that Plato could not get up, and every time he tried to, he did so by latching onto Brittney's bodice and attempting to hoist himself to his feet. Brittney, I should have mentioned earlier, had been costumed in something left over from Oakenboard's Jeckyll and Hyde of 2001: a bodice two sizes too large that made her look ripe for disembowelment in Whitechapel. Pulling just a little too hard on said bodice, Plato dislodged the water-filled condoms Brittney was using to fill out what the bodice left wanting. The condoms began to slide out the the bottom of the bodice, in the front, looking for all the world as though this inappropriately Sherlockian zombie was in fact pulling out her innards. Until they burst, splattering Plato and the actors with water. And the bodice fell open. Regretful dads had to carry inconsolable kids to the car, ticket refunds were refused utterly and Plato made a very snarky apology to the audience at the end of the show.
He also redoubled his efforts as Marley's ghost and screamed so loud in the role that he won a Shelley for Best Supporting Actor that year. Plato is also on the Shelley Committee.
I'll share more as I hear it.
Until then, O Thousands of Worshipful Readers
At which point, Plato as Marley's ghost "raped" Ebeneezer Scrooge. I have to use a lot of quotes around words when describing Plato's "work" because none of it ever seems to fulfill his unfortunate predictions. His oversize deerstalker cloak shielded anything he did to hapless old Scrooge, and the whole thing looked as though Jacob Marley had become, in the afterlife, a remarkably enthusiastic mummified Chiropractor.
Honestly, I wish you could have seen it (stoned), because I don't know if I could couldn't make it any clearer if I were to strap you down (drunk) to watch the bootleg Plato insisted I take -- all furtive and sly like I Spy -- because "they" were trying to "shut [him] down" because of his "dangerous vision." The only dangerous vision I had seen was the clear fact that he was wearing neither glasses nor contacts in the performance I attended, and he stumbled, legally blind, into the middle of young Ebeneezer's love duet with, what's her name, Elizabeth? Doesn't matter, I think Plato changed her name to Brittney. Anyway, he literally opened a door and walked onstage, peering about at the bright lights, confused, then tripped on a bench and tackled Brittney, who, I forgot to mention, spoke with an incredibly thick and inaccurate Cockney dialect. Plato has some inner ear issues, and as he was still wearing his ghoul makeup, several children in the audience began screaming when the zombie man got the nice princess lady. While Marley's accosting of Scrooge had just been weird and mildly discomfiting, this thing with Brittney was somewhat more disturbing. It appeared that Plato could not get up, and every time he tried to, he did so by latching onto Brittney's bodice and attempting to hoist himself to his feet. Brittney, I should have mentioned earlier, had been costumed in something left over from Oakenboard's Jeckyll and Hyde of 2001: a bodice two sizes too large that made her look ripe for disembowelment in Whitechapel. Pulling just a little too hard on said bodice, Plato dislodged the water-filled condoms Brittney was using to fill out what the bodice left wanting. The condoms began to slide out the the bottom of the bodice, in the front, looking for all the world as though this inappropriately Sherlockian zombie was in fact pulling out her innards. Until they burst, splattering Plato and the actors with water. And the bodice fell open. Regretful dads had to carry inconsolable kids to the car, ticket refunds were refused utterly and Plato made a very snarky apology to the audience at the end of the show.
He also redoubled his efforts as Marley's ghost and screamed so loud in the role that he won a Shelley for Best Supporting Actor that year. Plato is also on the Shelley Committee.
I'll share more as I hear it.
Until then, O Thousands of Worshipful Readers
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Wowsers McGowswers
It has been a really long time since I've written anything. This is largely because I have been involved with several large projects, both theatrical and cinematic. They took a great deal of my time, certainly. But the reason I wasn't writing was because I was so frustrated with the projects that I hesitated to write anything at all, out of not wanting the producers of the various projects to know what I thought of what was going on. Not that I think anyone reads this blog, but one never knows. Six subscribers, yes, but perhaps a malevolent person lurking and searching for more reasons to accuse me of things.
Look at that: even now, I am so hesitant to say anything about what was going on that I start with a direct statement and then alter it at least three times until the final product is so confusing that wonderful people associated with either project could find themselves wondering if they were the cause of my deep and abiding stress-angst in 2011.
Here we are in 2012, and my year ended with the most horrific event I have ever personally experienced -- and it did not even happen physically to me. And now, a new event: just this morning, I learned that my nephew, Jackson, was attacked and beaten last night at Rockridge BART. He is generally okay, there seems to have been a concussion of some sort, and though I haven't seen him yet, I have spoken to my brother who tells me that Jack is much improved from last night.
So, when I look back at all the shitfuck assness of what I had to endure artistically in 2011, it is nothing next to the fact that Veronica is alive and well, Jackson is recovering, and we still have a roof over our heads. I know I will need to find a way to express the rage that still smolders in me from 2011, but for now I am just happy that my family is intact. If you've met them, you know what I'm talking about. Individually and as a group, my family is wonderful. We all have our foibles, but they're what make us who we are; in my family, we accept everyone's foibles and love them in spite -- and often because of -- those things which in other groups would make them intolerable.
I am a fine example of this. The things I say at family dinners get howls of laughter; I tried one of the same lines at a subscriber event for Solano College and quickly learned that the best way to make subscribers leave you alone is offer to show them the scabs on your taint. Chris Guptill, take note.
Look at that: even now, I am so hesitant to say anything about what was going on that I start with a direct statement and then alter it at least three times until the final product is so confusing that wonderful people associated with either project could find themselves wondering if they were the cause of my deep and abiding stress-angst in 2011.
Here we are in 2012, and my year ended with the most horrific event I have ever personally experienced -- and it did not even happen physically to me. And now, a new event: just this morning, I learned that my nephew, Jackson, was attacked and beaten last night at Rockridge BART. He is generally okay, there seems to have been a concussion of some sort, and though I haven't seen him yet, I have spoken to my brother who tells me that Jack is much improved from last night.
So, when I look back at all the shitfuck assness of what I had to endure artistically in 2011, it is nothing next to the fact that Veronica is alive and well, Jackson is recovering, and we still have a roof over our heads. I know I will need to find a way to express the rage that still smolders in me from 2011, but for now I am just happy that my family is intact. If you've met them, you know what I'm talking about. Individually and as a group, my family is wonderful. We all have our foibles, but they're what make us who we are; in my family, we accept everyone's foibles and love them in spite -- and often because of -- those things which in other groups would make them intolerable.
I am a fine example of this. The things I say at family dinners get howls of laughter; I tried one of the same lines at a subscriber event for Solano College and quickly learned that the best way to make subscribers leave you alone is offer to show them the scabs on your taint. Chris Guptill, take note.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Adventures in Hair
I'm generally an affable, easy-going sort of fellow. But my recent stories about shaving my head have brought to mind some experiences I've had in theatre that are worth telling here. I'm not sure how many of these stories I'll tell today. I may restrict it to one, as I suspect that my overlong blogs turn off those of you with a third-grade attention span.
I drive through Walnut Creek every day en route to Solano College, where I am currently faculty in the Actor Training Program. I teach Musical Theatre Audition Technique. Like anything, you get out of it what you put into it. Like Walnut Creek, it has its nice parts and its not-so-nice parts. CTA/Crossroads was in a set of buildings in a not-so-nice part of Walnut Creek that aspired to the status of strip mall on Olympic Way, across from a 7/11. I heard recently that it had shut down. I don't know if that's true or not.
These buildings, nestled up against 680 Northbound, housed mostly automotive, florist, art supply businesses. And a theatre academy. With a theatre attached to it. The theatre itself had been a pet shop. This posed some problems, as apparently the stage manager -- someone's Dad, as I remember -- didn't think it was necessary to sweep or mop anywhere before, during or after it had been converted into a theatre space. Even when actors were sneezing and having asthma attacks, action was deemed unnecessary.
This tiny little theatre had chosen as its inaugural production the sophisticated Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music. This is a show about infidelity, familial love triangles, courtesans and suicide -- among other things. The theatre was run by Mormons. Many of you might see a disconnect there; the management did not. However, they had lost their director and the fellow playing Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm the day before they were to start rehearsing. Or perhaps when I arrived they'd been rehearsing for a week. I know they were freaking out, looking for someone to play Carl-Magnus. I got a call, so I figured I would go audition for them. I had never heard of the company, but then, I had been living and doing theatre on the East Coast since 1995. This was 2001.
Lesson Number One: Always Do Your Research
A theatre in a third-world strip mall, next to a freeway, in a former pet store, run by Mormons. I would never have gone anywhere near the place, had I known. (I think my then girlfriend knew some things, but she hesitated to tell me, as there were reflective surfaces in the vicinity.) I want to be clear: the only reason I took the job was out of boredom and because I hadn't actually done any theatre since 1998. Long story, I'll safe it for another post.
Lesson Number Two: $tick To Your Gun$
When you ask for $1,500.00. stick to it. If they refuse, thank them politely and leave. They will either capitulate or they will not. If they pay you what you ask, that's great. Invite whom you will. But if you give in to their offer of a third of that amount, do not invite anyone. You have sealed your own doom.
Lesson Number Three: Hold Them To The Dates They Give You
Write down performance dates the moment you get them. Do not trust the management to stick to those dates. They will probably extend the show without telling you, and when your performances conflict with rehearsals for your next project, you might find yourself in conflict with the Artistic Director of a far better company. Note: if you are ever in a situation where Crappy Group's show conflicts with Superb Group's show, choose Superb Group. Crappy group will probably fold due to financial mismanagement within five years.
So I was playing opposite a woman who was a little bit older than me. The management were concerned that I looked too young next to her, and in an effort to remedy this they brought a professional hairdresser in to "frost" my hair. I told them I could easily do it with makeup and they said, no, no, it's our pleasure. She's the real deal. She'll frost it and it will look natural and everything will be fine.
Next thing I know, there's this borderline morbidly obese woman in a tube top crowding into a handicap restroom with me, mixing some sort of paste in a plastic cup. It starts to smell, the fumes burn my eyes, and she's telling me, "We're going to just brush this on and see how it looks."
I'm assuming that this is step one of frosting. The paste begins to burn my skin. I can smell burning hair. I mention this, she doesn't seem concerned, I rinse my hair out and I have orange patches at each temple and an orange patch in the center of the hair above my forehead. I look like a Smoky Calico.
"What's step two?"
"Step two of what?"
"Of the frosting process."
"The what process?"
"Aren't we frosting my hair?"
"Maybe we can add some more ..."
So she daubs more caustic paste onto my hair. By the time it rinses out, it's made very large light yellow patches in my hair. I look like an idiot who has mated with a clown. A large clown. In a tube top.
One of the management people sees what has happened to my hair and does not immediately take steps to intervene. After rinsing my hair again, and again, and again, I ask what the next step is.
"That's it. There is no next step."
"What?"
"You're done. Don't you like it?"
"Well, it's not terribly natural-looking, is it?"
"Edward, trust me: our audiences don't care."
When I walk into the theatre to rehearse that evening, it goes quiet. The actress playing Anne gets oh-my-God eyes and starts studying her script very closely. I still don't understand where the hairdresser lady has gone and why she didn't finish the job. I ask someone if she'll be back, but rehearsal gets started and I forget about my hair until I get back to my parents' house and my sister Hillary says, "Tad, what THE FUCK did you do to your hair?"
The woman playing my wife wears enough makeup in the role that our age difference is hardly noticeable. But now I have to darken my hair with brown makeup and try to silver over that to cover the orange patches. On stage, my grey looks a deep, chlorinated green. In certain lights, because not all of the lighting is for theatre and some pieces are outdoor flood lamps, my hair seems to glow dully, like irradiated old copper. I look dead, possessed or cancerous by turns.
The production is generally terrible, but it does lead to further employment for me: because of a connection I make in that cast, I eventually direct The Cocktail Hour at Pleasanton Playhouse. But that's down the road. And, frankly, everything else is eclipsed by the savory tidbit they saved for opening night.
"Edward, we'd like to ask you not to say a couple of words in your performance."
"I'm sorry?"
"Our audience is very conservative and there are a couple of words we'd like you not to say."
"What words are these?" I'm polite, but now my hackles are really starting to rise. Do they point to the words or say them? I don't remember. I choose say:
"God-damn, please don't say God-damn."
"But it's in the script."
"We'd just like to ask you to consider not saying it, please. You can say anything else you want, just not those words."
"Have you asked Sondheim's permission?"
Silence.
This polite pressure continues. I agree to replace the word. Ordinarily, I would sing,
"The papers ... he mentioned papers,
Some legal papers which I didn't see there.
Where were they, the goddamn papers she had to sign?"
That night, and ever after, I sing something like this:
"The frongly-brongly papers ... he mentioned papers,
Some legal papers which I didn't see there.
Where were they, the krinkly-frankle papers she had to sign?"
Other variations include the golly-gee-whillikers papers, the baby-eating papers, the dog-fart papers, the invisible papers, the fly papers, the oofly-doodler papers, the penis papers. Anything is fine, as long as I don't say God-damn. And they never bat an eye. Neither the audience nor the management seems to notice.
The best and simplest substitution comes to me on closing night. It comes to me right before the line. One word, to perfectly describe my experience with that production:
Toilet.
The audience doesn't even twitch. I'd say my hair had them in its cobra-like gaze, but by this time Hillary had dyed it for me and the silver looked normal. No more Boris Karloff toupee for me, alas. So I must assume that this conservative audience simply had no idea what they were watching. They were there to be polite. They neither cared nor understood. Just stupid Americans, sitting in an old pet store, trying not to sneeze as the Liebeslieders shriek off-pitch at them and the ingenue runs around with band-aids up her shin from the giant hole backstage next to the stairs that the Stage Manager (someone's Dad) couldn't be troubled to patch.
I drive through Walnut Creek every day en route to Solano College, where I am currently faculty in the Actor Training Program. I teach Musical Theatre Audition Technique. Like anything, you get out of it what you put into it. Like Walnut Creek, it has its nice parts and its not-so-nice parts. CTA/Crossroads was in a set of buildings in a not-so-nice part of Walnut Creek that aspired to the status of strip mall on Olympic Way, across from a 7/11. I heard recently that it had shut down. I don't know if that's true or not.
These buildings, nestled up against 680 Northbound, housed mostly automotive, florist, art supply businesses. And a theatre academy. With a theatre attached to it. The theatre itself had been a pet shop. This posed some problems, as apparently the stage manager -- someone's Dad, as I remember -- didn't think it was necessary to sweep or mop anywhere before, during or after it had been converted into a theatre space. Even when actors were sneezing and having asthma attacks, action was deemed unnecessary.
This tiny little theatre had chosen as its inaugural production the sophisticated Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music. This is a show about infidelity, familial love triangles, courtesans and suicide -- among other things. The theatre was run by Mormons. Many of you might see a disconnect there; the management did not. However, they had lost their director and the fellow playing Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm the day before they were to start rehearsing. Or perhaps when I arrived they'd been rehearsing for a week. I know they were freaking out, looking for someone to play Carl-Magnus. I got a call, so I figured I would go audition for them. I had never heard of the company, but then, I had been living and doing theatre on the East Coast since 1995. This was 2001.
Lesson Number One: Always Do Your Research
A theatre in a third-world strip mall, next to a freeway, in a former pet store, run by Mormons. I would never have gone anywhere near the place, had I known. (I think my then girlfriend knew some things, but she hesitated to tell me, as there were reflective surfaces in the vicinity.) I want to be clear: the only reason I took the job was out of boredom and because I hadn't actually done any theatre since 1998. Long story, I'll safe it for another post.
Lesson Number Two: $tick To Your Gun$
When you ask for $1,500.00. stick to it. If they refuse, thank them politely and leave. They will either capitulate or they will not. If they pay you what you ask, that's great. Invite whom you will. But if you give in to their offer of a third of that amount, do not invite anyone. You have sealed your own doom.
Lesson Number Three: Hold Them To The Dates They Give You
Write down performance dates the moment you get them. Do not trust the management to stick to those dates. They will probably extend the show without telling you, and when your performances conflict with rehearsals for your next project, you might find yourself in conflict with the Artistic Director of a far better company. Note: if you are ever in a situation where Crappy Group's show conflicts with Superb Group's show, choose Superb Group. Crappy group will probably fold due to financial mismanagement within five years.
So I was playing opposite a woman who was a little bit older than me. The management were concerned that I looked too young next to her, and in an effort to remedy this they brought a professional hairdresser in to "frost" my hair. I told them I could easily do it with makeup and they said, no, no, it's our pleasure. She's the real deal. She'll frost it and it will look natural and everything will be fine.
Next thing I know, there's this borderline morbidly obese woman in a tube top crowding into a handicap restroom with me, mixing some sort of paste in a plastic cup. It starts to smell, the fumes burn my eyes, and she's telling me, "We're going to just brush this on and see how it looks."
I'm assuming that this is step one of frosting. The paste begins to burn my skin. I can smell burning hair. I mention this, she doesn't seem concerned, I rinse my hair out and I have orange patches at each temple and an orange patch in the center of the hair above my forehead. I look like a Smoky Calico.
"What's step two?"
"Step two of what?"
"Of the frosting process."
"The what process?"
"Aren't we frosting my hair?"
"Maybe we can add some more ..."
So she daubs more caustic paste onto my hair. By the time it rinses out, it's made very large light yellow patches in my hair. I look like an idiot who has mated with a clown. A large clown. In a tube top.
One of the management people sees what has happened to my hair and does not immediately take steps to intervene. After rinsing my hair again, and again, and again, I ask what the next step is.
"That's it. There is no next step."
"What?"
"You're done. Don't you like it?"
"Well, it's not terribly natural-looking, is it?"
"Edward, trust me: our audiences don't care."
When I walk into the theatre to rehearse that evening, it goes quiet. The actress playing Anne gets oh-my-God eyes and starts studying her script very closely. I still don't understand where the hairdresser lady has gone and why she didn't finish the job. I ask someone if she'll be back, but rehearsal gets started and I forget about my hair until I get back to my parents' house and my sister Hillary says, "Tad, what THE FUCK did you do to your hair?"
The woman playing my wife wears enough makeup in the role that our age difference is hardly noticeable. But now I have to darken my hair with brown makeup and try to silver over that to cover the orange patches. On stage, my grey looks a deep, chlorinated green. In certain lights, because not all of the lighting is for theatre and some pieces are outdoor flood lamps, my hair seems to glow dully, like irradiated old copper. I look dead, possessed or cancerous by turns.
The production is generally terrible, but it does lead to further employment for me: because of a connection I make in that cast, I eventually direct The Cocktail Hour at Pleasanton Playhouse. But that's down the road. And, frankly, everything else is eclipsed by the savory tidbit they saved for opening night.
"Edward, we'd like to ask you not to say a couple of words in your performance."
"I'm sorry?"
"Our audience is very conservative and there are a couple of words we'd like you not to say."
"What words are these?" I'm polite, but now my hackles are really starting to rise. Do they point to the words or say them? I don't remember. I choose say:
"God-damn, please don't say God-damn."
"But it's in the script."
"We'd just like to ask you to consider not saying it, please. You can say anything else you want, just not those words."
"Have you asked Sondheim's permission?"
Silence.
This polite pressure continues. I agree to replace the word. Ordinarily, I would sing,
"The papers ... he mentioned papers,
Some legal papers which I didn't see there.
Where were they, the goddamn papers she had to sign?"
That night, and ever after, I sing something like this:
"The frongly-brongly papers ... he mentioned papers,
Some legal papers which I didn't see there.
Where were they, the krinkly-frankle papers she had to sign?"
Other variations include the golly-gee-whillikers papers, the baby-eating papers, the dog-fart papers, the invisible papers, the fly papers, the oofly-doodler papers, the penis papers. Anything is fine, as long as I don't say God-damn. And they never bat an eye. Neither the audience nor the management seems to notice.
The best and simplest substitution comes to me on closing night. It comes to me right before the line. One word, to perfectly describe my experience with that production:
Toilet.
The audience doesn't even twitch. I'd say my hair had them in its cobra-like gaze, but by this time Hillary had dyed it for me and the silver looked normal. No more Boris Karloff toupee for me, alas. So I must assume that this conservative audience simply had no idea what they were watching. They were there to be polite. They neither cared nor understood. Just stupid Americans, sitting in an old pet store, trying not to sneeze as the Liebeslieders shriek off-pitch at them and the ingenue runs around with band-aids up her shin from the giant hole backstage next to the stairs that the Stage Manager (someone's Dad) couldn't be troubled to patch.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Debacle, Part II
He begins teaching the class the following Monday. Only it's not a theatre class at all. It's after-school babysitting. A cafeteria full of 60 kids, all yelling and playing and chasing and hitting. He is the only adult in the room. He tries to get their attention. It does not work. He yells, "Hey, everyone, free ice cream!"
The room is silent. They all turn to him. A little Asian Indian girl with sincere brown eyes says, "Really?"
"No, but --" and it's too late, they're all running and bellowing again.
He is uncertain what to do, until he sees the microphone. He goes over to it, next to an old piano that looks just like the piano from his elementary school; he taps the mic twice. It is on. He picks it up. No one has noticed the sounds. He takes a breath, and lets out a long, slow, "Moooooooooooooooo!" into the mic. Some of the kids pause.
He moos a second time and more of the kids pause. He moos a third time and they are still, silent, staring at him. He says, in a thick German accent, "You vill all be sittink DOWN or you vill all be fed to ze ogre I have HIDDEN in my plasticken tubben."
They sit, silent, wherever they are, he replaces the mic and reaches into the tub. They all gasp, sitting back, terror in their faces. He grasps something soft and flings it into the air. The children, frozen, are at once delighted: he's thrown the entire contents of a jumbo bag of cotton balls, and they are falling over the assembly like giant Charlie Brown Special snowballs. The noise level starts to rise and he shouts, "HALT!"
They halt.
"You vill each grab ONE cotton ball. You vill take this cotton ball to a table and sit, silent, pretending this cotton ball is your baby tyrannosaurus. IF you are silent, it vill not eat you and poop you out like so much poo." A few of the kids giggle. They are shushed by the others.
They move immediately to the tables, cotton balls in hand. There are only a few cotton balls left. They are all staring at the cotton. The little girl with the sincere, serious eyes is quietly whispering to hers.
"You vill tell me your NAMES vehn I point to you. Your NAMES und ONE szing about yourself zat nooooobody knows, as lonk as it does NOT involve creepy personal details."
In this way he goes around the room and gets them to say their names and he learns that this is a room full of exceptionally smart young people. As the last boy finishes talking about his pet tadpoles that are turning into frogs that make his mother "uncomfterble b'cause of Darwin", he prepares to talk about theatre. But the girl with the serious eyes says, softly, "What's your name?"
He is at a loss. What does he say? A title? A professorship? He remembers an instructor from Arkham: "Tell the truth about yourself to everyone except the Press; those fuckers don't deserve it."
"My name," he says, "Is Mr. X. I am here to teach you about Theatre."
Almost every hand in the room shoots up.
He points to a Chinese-American boy named Dean with a round face and a penchant for fossils; the boy says, "Like movies?"
And the room is full of questions: "Are you a Movie Star?" "Do you know Harry Potter?" "Why are you so fat?"
Then a bell rings and they all run out of the room to their parents' waiting cars. He is alone. Two hours have somehow passed. He is exhausted. He's just putting the lid on the plastic tub when the door opens and an Asian Indian man in his forties comes in.
"Mr. X.? Hello, I am Sanjay Singh, the Principal. I wanted to come talk to you earlier, but we had an altercation with a parent in the front office."
"Everything okay?" he asks as they shake hands.
"It's fine, just some philosophical differences. We're a private academy and we teach science in our science classrooms, not theology. Some parents are angered by this. When this sometimes happens, my motto is, 'Show 'em the fine print and if they don't like it, show 'em the door."
"That's a superb motto."
"How did it go today?"
"They seemed to have a great time."
"That's good. One of our teachers peeped in earlier and came running to tell on you, you know."
"What did I do?" he asks, thinking of the microphone.
"You managed to get an entire room of sixty children silent and attentive for two hours. Keep this up, and we'll try to hire you." Mr. Singh laughs and waggles a finger at him. The PA crackles, "Mr. Singh to the Office, please."
"Oh God, I have to go, we'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. X."
Singh was gone, the room was silent.
He realizes suddenly that Miss Smith has never shown. He hopes to see her the next day. Which reminds him of the check. He takes the tub to his sister's car, drives back toward his parents' house in Rowell's Corner before heading to the bank.
It's under the shade of the oak trees in their front drive that he first searches the tub for the check. It's there in the drive that he meticulously empties and reorganizes the tub. It's there that he sits, sweating and a little panicky, against the right front tire as he dials LouAnne's number. Busy signal.
He dials again.
Busy signal.
He dials again.
He searches the car.
He searches his clothes.
He goes into the house and searches his suitcase, sleeping bag and the entire area around the den where he's been living since he came home (they'd turned his old bedroom into storage).
He walks out to the car and sits down in shock. The check is gone.
"I'll just ask for another one," he says, putting the tub into the passenger seat and locking the car. He heads inside and starts making a salad for his family, turning on 91.1 FM for jazz instead of 88.5 FM for news and information.
So it is that he misses the news story about the Mexican family in Hayward who experienced a miracle: they were in danger of losing their house and on their way to ask family for a place to stay when an envelope containing a cashier's check for an undisclosed amount flew into their open car window as they drove South on 880.
"It's a miracle from Jesus! We can make our payments! We can live at home! Oh, thank you, thank you whoever you are!"
His salad is acclaimed that evening as one of the finest his parents and sister have ever had.
© 2010, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
The room is silent. They all turn to him. A little Asian Indian girl with sincere brown eyes says, "Really?"
"No, but --" and it's too late, they're all running and bellowing again.
He is uncertain what to do, until he sees the microphone. He goes over to it, next to an old piano that looks just like the piano from his elementary school; he taps the mic twice. It is on. He picks it up. No one has noticed the sounds. He takes a breath, and lets out a long, slow, "Moooooooooooooooo!" into the mic. Some of the kids pause.
He moos a second time and more of the kids pause. He moos a third time and they are still, silent, staring at him. He says, in a thick German accent, "You vill all be sittink DOWN or you vill all be fed to ze ogre I have HIDDEN in my plasticken tubben."
They sit, silent, wherever they are, he replaces the mic and reaches into the tub. They all gasp, sitting back, terror in their faces. He grasps something soft and flings it into the air. The children, frozen, are at once delighted: he's thrown the entire contents of a jumbo bag of cotton balls, and they are falling over the assembly like giant Charlie Brown Special snowballs. The noise level starts to rise and he shouts, "HALT!"
They halt.
"You vill each grab ONE cotton ball. You vill take this cotton ball to a table and sit, silent, pretending this cotton ball is your baby tyrannosaurus. IF you are silent, it vill not eat you and poop you out like so much poo." A few of the kids giggle. They are shushed by the others.
They move immediately to the tables, cotton balls in hand. There are only a few cotton balls left. They are all staring at the cotton. The little girl with the sincere, serious eyes is quietly whispering to hers.
"You vill tell me your NAMES vehn I point to you. Your NAMES und ONE szing about yourself zat nooooobody knows, as lonk as it does NOT involve creepy personal details."
In this way he goes around the room and gets them to say their names and he learns that this is a room full of exceptionally smart young people. As the last boy finishes talking about his pet tadpoles that are turning into frogs that make his mother "uncomfterble b'cause of Darwin", he prepares to talk about theatre. But the girl with the serious eyes says, softly, "What's your name?"
He is at a loss. What does he say? A title? A professorship? He remembers an instructor from Arkham: "Tell the truth about yourself to everyone except the Press; those fuckers don't deserve it."
"My name," he says, "Is Mr. X. I am here to teach you about Theatre."
Almost every hand in the room shoots up.
He points to a Chinese-American boy named Dean with a round face and a penchant for fossils; the boy says, "Like movies?"
And the room is full of questions: "Are you a Movie Star?" "Do you know Harry Potter?" "Why are you so fat?"
Then a bell rings and they all run out of the room to their parents' waiting cars. He is alone. Two hours have somehow passed. He is exhausted. He's just putting the lid on the plastic tub when the door opens and an Asian Indian man in his forties comes in.
"Mr. X.? Hello, I am Sanjay Singh, the Principal. I wanted to come talk to you earlier, but we had an altercation with a parent in the front office."
"Everything okay?" he asks as they shake hands.
"It's fine, just some philosophical differences. We're a private academy and we teach science in our science classrooms, not theology. Some parents are angered by this. When this sometimes happens, my motto is, 'Show 'em the fine print and if they don't like it, show 'em the door."
"That's a superb motto."
"How did it go today?"
"They seemed to have a great time."
"That's good. One of our teachers peeped in earlier and came running to tell on you, you know."
"What did I do?" he asks, thinking of the microphone.
"You managed to get an entire room of sixty children silent and attentive for two hours. Keep this up, and we'll try to hire you." Mr. Singh laughs and waggles a finger at him. The PA crackles, "Mr. Singh to the Office, please."
"Oh God, I have to go, we'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. X."
Singh was gone, the room was silent.
He realizes suddenly that Miss Smith has never shown. He hopes to see her the next day. Which reminds him of the check. He takes the tub to his sister's car, drives back toward his parents' house in Rowell's Corner before heading to the bank.
It's under the shade of the oak trees in their front drive that he first searches the tub for the check. It's there in the drive that he meticulously empties and reorganizes the tub. It's there that he sits, sweating and a little panicky, against the right front tire as he dials LouAnne's number. Busy signal.
He dials again.
Busy signal.
He dials again.
He searches the car.
He searches his clothes.
He goes into the house and searches his suitcase, sleeping bag and the entire area around the den where he's been living since he came home (they'd turned his old bedroom into storage).
He walks out to the car and sits down in shock. The check is gone.
"I'll just ask for another one," he says, putting the tub into the passenger seat and locking the car. He heads inside and starts making a salad for his family, turning on 91.1 FM for jazz instead of 88.5 FM for news and information.
So it is that he misses the news story about the Mexican family in Hayward who experienced a miracle: they were in danger of losing their house and on their way to ask family for a place to stay when an envelope containing a cashier's check for an undisclosed amount flew into their open car window as they drove South on 880.
"It's a miracle from Jesus! We can make our payments! We can live at home! Oh, thank you, thank you whoever you are!"
His salad is acclaimed that evening as one of the finest his parents and sister have ever had.
© 2010, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
Debacle, Part I
The actor has graduated from a prestigious conservatory on the East Coast. Owing to a family emergency, he finds himself back home in California for a time, and must find temporary employment in order to fund his return to New York. Casting about for theatrical work that pays, he finds a teaching opportunity in a small town not twenty minutes from his family's home.
He is interviewed by a man several years younger than himself, who seems to doubt the actor's training and qualifications. The actor leaves the interview somewhat shocked that the interviewer only asked if he could teach specific classes and never asked what he could teach. He takes a job with an outfit called, "TheaterSmartiez Theater For Kidz!!!"
Smartiez is run by a somewhat desperate woman in her late forties. Her name is LouAnne. She likes to be called Ann. She specifies, "Ann, A-n-n. Don't pronounce the E."
"Isn't it silent, anyway?"
Long silence.
"I can see you've got a lot of training," she smiles. Genuinely pleased, for some reason. He's uncomfortable, having borrowed his sister's car to drive to this very hot little alleyway in San Jose to pick up the supplies for this theatre class he's supposed to teach. There's no air conditioning in this building, but she is not sweating. On his father's advice, he has worn a suit. It does not fit well. He can feel his sweat soaking through his undershirt, shirt, tie and jacket. But he is afraid to take any of it off in case he has to beat a hasty retreat.
"You've read my resume? That's a relief, the last two people I interviewed with didn't even glance at it," and here he pauses, having looked at the envelope he sent with a fancy resume printed on fancy paper, sealed in a fancy presentation folder with a wax seal. An unbroken wax seal. She hasn't, in fact, seen his resume. The only thing she's read is his cover letter; it's there, on her desk, his phone number circled in red. There's a coffee stain on the resume. She glances at it and she blushes, but it looks more like a spiderwebbing of varicose veins and gin blossoms pulsing across her face under her skin. She laughs and her gums look like she is cultivating plankton under her lips. He is deeply alarmed.
"I didn't need to read your resume, I know you by reputation, Mr. ..." a glance at his last name, "Mr. X."
He is genuinely surprised and a little pleased. "Who did you talk to?"
"The guy at that theatre over there in ... what's the name of that town ... ?"
"Livermore?"
"Yes! Nice man."
"Yes, he is. Want to see my impersonation of him?"
"Sure, another time. Anyway, he said to hire you, so here you are. Now: the box of supplies requires a forty-five dollar deposit on your part and if you don't return them, I keep that forty-five dollars. You'll arrive at the Cherrywood Preparatory Academy in Newark at 3:10 pm, you'll check in at the office and proceed to the cafeteria where you will run a theater program. This is Monday through Friday 3:10 pm to 5:10 pm. If you miss a day, you're fired; if you're late, you're fired; if you swear or blaspheme or touch a kid, you're fired. Miss Smith will be there with you every day as your assistant, and she will watch you like a hawk. Miss Smith reports directly to me. Miss Smith hates homosexuals, so watch yourself."
He's a little shocked, and sits silent for a minute. Then he says, "If Ken had such good things to say about me, why would you think I'd touch a kid?"
She grins. "Standard fare. I have to say that to all of our instructors. Nothing personal."
"Don't you require fingerprinting?"
"Not for after-school programs," she's all business now, putting forms in a folder and putting the folder in a plastic bin full of crafts supplies.
"Why not?"
"The instructors are on campus, the school is there to watch out for the kids, if something goes wrong, it's their responsibility."
She shoves the tub at him.
"Fill out the forms and send them in when the class is complete, you'll get your check 90 days after that."
"Should I sign a contract?"
"Oh! Right, of course," she looks around, a little perplexed. "Where did I put them?" She starts rummaging, mumbling about the newly reorganized office. It does not look reorganized to him. The only newly-anything about it is the newly-settled layer of dust on the piles of paper on the table and file cabinets behind her. She searches for so long, knocks over so many things looking, that he decides to cut it short:
"You know what? Send me the contract. I'll sign it and send it back to you. Here's my money-order for the supplies."
She ceases her search immediately and grabs the money-order, perusing it thoroughly, her beady eyes screwed up like Buddy Hackett. In fact, she looks and acts so much like the old comedian that he chokes back an involuntary laugh. She bends down to put the check in a drawer and farts.
The laughter dies in his soul. The fart has a thick and meaty sound to it, as though it's been squeezed through two very wet slabs of salted beef. It ends with a high, liquid squirt that leaves little to the imagination. The room is filled with the smell of old, old cabbage and musty pumpkins and something deeper, something darker, something like what one would expect to find in a recently-raided crypt.
He can't breathe, he's afraid he'll vomit. He is smiling as hard as he can, pretending he didn't notice as she flaps some papers around in the drawer. He wants to leave, and he can feel the vomit rising as he begins to feel faint from the heat. He is certain he will die if she tries to revive him. Her ineptitude is only surpassed by the odor of her undead flatus.
"Thanks so much, bye!" he gasps out, then turns and runs smack into the door, falling over and hitting his head on the desk, biting his tongue hard as he hits the floor. The last thing he hears before losing consciousness is, "Smith! Get in here!"
He isn't out for long. Or perhaps he dreams it. But Miss Smith, svelte and twenty-something, comes in from another place and there must be air conditioning because the room is cool and it smells nice and she is wearing a white ankle-length skirt and when she steps over him to get water from the cooler he sees that she is wearing no panties and she is a real redhead, au naturel. He is instantly aroused but cannot do anything about it. He's unable to move. Or breathe. Sudden panic hits: he's knocked the wind out of himself! Struggling to breathe, afraid of smelling that fart again, he despairs of ever escaping this small, hot, dusty place. He closes his eyes again, every bad fall from childhood clear in his mind as he fights the panic and makes gasping noises like a dying frog in Death Valley.
The pain eases. He can breathe. He opens his eyes. Miss Smith is indeed a redhead, quite lovely and very hot-for-teacher with her green cat's eye glasses. She is mopping his brow. He smells oranges. He takes an exploratory breath, his lungs aching.
"Where's --"
"LouAnne went to the bank. Thank God. Are you here to pick up your paycheck?"
"No," he tries to move his hands to cover his embarrassment, but there's no way without being obvious or grazing her inner thigh with his knuckle.
"Are you sure? Because I can write you the check right now, I'm authorized," she says, still mopping his brow.
He sits up slightly, she hands him a cup of cool water.
"I haven't started teaching yet. I start Monday," he sips the water and looks at her face, her freckles, her green eyes, her full lips. He wants to ask her to marry him. Instead, he tries to adjust his pants, only enhancing the appearance of his excitement. Her eyes follow his hand, her head tilts and her eyes widen. There is the briefest of deeply pregnant silences. She takes a breath.
"I'll get you your check," and she is gone. He hears typing in the other room as he adjusts himself, tucking it under the band of his boxer-briefs.
Five minutes pass. He sips the water. He feels better. Miss Smith returns and offers him a hand up. She's smiling.
"Here's your check. Take it to the bank today," she hands him an envelope with the check inside, the flap folded inward. She grasps his hand, looks him in the eyes. His pulse leaps. "Today," she says.
He picks up the plastic tub and says, "Thank you, Miss Smith."
She walks him to the door, opens it for him. He is trying to think of something to say. He cannot. He turns once he's outside. She's got the door half-closed, he can only see the right side of her face.
"You're welcome," she says, unblinking eye contact lasting a full ten seconds. Then the door is closed and she locks it. He stands there in the dusk of San Jose, wondering idly how hours had passed. The sun has just set. The OPEN light switches off, the blinds are already closed. The small, brown cinderblock building looks as though it has been abandoned for years.
He walks to his sister's car, hoping to see Miss Smith in the lot. His is the sole vehicle in the freshly-painted lot. He puts the tub in, gets into the car, rolls down all the windows and cranks the air conditioning.
As he is driving North on 880, he begins to feel better. Miss Smith will be at every class, "watching him". He will see her again. He will make a point of never mentioning his angry ex-girlfriend or the broken hearts, mostly his, of his years in Arkham, MA. He drives North with all the windows down, air conditioning off, enjoying the dry heat of a California summer evening.
Consequently, he does not notice that the check flies out the window somewhere around the Tennyson exit.
© 2010, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
He is interviewed by a man several years younger than himself, who seems to doubt the actor's training and qualifications. The actor leaves the interview somewhat shocked that the interviewer only asked if he could teach specific classes and never asked what he could teach. He takes a job with an outfit called, "TheaterSmartiez Theater For Kidz!!!"
Smartiez is run by a somewhat desperate woman in her late forties. Her name is LouAnne. She likes to be called Ann. She specifies, "Ann, A-n-n. Don't pronounce the E."
"Isn't it silent, anyway?"
Long silence.
"I can see you've got a lot of training," she smiles. Genuinely pleased, for some reason. He's uncomfortable, having borrowed his sister's car to drive to this very hot little alleyway in San Jose to pick up the supplies for this theatre class he's supposed to teach. There's no air conditioning in this building, but she is not sweating. On his father's advice, he has worn a suit. It does not fit well. He can feel his sweat soaking through his undershirt, shirt, tie and jacket. But he is afraid to take any of it off in case he has to beat a hasty retreat.
"You've read my resume? That's a relief, the last two people I interviewed with didn't even glance at it," and here he pauses, having looked at the envelope he sent with a fancy resume printed on fancy paper, sealed in a fancy presentation folder with a wax seal. An unbroken wax seal. She hasn't, in fact, seen his resume. The only thing she's read is his cover letter; it's there, on her desk, his phone number circled in red. There's a coffee stain on the resume. She glances at it and she blushes, but it looks more like a spiderwebbing of varicose veins and gin blossoms pulsing across her face under her skin. She laughs and her gums look like she is cultivating plankton under her lips. He is deeply alarmed.
"I didn't need to read your resume, I know you by reputation, Mr. ..." a glance at his last name, "Mr. X."
He is genuinely surprised and a little pleased. "Who did you talk to?"
"The guy at that theatre over there in ... what's the name of that town ... ?"
"Livermore?"
"Yes! Nice man."
"Yes, he is. Want to see my impersonation of him?"
"Sure, another time. Anyway, he said to hire you, so here you are. Now: the box of supplies requires a forty-five dollar deposit on your part and if you don't return them, I keep that forty-five dollars. You'll arrive at the Cherrywood Preparatory Academy in Newark at 3:10 pm, you'll check in at the office and proceed to the cafeteria where you will run a theater program. This is Monday through Friday 3:10 pm to 5:10 pm. If you miss a day, you're fired; if you're late, you're fired; if you swear or blaspheme or touch a kid, you're fired. Miss Smith will be there with you every day as your assistant, and she will watch you like a hawk. Miss Smith reports directly to me. Miss Smith hates homosexuals, so watch yourself."
He's a little shocked, and sits silent for a minute. Then he says, "If Ken had such good things to say about me, why would you think I'd touch a kid?"
She grins. "Standard fare. I have to say that to all of our instructors. Nothing personal."
"Don't you require fingerprinting?"
"Not for after-school programs," she's all business now, putting forms in a folder and putting the folder in a plastic bin full of crafts supplies.
"Why not?"
"The instructors are on campus, the school is there to watch out for the kids, if something goes wrong, it's their responsibility."
She shoves the tub at him.
"Fill out the forms and send them in when the class is complete, you'll get your check 90 days after that."
"Should I sign a contract?"
"Oh! Right, of course," she looks around, a little perplexed. "Where did I put them?" She starts rummaging, mumbling about the newly reorganized office. It does not look reorganized to him. The only newly-anything about it is the newly-settled layer of dust on the piles of paper on the table and file cabinets behind her. She searches for so long, knocks over so many things looking, that he decides to cut it short:
"You know what? Send me the contract. I'll sign it and send it back to you. Here's my money-order for the supplies."
She ceases her search immediately and grabs the money-order, perusing it thoroughly, her beady eyes screwed up like Buddy Hackett. In fact, she looks and acts so much like the old comedian that he chokes back an involuntary laugh. She bends down to put the check in a drawer and farts.
The laughter dies in his soul. The fart has a thick and meaty sound to it, as though it's been squeezed through two very wet slabs of salted beef. It ends with a high, liquid squirt that leaves little to the imagination. The room is filled with the smell of old, old cabbage and musty pumpkins and something deeper, something darker, something like what one would expect to find in a recently-raided crypt.
He can't breathe, he's afraid he'll vomit. He is smiling as hard as he can, pretending he didn't notice as she flaps some papers around in the drawer. He wants to leave, and he can feel the vomit rising as he begins to feel faint from the heat. He is certain he will die if she tries to revive him. Her ineptitude is only surpassed by the odor of her undead flatus.
"Thanks so much, bye!" he gasps out, then turns and runs smack into the door, falling over and hitting his head on the desk, biting his tongue hard as he hits the floor. The last thing he hears before losing consciousness is, "Smith! Get in here!"
He isn't out for long. Or perhaps he dreams it. But Miss Smith, svelte and twenty-something, comes in from another place and there must be air conditioning because the room is cool and it smells nice and she is wearing a white ankle-length skirt and when she steps over him to get water from the cooler he sees that she is wearing no panties and she is a real redhead, au naturel. He is instantly aroused but cannot do anything about it. He's unable to move. Or breathe. Sudden panic hits: he's knocked the wind out of himself! Struggling to breathe, afraid of smelling that fart again, he despairs of ever escaping this small, hot, dusty place. He closes his eyes again, every bad fall from childhood clear in his mind as he fights the panic and makes gasping noises like a dying frog in Death Valley.
The pain eases. He can breathe. He opens his eyes. Miss Smith is indeed a redhead, quite lovely and very hot-for-teacher with her green cat's eye glasses. She is mopping his brow. He smells oranges. He takes an exploratory breath, his lungs aching.
"Where's --"
"LouAnne went to the bank. Thank God. Are you here to pick up your paycheck?"
"No," he tries to move his hands to cover his embarrassment, but there's no way without being obvious or grazing her inner thigh with his knuckle.
"Are you sure? Because I can write you the check right now, I'm authorized," she says, still mopping his brow.
He sits up slightly, she hands him a cup of cool water.
"I haven't started teaching yet. I start Monday," he sips the water and looks at her face, her freckles, her green eyes, her full lips. He wants to ask her to marry him. Instead, he tries to adjust his pants, only enhancing the appearance of his excitement. Her eyes follow his hand, her head tilts and her eyes widen. There is the briefest of deeply pregnant silences. She takes a breath.
"I'll get you your check," and she is gone. He hears typing in the other room as he adjusts himself, tucking it under the band of his boxer-briefs.
Five minutes pass. He sips the water. He feels better. Miss Smith returns and offers him a hand up. She's smiling.
"Here's your check. Take it to the bank today," she hands him an envelope with the check inside, the flap folded inward. She grasps his hand, looks him in the eyes. His pulse leaps. "Today," she says.
He picks up the plastic tub and says, "Thank you, Miss Smith."
She walks him to the door, opens it for him. He is trying to think of something to say. He cannot. He turns once he's outside. She's got the door half-closed, he can only see the right side of her face.
"You're welcome," she says, unblinking eye contact lasting a full ten seconds. Then the door is closed and she locks it. He stands there in the dusk of San Jose, wondering idly how hours had passed. The sun has just set. The OPEN light switches off, the blinds are already closed. The small, brown cinderblock building looks as though it has been abandoned for years.
He walks to his sister's car, hoping to see Miss Smith in the lot. His is the sole vehicle in the freshly-painted lot. He puts the tub in, gets into the car, rolls down all the windows and cranks the air conditioning.
As he is driving North on 880, he begins to feel better. Miss Smith will be at every class, "watching him". He will see her again. He will make a point of never mentioning his angry ex-girlfriend or the broken hearts, mostly his, of his years in Arkham, MA. He drives North with all the windows down, air conditioning off, enjoying the dry heat of a California summer evening.
Consequently, he does not notice that the check flies out the window somewhere around the Tennyson exit.
© 2010, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Wandering Millieland Without a Spyglass
Hello from the trenches of American Theatre. Currently directing Thoroughly Modern Millie at Solano College, an hybrid of the Solano Youth Theatre and Solano College Theatre. Shaping the future of American Theatre, one actor at a time, in a superb production of a happy-tappy show.
Problems thus far: communication, schedules, conflicts and loss of sleep. All of which are to be expected.
Unexpected issues: there's no Judas Hole or secret entrance to the Speakeasy. How this happened is a mystery. Supreme lack of communication, and as I'm at the helm, this is my mistake. I need to find a way to do better last time. So that next time I know what to do.
Missing from my life: relaxation.
And I seem to have contracted fleas from Andrew Zollinger's dog. Alarming.
© 2010, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
Problems thus far: communication, schedules, conflicts and loss of sleep. All of which are to be expected.
Unexpected issues: there's no Judas Hole or secret entrance to the Speakeasy. How this happened is a mystery. Supreme lack of communication, and as I'm at the helm, this is my mistake. I need to find a way to do better last time. So that next time I know what to do.
Missing from my life: relaxation.
And I seem to have contracted fleas from Andrew Zollinger's dog. Alarming.
© 2010, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
JMT, The Producers, Skinny
So I completed the JMT at 3:30 pm on August 3, 2009. I have many things to write about it, and I will eventually post those writings herein. At the moment, though, I have other concerns. Specifically: I am now 25 lbs lighter than I was in July, I am currently rehearsing the role of Max Bialystock in The Producers, Max is supposed to be fat and the director is not terribly concerned about padding me.
I understand if it's a matter of money. Money is expensive these days. But my approach to acting is to play the ink; meaning that I play what's written. If it's in the dialogue that my character is supposed to be fat, then I think it's worth doing. And it's in the dialogue. About three times. So we're supposed to somehow pretend that I'm fat and slobbish, when I look dashing and possibly even sexy in my costumes. It's a rather large contradiction. If it weren't in the dialogue, I wouldn't care.
Clarity: I love the costumers at SCT, I love the costumes they've put together for me in every role I've ever done there, and I love what they've got for me on this project. I just happen to feel that Max should be a much bulkier fellow. And I know for a fact that the brilliant ladies of the costume department could make it work. So my concern is not their work. My concern is the dichotomy between what the script says about how Max looks, and how I look.
Maybe we can do something with my hair. Shave it into a massive balding pattern and create a ridiculous comb-over, add more silver to my temples (already silvering nicely on their own, but needing more to read from the audience), deepen the circles under my eyes ... but I think I'll just look old and balding and tired. Not fat.
My main childhood idol was Lon Chaney. His work is -- in my opinion -- some of the finest film acting of the early 20th Century. His ability to transform himself for every role remains unsurpassed and is the standard I set for myself, both on stage and on film. I know that I can transform myself from fit, dashing Edward to fat, slovenly Max. I will happily build my own latex appliances if I have to. I might even show up at the theatre in full "fats" and mysteriously mystify the powers that be. Of course, I am in no danger of revealing my plan in advance: as far as I can tell, there are only two readers of this blog.
I find it very hard to play a role when I do not look the way I feel the character should look. I feel that I have to work a lot harder to play the part, because my costume or hair or beard or overall physique isn't right for the role. It is very frustrating. I like the idea of 'banners and flags': we should know from the moment we see this character what and who they are; it saves time, cuts down exposition and makes my work a hell of a lot easier. Details should also be accurate. I played a military officer once in a show where the costume department either didn't know or care about accurate military insignia. Not only was I wearing the wrong uniform, I was of no discernible rank and was not even a member of the military of the country in which the play took place. These may seem to be tiny little details, but for anyone in the audience who knows anything about military uniforms (and I have to assume that there was at least one), I was clearly an impostor. Granted, the costume was beautiful and I looked great in it. But this was not a faerie tale, it took place in an actual country that still exists.
So how could I justify this wrongness of uniform? I couldn't. My only option, then, was to play the part as though I was not what I said I was, which meant my character had to try much harder to be that which he pretended to be. None of this was apparent to the audience, but it added a layer of barriers and friction to my work that could have been avoided with attention to detail. It was extremely stressful and exhausting, and led to some severe medical issues that took months to resolve.
Now I feel I am teetering on the brink of something similar, and I don't know what to do. I will talk to the director.
Update 11/30/2009
We never did pad the costume, and audience members did ask me about the line, "Fat, fat, fatty!" However, I aged and splotched my face enough that Brian (Leo Bloom) told me his wife Jocelyn (a superb costumer herself) was worried about how badly I was aging. When he told her it was makeup, she said, "Oh! Good." Or something to that effect. I was not there.
So, there you go: a schism between the spoken line and its relation to what the audience can see is definitely going to draw questions. No amount of justification among the actors or creative staff is going to hide the discrepancies from the audience, and pretending that it will is just silly. We should have changed the line. It could very easily have been, "Drunk, drunk, drunky!"
Lesson learned. Maybe. It's difficult to get people to listen while being polite.
© 2009, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
I understand if it's a matter of money. Money is expensive these days. But my approach to acting is to play the ink; meaning that I play what's written. If it's in the dialogue that my character is supposed to be fat, then I think it's worth doing. And it's in the dialogue. About three times. So we're supposed to somehow pretend that I'm fat and slobbish, when I look dashing and possibly even sexy in my costumes. It's a rather large contradiction. If it weren't in the dialogue, I wouldn't care.
Clarity: I love the costumers at SCT, I love the costumes they've put together for me in every role I've ever done there, and I love what they've got for me on this project. I just happen to feel that Max should be a much bulkier fellow. And I know for a fact that the brilliant ladies of the costume department could make it work. So my concern is not their work. My concern is the dichotomy between what the script says about how Max looks, and how I look.
Maybe we can do something with my hair. Shave it into a massive balding pattern and create a ridiculous comb-over, add more silver to my temples (already silvering nicely on their own, but needing more to read from the audience), deepen the circles under my eyes ... but I think I'll just look old and balding and tired. Not fat.
My main childhood idol was Lon Chaney. His work is -- in my opinion -- some of the finest film acting of the early 20th Century. His ability to transform himself for every role remains unsurpassed and is the standard I set for myself, both on stage and on film. I know that I can transform myself from fit, dashing Edward to fat, slovenly Max. I will happily build my own latex appliances if I have to. I might even show up at the theatre in full "fats" and mysteriously mystify the powers that be. Of course, I am in no danger of revealing my plan in advance: as far as I can tell, there are only two readers of this blog.
I find it very hard to play a role when I do not look the way I feel the character should look. I feel that I have to work a lot harder to play the part, because my costume or hair or beard or overall physique isn't right for the role. It is very frustrating. I like the idea of 'banners and flags': we should know from the moment we see this character what and who they are; it saves time, cuts down exposition and makes my work a hell of a lot easier. Details should also be accurate. I played a military officer once in a show where the costume department either didn't know or care about accurate military insignia. Not only was I wearing the wrong uniform, I was of no discernible rank and was not even a member of the military of the country in which the play took place. These may seem to be tiny little details, but for anyone in the audience who knows anything about military uniforms (and I have to assume that there was at least one), I was clearly an impostor. Granted, the costume was beautiful and I looked great in it. But this was not a faerie tale, it took place in an actual country that still exists.
So how could I justify this wrongness of uniform? I couldn't. My only option, then, was to play the part as though I was not what I said I was, which meant my character had to try much harder to be that which he pretended to be. None of this was apparent to the audience, but it added a layer of barriers and friction to my work that could have been avoided with attention to detail. It was extremely stressful and exhausting, and led to some severe medical issues that took months to resolve.
Now I feel I am teetering on the brink of something similar, and I don't know what to do. I will talk to the director.
Update 11/30/2009
We never did pad the costume, and audience members did ask me about the line, "Fat, fat, fatty!" However, I aged and splotched my face enough that Brian (Leo Bloom) told me his wife Jocelyn (a superb costumer herself) was worried about how badly I was aging. When he told her it was makeup, she said, "Oh! Good." Or something to that effect. I was not there.
So, there you go: a schism between the spoken line and its relation to what the audience can see is definitely going to draw questions. No amount of justification among the actors or creative staff is going to hide the discrepancies from the audience, and pretending that it will is just silly. We should have changed the line. It could very easily have been, "Drunk, drunk, drunky!"
Lesson learned. Maybe. It's difficult to get people to listen while being polite.
© 2009, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Bus Stop: Next Stop, Livermore! Part I
On January 24, 2008 I heard Susan Steinberg of the Livermore Independent ask Dana Anderson (director of Bus Stop at Role Players Ensemble in Danville ) if it would be possible to move Bus Stop to the new Bankhead Theatre in Livermore after it closes its Danville
What's interesting here is the question of moving the show to the Bankhead. The first thing it tells us is how little is known of theatre by nice ladies who write synopses for local papers. Perhaps Steinberg knows more: is there a financial trapdoor one can use to avoid the $2,000.00-per-night pricetag that comes with doing a show at the Bankhead? I doubt it, but I will inquire.
I further doubt that Role Players Ensemble of Danville will be much interested in transferring their show toLivermore Danville Danville will be too busy with that worthy endeavor to take any time off re-mounting Bus Stop in déclassé Livermore
Just for fun, let's look at what it would take for Role Players to actually produce a tour of Bus Stop to Livermore; I realize that this is highly unlikely. But this is exactly the kind of word problem I love to solve.
First there is the question of the people involved: does the cast want to go toLivermore
If all have pressing previous engagements, next question: would the director be willing to re-cast and re-stage the production?
If the answer is yes, would he want it exactly as it was, or would he be able to resist the temptation to tinker with things?
Would there even be time to tinker?
If the director does not want to re-cast and re-stage, is he okay with someone else directing the re-mount?
If he's okay with it, how much of this production is still Role Players'? The set ... the sound design maybe ... But then, a Broadway Tour is accepted as not exactly the original but definitely the next best thing. We've all heard stories of tours where the performances were better than Broadway. Does this sound to me like something Role Players would still be interested in producing? No. So let's pretend that most of the originalDanville cast wants to go to Livermore
What's interesting here is the question of moving the show to the Bankhead. The first thing it tells us is how little is known of theatre by nice ladies who write synopses for local papers. Perhaps Steinberg knows more: is there a financial trapdoor one can use to avoid the $2,000.00-per-night pricetag that comes with doing a show at the Bankhead? I doubt it, but I will inquire.
I further doubt that Role Players Ensemble of Danville will be much interested in transferring their show to
Just for fun, let's look at what it would take for Role Players to actually produce a tour of Bus Stop to Livermore; I realize that this is highly unlikely. But this is exactly the kind of word problem I love to solve.
First there is the question of the people involved: does the cast want to go to
If all have pressing previous engagements, next question: would the director be willing to re-cast and re-stage the production?
If the answer is yes, would he want it exactly as it was, or would he be able to resist the temptation to tinker with things?
Would there even be time to tinker?
If the director does not want to re-cast and re-stage, is he okay with someone else directing the re-mount?
If he's okay with it, how much of this production is still Role Players'? The set ... the sound design maybe ... But then, a Broadway Tour is accepted as not exactly the original but definitely the next best thing. We've all heard stories of tours where the performances were better than Broadway. Does this sound to me like something Role Players would still be interested in producing? No. So let's pretend that most of the original
© 2008, 2009, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
Bus Stop: Next Stop, Livermore! Part II
| |
© 2008, 2009, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
Bus Stop: Next Stop, Livermore! Part III
The producer is in the bar at Uncle Yu's, slamming a double scotch and desperately calling everyone she knows. She even calls the set designer, isn't that nice of her? She knows he's done some acting, and it's not really his sort of role but would he be willing to fill in or does he know someone? Thankfully, this set designer is realistic regarding his type and the time he would have to lose 30 lbs. before opening: one week. He declines, all gracious charm, and says he'll put the word out. The producer keeps calling people.
The designer, after his luck with the door, is cautiously sending out feelers to the young male lead types in his network. Prophecy: none are close enough / available / willing to do the role.
On her third scotch, the producer sees something amazing; she blinks, leans forward ... there, across the restaurant, a very handsome young man is putting on a customer's cowboy hat at the behest of the customer and his younger, bleached and leathered wife. The handsome young man is a waiter. Server. Whatever the fuck, he's wearing the hat and he looks ... let's not jinx it: he looks like he might work if we tweeze his eyebrows.
At his side, she stuffs a hundred-dollar bill into his hand, "You're coming with me, I'm a theatrical producer, we need your help immediately, where's your manager and will this nice man let us borrow his hat for twenty minutes? Here's fifty as a deposit on the hat."
"I'm the manager," says the manager, overhearing from the host station. Drunk producers are loud.
"I am borrowing this darling boy for twenty minutes, please do not fire him, there's a set of comps we open at the Bankhead next week tell them I sent you and before any of you think I am going to do naughty things to this boy I want you to know that I am happily married for the fifth time and so it shall remain!"
This does not stop her from thoroughly squeezing the young man's biceps, pectorals, buttocks and one or two other pieces of prime real estate as she whisks him across the street and down the block and into the middle of rehearsal with a triumphant cry of, "I've found our lead!"
Rehearsal stops dead.
Director: Can he act?
Producer: Of course he can, what's your name young man?
Waiter: Bo.
Director: You're shitting me.
Producer: Ever done any theatre?
Waiter: That's what I'm studying at the local college.
Producer: This is a paid production. Contracts are involved. Could you get the time off from school and Uncle Yu's?
Waiter: Sure. I usually work lunch, I'm only filling in --
[Edward has to interrupt: I know it's completely unrealistic. It's what I'd want to happen. Can you blame me?]
Producer: Shut up, Edward.
Waiter: I have to finish my shift.
Director: That's fine, be here tomorrow night --
Producer: Tomorrow night, seven o'clock, erhm, six forty-five on the dot, darling, early is on time in theatre and if they haven't told you that at the college yet you should kill them all.
Waiter: I'm always early. Except where it matters.
He smiles a little at the female lead. She stops her frantic and destined-to-go-unanswered text to the former male lead.
This is the miracle they needed. It galvanizes the cast, new energy and innovation zap into the show and it sells out every performance. The Village Theatre has a pretty nice talent show, proving that there is Talent inDanville
Right?
Right. A wonderful fable.
But what really would have to happen would be an independent production company in Livermore approaching Role Players with a brilliantly prepared presentation which they would have to be insane to ignore, particularly because it will cost them very little or nothing at all and Role Players will get the credit for originating the production.
This would possibly involve a new director, and one or two actors might need to be replaced depending on conflicts.
It's possible. I would even say plausible, were there an independent 501-c3 in Livermore who could pull it off.
Do I think it will happen?
Nah.
© 2008, 2009, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
The designer, after his luck with the door, is cautiously sending out feelers to the young male lead types in his network. Prophecy: none are close enough / available / willing to do the role.
On her third scotch, the producer sees something amazing; she blinks, leans forward ... there, across the restaurant, a very handsome young man is putting on a customer's cowboy hat at the behest of the customer and his younger, bleached and leathered wife. The handsome young man is a waiter. Server. Whatever the fuck, he's wearing the hat and he looks ... let's not jinx it: he looks like he might work if we tweeze his eyebrows.
At his side, she stuffs a hundred-dollar bill into his hand, "You're coming with me, I'm a theatrical producer, we need your help immediately, where's your manager and will this nice man let us borrow his hat for twenty minutes? Here's fifty as a deposit on the hat."
"I'm the manager," says the manager, overhearing from the host station. Drunk producers are loud.
"I am borrowing this darling boy for twenty minutes, please do not fire him, there's a set of comps we open at the Bankhead next week tell them I sent you and before any of you think I am going to do naughty things to this boy I want you to know that I am happily married for the fifth time and so it shall remain!"
This does not stop her from thoroughly squeezing the young man's biceps, pectorals, buttocks and one or two other pieces of prime real estate as she whisks him across the street and down the block and into the middle of rehearsal with a triumphant cry of, "I've found our lead!"
Rehearsal stops dead.
Director: Can he act?
Producer: Of course he can, what's your name young man?
Waiter: Bo.
Director: You're shitting me.
Producer: Ever done any theatre?
Waiter: That's what I'm studying at the local college.
Producer: This is a paid production. Contracts are involved. Could you get the time off from school and Uncle Yu's?
Waiter: Sure. I usually work lunch, I'm only filling in --
[Edward has to interrupt: I know it's completely unrealistic. It's what I'd want to happen. Can you blame me?]
Producer: Shut up, Edward.
Waiter: I have to finish my shift.
Director: That's fine, be here tomorrow night --
Producer: Tomorrow night, seven o'clock, erhm, six forty-five on the dot, darling, early is on time in theatre and if they haven't told you that at the college yet you should kill them all.
Waiter: I'm always early. Except where it matters.
He smiles a little at the female lead. She stops her frantic and destined-to-go-unanswered text to the former male lead.
This is the miracle they needed. It galvanizes the cast, new energy and innovation zap into the show and it sells out every performance. The Village Theatre has a pretty nice talent show, proving that there is Talent in
Right?
Right. A wonderful fable.
But what really would have to happen would be an independent production company in Livermore approaching Role Players with a brilliantly prepared presentation which they would have to be insane to ignore, particularly because it will cost them very little or nothing at all and Role Players will get the credit for originating the production.
This would possibly involve a new director, and one or two actors might need to be replaced depending on conflicts.
It's possible. I would even say plausible, were there an independent 501-c3 in Livermore who could pull it off.
Do I think it will happen?
Nah.
© 2008, 2009, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)