Letters to Holly

Friday, January 19

Day Twenty-Five: Calamity

It's the stage manager's birthday, and we present her with a cake and a giant signed card. Because Mae and the kids sing Happy Birthday to Big Daddy, she leads us in serenading the manger, followed by a round of "Skina-ma-rinka-dinka-dink," the second and diabetic song they sing. We do all this early in the evening so the cast can eat cake before donning the costumes.

Someone has unearthed photo albums of past shows, A Few Good Men, Christmas Belles, and Wizard of Oz, and they are perused by all. They are huge Easily 50 pictures each album. We're to take our show's pictures after this Sunday's performance, which strikes me as a rough assignment. This will take place after the ninth performance within a week. Normally they do this session during the second week's run, but it was moved here for some reason I never hear. I prefer it to be done during tech rehearsal. Taking pictures after a show means you have to reapply make-up and straighten the clothes you've slogged around in for three hours. Also, I am desperate to catch the Patriots-Colts game Sunday evening. We have already been assured that our set strike on the last night will not last long enough for us to miss the Super Bowl kickoff. I need to mention that the photo albums reveal a design that makes Hot Tin Roof look like a Broadway production. Our one set allowed the crew to go crazy with details and light design.

This is Preview Night, when local reviewers attend for their columns, and from what I've seen in those albums, the local reviewers are of the rah-rah variety. You might notice that daily papers, when they run reviews of shows, are positive to a fault. Literally. You can't trust them to provide anything but an glowing advertisement. The weekly papers are where you find objective articles. When I worked at the Spartanburg daily, I was told the paper's policy is to in no way discourage the people volunteering their time for the shows. Know you this: Most daily arts reviewers know nothing about art, and their comments are analogous to your Aunt Yvonne telling you your giant abstract painting of the horrors of war is "nice" and "certainly colorful." The audience is also made up of employees of theatre corporate sponsors. The companies get a free night of the show in return for their monies. I've yet to see such a show well-attended.

As the show starts, they are formal and quiet. Maybe the actors are a little flat. Last night's audience may have spoiled us. And this is the fourth night of doing this show. Maybe we're dragging a tad. That might explain how tonight became a series of calamity.

Mae and Brick sound good for Act I, but we're down one Gooper daughter, and another kid is pulling double duty. This never seems to be a problem. When the stage-left manager moves to activate the offstage phone, she accidentally body slams her metal stand, and it crashes to the floor. The actors onstage seem to drift right past it like pros.

The crowd warms up to Mae and the kids and really take to Big Daddy. He has them in complete control for the night. But in Act III, we seem to lose our focus. We've had constant problems with the stage-left door. It works fine, but it's created a distracting amount of choreography. Last night, the director asked me to close it when Gooper says "we can talk," and I practiced my lines all day by adding the direction "close to door" when I say that line. But as we move through the act, a weird moment emerges. Mama instructs Gooper and Mae to open the door to let in some air into this summer-swaddled Southern plantation. But the door is standing wide open. To their credit, they know this. Mae makes a comment about keeping the door closed so Big Daddy doesn't here. She closes it, and then Mama says to open it, and it's re-opened. The audience probably never notices. It may even look like Mama is unknowingly countering Mae and Gooper's plans. But to us, it feels like bomb defusing, and the moment lasts forever.

This takes us off-guard for the rest of the act, and we never hit a flow. Indeed, we can feel the audience pulling back from us. When Gooper is to say the line "Mae took a course in nursing during the war," I apparently have some sort of stroke and can't get the line out. It's embarrassing and seems to last as long as a parade. I finally spit it out, and we move on. Then Mae reverses an insult directed at Maggie. Then Big Daddy has trouble with his two-page-long elephant joke. Then, as we line up for curtain call backstage, a stranger walks up to the kids. It's the littlest girl's grandmother, and she has blithely strolled onto us before the show is over. The child wrangler and I, standing right there, shoo her away, and off she walks toward the back of the set -- a set with no back wall -- and we whisper-yell for her to come back before she walks onstage.

I feel stupid for my line trouble and joke about it after the curtain and while we change clothes. But I hear the stage manager yell for us to receive director notes, and the director is there with all of the Act III folks, and they, well, it feels like they pounce on me. The director has the same direction from last night, concerning the door, and makes a mantra out of "now we can talk, close the door" and leads the other actors in reciting it. I'm baffled. I did that. I stood up, said my line, and closed the door. Just as he told me. I'm at a loss, and it seems like attention is focused on my doing something as instructed but discounted, when the real problem was with the earlier door debacle and my screwed-up delivery of a later line. I feel like a scapegoat for the whole act, and the happy ribbing feels cruel. I'm tired, and I take it too seriously.

I go backstage and grab my things and start to leave. The crowd has dispersed, and I track down the director out front to confirm a suspicion. Williams repeats many lines. We joke about it. It's said that if we cut every repeated line, we could finish the show in an hour. And Gooper says the same line twice. He says "we can talk" two times, and I thought the director meant for me to close the door on the second time. No, he points out, and I apologize profusely, and now I feel like shit. We had a crappy Act III on preview night (yes, even though it's just the rah-rah reviewers), and we barely escaped the stage with our lives, and it's because I didn't close the door at the right time. A small, tiny thing. But I've worked very hard to be reliable to this new group, and it feels like that's all gone, that I have to start over from scratch. Sure, the reverend and doctor may have had line trouble, but not for a real audience. And I beat myself up for it on the drive back home. Fuck.

But Friday is the real opening night, and if we're to have a night of chaos, let it happen before people pay to see us. OK, that's my one (self-)allowed moment of incompetence. The rest of the run will be good and solid and dependable and in no way indicative that my brain fell out of my head. Fuck if I'll mess up in front of Harry Anderson.

Speaking of the doctor and reverend, here they is.


Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical
Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are
Day Twenty-Three: Socks
Day Twenty-Four: Our First Audience

Thursday, January 18

Day Twenty-Four: Our First Audience

Even though this show makes 13 I've been in since high school, it's the first in almost two years. And even though I've got my lines and my blocking and I've even prepared lines in case the reverend and doctor blank on stage, I find myself getting nervous in the middle of the day. I start running lines before I leave work. I can't tell if it's eagerness or nerves, but I don't like these jitters, and I want to get the show started, despite opening tonight an hour earlier than we will for the rest of the run.

I could always quell the panic by telling myself that the audience has paid to enter our house and watch us. This makes the theatre a business and us indirectly professionals (I guess we are paid in free snacks backstage), so we have to behave like pros, know our stuff, go out there, and not suck. Responsibility clams me down instead of spooking me.

I already have turned back to my old theatre habits. When I arrive, I set my camera and books and sketchpad at my dressing room area. If the clothes have been laundered, I gather them or confirm they're back at my station. Then I check my props. Gooper has four props: a briefcase, a cake, car keys and a notepad. The pad resides in his suit jacket, the others can be found on a stage-left wing table, and I put the keys in my pocket. I then prowl the theatre, wandering everywhere and greeting the crew. I'm just killing time. We have to be at the theatre an hour before the curtain goes up, and I don't go onstage for an hour after that.

We do a quick set of warm-ups onstage, and after that I start assembling Gooper and talking to the cast as they arrive. Once I get the make-up and costume on (even those damn shoes of +3 Toe Pain), I pace about the green room, talking to folks, or sit at my station to read. I'm not the only person with a bout of energy. Big Daddy is concerned about hitting his notes, and the reverend and doctor go over their lines when they aren't reading at their stations. We assemble in the green room as the director tells us to make the show move and enjoy ourselves. The phrase "break a leg" flies around the room for a while. There's always uncertainty about how someone will behave in front of an audience, and we new people are one more thing for the theatre to worry about. Also, the balcony space is tighter tonight because of the a new column. Those of use who work on that balcony have to move so the entire audience can see us. Just another note to bear in mind when we go onstage.

The stage managers regularly come by with a countdown until we open the house (the audience is allowed past the lobby and into the auditorium) or raise the curtain. If you've seen the Muppet Show, you recognize this as what Scooter does at the start of each show ("Elton John. Mr. Elton John. Five minutes to curtain, Mr. Elton John."), and we, just like the week's celeb, respond with a confirming "thank you." When we're close to starting the show, the managers countdown to "places," and this is where the actors go if they are walk onstage as the play begins. They do this for every act, but once the play starts, the actors are responsible for getting to their places for their entrance or line cues. For those of us who read, backstage, we have a sense of time leading up to our next cues, and the backstage monitors let us hear the actors get nearer to them.

Before the show, we can hear the audience talking in their seats, and that gives us an idea of how many folks are there before we see them from the stage. When they become quiet, we know the lights have gone down and the curtain is opening. The overture tells us that too, but the audience is the new element tonight, and we focus on them. They laugh early as Maggie insults Mae and Gooper's kids. They laugh shortly, suggesting they don't want to miss the dialogue. The boys are wandering backstage, and one of them is the kind who starts a conversation with you even if you don't look up from your book or respond in anything but grunts. The kid's gifted, and gifted kids won't shut up.

I shout out my offstage lines and go over my Act II lines and finally get to walk out there. As the lines come out of me, I feel incrementally more calm and confident, and within five minutes, I'm almost arrogantly comfy. Once onstage, you can see the entire audience clearly. Its a trick to avoid eye contact as you stare at the fourth wall, and this role isn't one for connecting with audience members that way. There's maybe 40 people tonight.

I get a few laughs in Act III, especially with a line that Gooper means to be jovial and comforting but comes across as cruel, and when I get to Gooper's monologue, I feel the audience hanging with me. You can actually feel their focus and attention, and as they invest in you, you hit your notes right and give them more to digest, and a new entity is formed. They're as much a performer as you are, and they control how this moment will be played. This is why I do theatre. The doctor blanks on his first big line in Act III and looks to me to help him. I'm the next speaker, but my lines are dependent on his, and you know, I know how to save this moment and have lines ready to move ahead, but I'm gonna let him dangle a bit. This is still a glorified dress rehearsal, after all. Let him feel this, and maybe it won't happen again. Soon enough, he remembers the second half of his line, and gets it out, and we move on from there.

Show ends, curtain call, nice bit of applause for me as I bow, and as the curtain closes on our cast tableau, we all exhale. We started at 7 p.m., and I'm in my car, un-costumed and Noxema-ed, at 9:50. We're no longer a three-hour show. There it is. There's our show. Now we do that ten more times.

Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical
Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are
Day Twenty-Three: Socks

Picture of the Day
And here's me as Gooper. You can kinda see the eyeliner.

Wednesday, January 17

Day Twenty-Three: Socks

The costume and make-up managers (a tag team of older women) also do our laundry every day. If you want clothing washed , you just put it in a basket in each dressing room, and they take care of it before rehearsal. They've tagged some of the clothes as our own, and each person has a list of their costume pieces separated into those own by the theater and what we brought from home. When I arrive, I go to the laundry machines to get my socks and shirt. One of the ladies hands them to me, and I take them back to the dressing room and sit them down at my stations.

We each staked out our regular seats in there as soon as we started wearing costumes for rehearsals. If you start from the left side of the room, we're in this order: the two Gooper sons, the reverend, Brick, Big Daddy, me and the doctor. Because we're in such a confined space, we have to be extra polite. As Heinlein wrote, "moving parts in contact contact need lubrication," and while he was indeed a dirty old man, he also regarded courtesy as a social foundation. Courtesy is that lubricant. So we're polite. But as I start to dress and put on my make-up and put in my contacts, I return to my station to find the socks gone. They were laying on top of my t-shirt.

Now, I'm not a paranoid guy. I used to be. Used to scream "theft" whenever something went missing, and because those occasions usually ended with the object found under something or where I had forgotten it, I stopped the paranoia. And as the socks were gone, I bite my tongue and search the place. I go all through the dressing room, the stage, the backstage, the laundry room, the green room, the bathroom. Everywhere. I ask the crew if they had seen them and apologize to the costume ladies for losing theatre socks. It becomes a joke that Gooper can't keep his socks. And after a while I know, despite my hesitation to say so, that someone took them, and the first suspects were the Gooper kids. But the last thing a theatre needs is drama, so I decide to just wear my day socks and bring in another pair tomorrow. As I go back to the green room, one of the costume ladies asks if I had checked the feet of the other actors and I say I hadn't. She promptly did. And there they are on the preacher's feet.

He claims they are his and points out that these dark socks go with his black suit. As a dilettante artist, I have some notion of color. I know the difference between brown and black. Those are mine. He's convinced they're his. We talk to the costume lady from whom I got the socks earlier, and we all recite how the evening began regarding piecing our costumes together. I ask where he got them, and he says simply "off your t-shirt." I coulda screamed. This I expect from the kids, but not an adult whose been a regular actor. He obviously waited until I was gone to take them, and he didn't speak up when everyone knew I was looking for them. He took them off and handed them to me and I promptly put them on. Fuck athlete's foot.

This is a tiny thing. Tiny tiny tiny. But the reverend is not hitting home runs with me lately, and this doesn't help. We now have a precedent of backstage items walking away, and I hate that kind of atmosphere. I don't need that distraction on top of everything else.

Before the rehearsal, Mae leads us in warm-ups. We stretch a bit, and jump a bit and do basic theatre mouth exercises. "The black bug bled black blood." "She sells seashells by the sea shore." "Red leather, yellow leather." "Unique New York." And we open up the lungs and breathing muscles. Then we practice our curtain calls and go backstage. The eyeliner pencil is really handy as it draws easily. Usually one has to hold the pencil to a light bulb to melt the wax and get a good flow. But it doesn't wash off well. And last night I forgot to use the pencil on my eyebrows over the base make-up. Again, I don't know how much this makes a difference for the audience, but if Mae and Big Daddy and Big Mama are slapping it on, so shall I.

While I'm waiting for my cues, I read Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff with one ear cocked to the stage. I can't read but a few pages at a time out of eagerness to get going, and I close the book and wander off and recite my lines. I try not to put any inflection on them because I want the night's performance to have the fresh delivery. While there are snacks backstage (despite warning of eating in costume), I constrain myself to bites of leftover candy canes. My coat pockets are full of them. Before I go onstage in Act III, Victoria says I'm developing a fan club, and I attribute this to two possibilities:

1. I look a lot different than I did for read-throughs, and
2. Gooper's a damn fun role to play. I think he gives the show a sympathetic burst of energy in contrast to Big Daddy's bluster and anger.

But I do feel good about where I am with the role and confident about getting our first audience Wednesday night. The director even tells me before I leave that I can slow down Gooper's big speech. Wait, I can milk the big monologue and own the stage a little longer? Don't have to tell me twice.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical
Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are

Picture of the Day
The dressing room. My stuff is right of center. The clothes rack is on the left. See the brown liquid on the right? That's what drips from the ceiling.

Tuesday, January 16

Day Twenty-Two: We're Ready When You Are

Holy shit, I'm tired. That tech rehearsal plum wore me out.

Monday, before I work a half day, I run out to buy the theatre goods. Good Lord, buying make-up has gotten tricky. wanna buy a brown eyeliner pencil. Forget it. They have Onyx, Sage, Olive, Espresso, and a variety of other colors but no Brown. I settle for Espresso and buy Buff Beige base. It's not too much darker than my skin tone, and I hope the backstage crew OKs my color choice. It takes a while to find a color that's not too red or white. The theatre will allegedly provide rouge and powder.

I arrive a little earlier than normal. The director is concerned about getting kids out of there before their bedtimes. The theater's shoes are killing my feet, and I try to sit as much as I can. Everyone is dragging after Sunday. We're warned not to bump into the set columns as they might topple. I also am reminded which way to run behind the gallery windows with the kids. The two daughters and I ran in different directions, and the oldest girl won't let me live down that she was right. I bring a belt and tie tack to complete my costume and make a note on the costume sheet of which items belong to me. We're two nights way from a friends and family audience. This is the last dress rehearsal before an official crowd made up of sponsor company employees. We're also to begin communal warm-up exercises Tuesday night. Mae will lead those. The green room is a madhouse with kids and adults and costumers. This is usually more distracting than any audience, you should know. Kids are playing board games, dancing, imitating the adult actors, etc.

I've before expressed my concern about the reverend and doctor getting their lines down, and they seem to be getting better. Still a little halting in delivery. But tonight, the reverend missed his cue to walk onstage. Act II begins with him and Gooper talking on the balcony. When the stage-right manager called "places," I told her the preacher wasn't there. I don't think that registered. The curtain opened, I walked out, and there was not a reverend to be found. I said my line to the empty seats, and the cast on the other side of the balcony wall stood silent, waiting for the reverend discussion. About 15 seconds later, I hear the hurried footsteps. He takes his place, I give him a comforting smile and repeat my line. And we were off.

The stage-right manager said later that when she watches Gooper, she doesn't see me, and I appreciate that. I'm feeling really good about my part and my acting right now. I'm past anxiety and am enjoying the work. This is when the "play" of the play procedure kicks in. Everything before was work. But now, we're dressing up, we're spitting out Williams' profanity, we're talking like Foghorn Leghorn. This is the goods. I even improved a dramatic door closure that the director liked. But, fuck, those shoes hurt.

I'm taking a book to rehearsal tomorrow night to kill the boredom and block out encouraging eye contact with the kids. I have plenty of time to get into character while backstage in Act II. I'm jazzed about this. I'm ready for an audience.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words
Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical

Day Twenty-One: Getting Technical

Tech Rehearsal is always exhausting and takes all day, but this one seemed to fly by. We're all in costume for the first time as a group, even the kids. They are appropriately adorable. I am not. Big Mama has to wear a ton of makeup to age her, and that brings me to the first surprise of the day. Almost everyone arrives with a make-up kit. Everyone but me. The last theatre I worked with didn't require make-up. I've used make-up before. I know what layers to buy. Because of the bright stage lights, skin washes out, so we have to paint ourselves like Roman whores. Once the audience sees us in that light at a distance, they can't notice the make-up. Hopefully. We don't wear any tonight, but we will need it for the next three rehearsals.

The stage looks fantastic. There wasn't much they could add to it, but the new touches -- paintings, wall patterns, columns, etc. -- make the set look like a real 1950s plantation bedroom. And the yellow-toned stage lights help too. It's a warm set. The immediate backstage area is now a maze of black curtains to baffle offstage noises and hide our movements. Dark lights illuminate the back of the set and the two stations for the people talking to the sound booth and helping with sound cues. Behind all that, however, we are beset by a leaky air system, and nasty brown water plops down throughout the green room. This ready room has a siting table and chairs, a full kitchen, a sofa, and access to both dressing rooms. It's a zoo there. Kids, parents, crew, cast. Above us wafts the stage sounds over the speaker system (the stage is microphoned, not us), and we know we will be here the majority of the time for this day. We arrive at 12:30, and I bet we won't leave before 9. Before we start, Mae, who works at another theatre, informs us that she spotted actor harry Anderson ("Night Court," "Dave's World") and invited him to opening night. I have his autograph when I wrote to him during the "Night Court" heyday, but I'm not going to worry about any star audience members. I gotta a show to hold together.

I didn't bring make-up but I did bring contact lenses, hair gel, shoe polish, t-shirts, and my first wedding ring. My current one doesn't fit the time period, and I have a ring I'm no longer wearing. I asked Your Sis and she had no problem with it and even chastised me a smidge for thinking it would be a problem. I also bring sweet potato pie for tonight's potluck dinner. We'll do the entire show twice, but the first run will be for sound and light cues. We'll stop to adjust volume and let the director pick from among some possible sounds for fireworks, thunder, and dogs.

We do the show once, and it requires an extra hour to fix the effects. The kids don't arrive until the beginning of Act III as the full day might drive them stir crazy. Then we eat, dress, and get to work on the show again.

I get dressed up, and one of Gooper's kids says "you look 20 years weirder." He can't elaborate, but it is a big change, with gelled hair, no glasses, shaven face, and fancy duds. I try later to help him gel his hair, but it's already gooped for a modern style, and all I can do is laminate it with hair gel. My shoes are very tight, and I think this might help Gooper appear unsettled onstage. Or it might distract me to the point where I deliver a line from a completely different show. That's the mystery of live theatre, folks. Even we don't know what we're gonna say. We have to determine when and who will close the bedroom door and how to navigate the backstage curtains to move behind the set. But if we're dealing with those small details, we're obviously getting closer to the end.

Previous entries:
Day One: Reading It Through
Day Two: Act Two
Day Three: Reading Act Two
Day Four: Talking It Through
Day Five: Blocking Act Two
Day Six: Act Two Redux
Day Seven: Reading Act Three
Day Eight: The Da Gooper Code
Day Nine: The Laying On of Hands
Day Ten: Pictures and Pages
Day Eleven: Onstage
Day Twelve: Memory
Day Thirteen: The Quickie
Day Fourteen: The Lines
Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety
Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right
Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper
Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse
Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In The House
Day Twenty: Back to Words

Picture of the Day
Set's almost finished.