Letters to Holly

Friday, February 9

A Quiet Night

Your Sis overdosed on chocolate and went to bed about a half hour after I got home. I had hoped to take her out for dinner so I could tell her about the new comic, but that will have to wait for sometime this weekend. While she was in her coma, I stayed in the workshop to finish Travis's CD (see below) and start research on that comic story. I have an idea that can easily fill the three allotted pages, and now I just need a deadline.

The blog labels aren't showing up on the posts although the blog database is cataloging them. I also can't get the archives to use the date format I prefer. Still, the blog offers what I most require for now.

Picture of the Day
The Travis mash-up CD. The pic is a desktop image I found online.


1. Killing in the Boom - Shaggy/Rage Against The Machine
2. Dirty Girl - Christine Aquilera/Redman/Jet
3. When God Breaks - Led Zeppelin/Johnny Cash
4. Only Boogie - Nine Inch Nails/Kool and the Gang
5. Superstitious Jolene - Dolly Parton/Stevie Wonder
6. They Might Be Starting - They Might Giants/Will Smith/Pink
7. Sweet Country Grammar Nelly/Lynyrd Skynyrd
8. Put On The Super Freak - Police/Rick James
9. Black Sabotage - Led Zeppelin/Beastie Boys
10. Take Me Without - Franz Ferdinand/Eminem
11. The Tide Is Not Unusual - Blondie/Tom Jones
12. Big Time Dare - Gorillaz/Peter Gabriel
13. Free ADIDAS - Tom Petty/Run DMC
14. Crazy Logic - Supertramp/Gnarls Barkley
15. Surf Wax Off Your Shoulder - Jay-Z/Weezer
16. Get Rhythm - Johnny Cash/Wu-Tang Clan
17. Regulate the Dust - Warren G/Kansas
18. Rush Where It's At - Big Audio Dynamite/Beck/Green Day
19. Always With You - Willie Nelson/U2/MARRS

In The News
Let's be clear on Anna Nicole: She was an air-headed, drug-addled, attention-needy strumpet. I've seen comparisons in the last 24 hours to Marilyn fucking Monroe, and that analogy works only in the most shallow of ways (blonde, centerfold, dead). She's not a sad poster girl for desperate dieting, a Little Girl Lost in the depravity of Hollywood, nor a symbol of our consumer times. She's a third-generation Xerox of Pamela Anderson, and that's it.

+ + +

The new Secretary of Defense claims weapons in Iraq are coming from Iran. What can't be proven is that the material is from the government of Iran, just that they may be are Iranian in origin. The movement for attacking Iran is not new, but the debacle of altered evidence against Iraq has to minimize that anti-Iranian effort. Right?

Thursday, February 8

Sushi and Comics

I made my house-famous stir-fry last night, and we ate it using the sushi bowl set Your Sis got me for Christmas. I discovered we still have sushi rice leftover, and that immediately reminded me of the "It's a Wonderful Tuna" night we had. I'm hesitant to make sushi again because I'm sure it can't be as good as what you made. We polished off the merlot last night, making a suddenly spooky four straight nights of alcohol. That's not a pattern this Irish-German-Cherokee needs to establish.

"Lost" was good last night, thank God. Time and a weak fall run has made me suspicious of the show's direction. This new episode had definite movement and development, and that's what we loyalists need. Once again, Sawyer brings the pop-culture references, and he and Kate recreated the Star wars prison rescue.

I talked to the guy who published the comics anthologies again, and I'm in early talks to make another short comic for Free Comic Boom Day. This is a new annual event where publishers and stores hand out special issues. It used to coincide with a summer blockbuster comic-movie adaptation, but this year, I think the day falls between such releases. Regardless, I'm gonna make another comic story in addition to the mini-comics I'm making for him to sell at conventions.

Picture of the Day
It's a small closet made to look like a socket. In college, I had a fridge made to look like a bank vault.

Tuesday, February 6

"Guys, Where Are We?"

Your Sis made a handsome sausage spaghetti dish last night, and we cracked open some imported Vampire merlot. We started our long slog through "Six Feet Under" episodes and tonight -- oh, tonight -- "Lost" is back. It's on now at 10, the third time slot ABC has given it for Wednesdays.

I'm playing with Blogger's upgrades, mainly the ability to post a header image. This is something I will play with quite a bit. The archives and links look a tad different, but no content has changed. In fact I may add a fleet of links along the bottom right corner. There's also the ability to add labels to the bottom of each post which then provide indexing according to category. Most people who do this make smart-ass labels, which is of course why I added it to the blog.

I'm making two mix CDs this weekend, one for Your Sis and the other for Travis, who's enjoying a birthday next week.

Moving Picture of the Day

A new Beatles musical of which I just learned, made by the director of The Lion King stage show and the film Titus. The musical numbers look good, but the story looks oh-so corny.




The Day After

Still not feeling the expected lack of burden from the show's close. My lines haven't vanished overnight; I can still recite them in under five minutes. I spoke to a college student on one of my message boards who just got cast as Gooper and offered words of wisdom for any character insight. Not that he needs it; the part's clearly delineated on the page. It's one of those roles where you should try to not get in it's way. Just read the words aloud and let the playwright do the heavy lifting. I say this now, of course, after months of worrying over inflections and motivation. I have the Buddhist contentment that only comes after the work is done.

Last night was gloriously ho-hum. We watched "Six Feet Under," talked about our workdays, and I gobbled wings while Your Sis went to bed. Much like the rest of the nation, we are in the depths of winter. It's shockingly cold out there. I thoughtlessly left a newly purchased bottle of frappuccino in the car for the next morning and discovered when I got to work that it had turned into ice cream.

Picture of the Day
This is Hyperion, a moon of Saturn. As moons go, it's puny and ugly and nothing you'd want to take to bed. But as extraterrestrial objects go, it possessing the natural beauty of a thing we can't make. It reminds me of sea sponge mixed with honeycomb, and that kind of collage analogy underscores the poetic nature of astronomy.



In the News
This kind of ugly love story is only unique because it involves astronauts. Having just finished reading The Right Stuff, I can tell you Wolfe paints a picture of martial indiscretions given unspoken approval by their spouses. With jobs that stressful, one-night stands were a given for the married, noble air soldiers. This is no way dilutes the early judgment that the arrested lady is cuckoo for Cocoa-Cocoa Puffs.

+ + +

Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign is doomed from the start unless he can convince the GOP majority to accept his moderate social ideas. He's pro-choice and pro-gun control. You almost have to be to win the New York City mayoral job. The party needs a new direction after the neo-con administration, but it may reflexively rally around a hardline social policy to counter the centrist Democrat candidates. And make no mistake, Clinton and Obama and Edwards are not the hardline lefties pundits may wish you to believe. They're gonna follow the Bill Clinton stance of government (smaller, compassionate, proactive) because it worked well and remained popular despite his inexcusable fling with Monica.

+ + +

The trail of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada began yesterday. He's facing four years for refusing to serve in what he calls an illegal war. The judge ruled yesterday that the legality of the war cannot be argued, a statement that may directly defy the Nuremberg rulings involving soldiers following illegal orders. Not that we should bandy about World War II precedents easily; it's bad enough when folks toss in a Hitler comparison to make their shrill points. But the judge's decision does allow early appeal room for whatever verdict is handed down.

The Plays

I started doing plays, oddly enough, in church; the parents in my Baptist church would use a kids-only nativity play to themselves play matchmakers. I'm still convinced, decades later, that I was supposed to marry the girl who played Mary to my Joseph. But that was years after I worked my way up from a sheep to a shepherd to a wise man. I don't think I ever played the Roman soldier who reads the tax decree that sent the parents-to-be to Bethlehem in the first place. Maybe I left the church before then.

There were also school plays, the kind of mindless pageants excruciating for parents and kids alike. I include in these the obligatory chorale presentations where boys are directed to sing falsetto for an hour, even during the John Denver medley. I can still sing "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" because of that, surely doubling my market value on the streets. There was the Court of Queen Arithmetic in fifth grade where I played Sir Problem, the brusque, snarky character given to me no doubt because I was an insufferable motormouth at the time.

In middle school, I remember doing a reader-theater production of Sorry, Wrong Number for one class, and that was as much fun as I could imagine back then. We did it as a radio play, complete with ringing phones and recorded train noises. We may have even gotten cassette recordings of our final performance. If we did, mine is lost to the winds now.

In high school, I joined the advanced drama class for two reasons: a good number of my friends were in it, and we would travel across the state to compete against other school groups. That was it. Performing had very little to do with trying out for the class (my first audition). I got in, we indeed went here and there and won a nice chunk of awards for our work. I even got a individual trophy in the kind of surreal moment that made me feel like a homecoming queen. And my best friend at the time got the same honor (this was for a contest-wide all-star ensemble), so I had the chance to be incredibly egotistical and equally magnanimous at the same time. We had no senior production that year on account of a snafu involving the school beauty pageant, so the trophy was the highlight of my school drama class. Well, that and watching that cheerleader change clothes backstage.

I did some college plays -- The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, Look Homeward Angel, and It's A Scream -- and went into community theatre after I graduated the university.

The Student Prince
Broadway Bound
Barefoot in the Park
The Curious Savage
The Glass Menagerie
Black Coffee
The Sound of Music
Tintypes (stage manager)
The Odd Couple

And I think this is where the blog entries can take the narration baton.

Cat On a Hot Tin Roof

The Audition
Called Back
Six Hours Til The Callback
Anxiety, Humiliation, Doubt
I Got The Call
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
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity

Performances

Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night
Day Twenty-Seven: Second Night
Day Twenty-Eight: The Show You Saw
Day Twenty-Nine: Brush-Up
Day Thirty: Back to Work
Day Thirty-One: A Spreading Plague
Day Thirty-Two: Cast Party
Day Thirty-Three: The Cast Gift
Day Thirty-Four: Slapstick
Day Thirty-Five: Dinner and A Show
Day Thirty-Six: Curtain Call

Night of January 16th

Auditions
First Night
Second Night
Third Night
Fourth Night


Rehearsals

Marking the Floor
Readthrough
Walking and Talking
Cramming
J'Accuse
Script Work
'Go and Do Likewise, Gents'
End of Second Week
Line Trouble
Dusting Off Act One
Act Three Lines
Our First Friday
Getting Serious
Drama!
Eggshells
Friday Through Sunday
Act Two Redux
Punching a Cop Is Bad, Right?
My Big Speech
Clock is Ticking
Countdown: Seven Rehearsals
Countdown: Six Rehearsals
Countdown: Five Rehearsals
Countdown: Four Rehearsals
Countdown: Three Rehearsals
Extra Drama
Countdown: Two Rehearsals
The Last Rehearsals
Biding Time

Performances

First Show
Second Show
Third Show
Rehearsal Party
Fourth Show
Fifth Show
Last Show


The Murder Game

Audition
Day One: Starting Up the Play
Day 2: Blocking Act One
Days 3 & 4: Blocking Act Two
Day 5: Back To Act One
Days 6 & 7: Act Two Details
Day 8: Act Two Again
Day 9: Act One From Memory
Day 10: Pictures and Lines
Day 11: Act One Fragments
Day 12: Act two Fragments
Day 13: Stumbling
Day 14: Scattered
Day 15: Conquering
Day 16: A New Stage
Day 17: The First Sunday
Day 18: She Needs to Calm Down
Day 19: We Can't Dance
Days 20 and 21: Tech
Day 22: Costumes
Day 23: Finding a Groove
Day 24: An Audience
Day 25: First Show
Day 26: Second Show

Day 27: Third Show

Day 28: Last Rehearsal

Day 29: Fourth Show

Day 30: Fifth Show

Day 31: Last Show and Cast Party


The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge

Auditions

Rehearsals One and Two

Rehearsal Three

Rehearsal Four: No Shows

Rehearsals Five and Six: Change and Concern

Rehearsal Seven: Hello Again

Rehearsal Eight: A Bad Night

Rehearsal Nine: Cold Comfort

Rehearsal Ten: What the Hell?

Rehearsal Eleven: The Absolute Nadir

Rehearsal Twelve: Toil

Rehearsal Thirteen: Stagecraft

Rehearsal Fourteen: Bad Move

Rehearsal Fifteen: Sick Sick Sick

Rehearsal Sixteen: Tech

Countdown: Four Nights

Countdown: Three Nights

Countdown: Two Nights

Open Dress Rehearsal

First Show

Second Show

Third Show

Refreshing

Fourth Show

The Last Two Shows


Mama's Almost Birthday (directing)

An Offer

Almost Beginnings

Sign Me Up

Another Page Done

Officially Official

New Music and Directing

Small Stuff

Wonder Women

Making Notes

Almost

Auditions

Making the Call

My Brain is Dumb

Back On Track

One Step Back

The Weekend Before

Readthrough

Developmental Work

Fixing the Books

First Rehearsal

Second Rehearsal

Prop Shopping

Third Rehearsal

Sudden Hopes

Oh, Right

Crash and Burn

The Curtain Comes Down

Game Face

Long Weekend

Home Stretch

Rage

All We Did Was Kick Ass

So Much Occurs

This is Why I Don't Teach

Almost Done Almost Starting

Theatre Doings

Starting With a Readthrough

Keep It Moving

New Technology

Lots of Much

One Rehearsal This Week

Working Holiday

Glee and Gratitude

Smoothing the Fur

Not My Job

Someone Had To Do It

Only Nine More Times

Getting Better

A Day Off

Last Rehearsal

First Show

Second Show

Third Show

Mid-Week Rehearsal

Showdown

Tranquility



Monday, February 5

Day Thirty-Six: Curtain Call

It's snowing like mad when I drive into town, and my first concern is a possible postponement of the last performance. Will I have to delay the much-needed haircut? Will we do that show this week? But no, the show goes on.

A teacher buddy of my wife asks to use one of our complimentary passes, and when I try to explain this to the lobby volunteer, it's like a Groucho Marx skit. She's old and ornery. She thinks I'm scamming her. When I tell her the guy's last name, she asks me to spell it and then gives me shit for pronouncing it wrong. I tell her that's how he pronounces it. She gives me the eye. This is the face of the theatre for the community? Granny McAsshole? No wonder we can't sell out the show. Then when I tell her I'm in the play, oh, how her tenor changes. So now she's politely condescending. I mentally debate whether I'm willing to perform with blood dripping from my hands as I head backstage.

The stage manager points out the Spider-Gooper sketch on the wall and shows me her Spidey t-shirt. It's exactly like one I have. A hundred cool points to her. After warm-ups she asks us to sign cards to the stage, lighting, and costume designers. She also gives the cast personal notes and birthday candles to commemorate each day. It's a nice gesture, and her words are humbling. To fill out my obligation to the art board, I draw the Incredible Hulk as Big Daddy. It goes over well. There's a sad note of ending to everything. As we apply our make-up, we pack the items away. As soon as we're onstage, the assistant costumer takes away our extra hangers. We're closing up shop as the show moves along. Daddy calls this the "evaporation show," meaning the lines vanish as we say them. I don't know. I remember bits from my previous plays, and if I had to re-learn a character, I think I could do it within a week. Maybe not, though.

Backstage, the littlest girl mentions my weird eyes and I do the lazy-eye trick for her (I can switch which eye I'm looking through, and the other rolls off to the side.). She thinks it's cool and demands I show it to the other Gooper daughter. That one's trying to act like a teenager and pretends to be disinterested. The reverend and the doctor almost miss their cue for Act I offstage lines and practically run to the wings. It's a sizable and responsive crowd for a Sunday. Not a dominance of bluehairs. I wonder how many of them tried to reach through the box-office window and slay the ticket lady.

In Act II, Daddy repeats a bit of dialogue, and it sounds like he jumped the gun. Maybe he's feeling a little loose because it's the last show. It doesn't feel like the last one, personally. Except for the cleaning business backstage, there's no sign that this is a grand finale. I'm used to doing 12 performances in a run, not 9, and I only possess a notion of relief that I'll have my weekends free again. I know I'll miss working with this cast. We didn't get close personally, but we were a tight corps onstage.

Act III swims along, and we get a partial standing ovation. Mae and Daddy gesture to the light booth to acknowledge their efforts for making the show work. The curtain closes, and we say our mutual congrats. The cast presents Brick with a joke book backstage. During his big Act II monologue, he admits to the closeness of his friendship with Skipper. He mentions how they used to hug, how they would reach across the space between hotel beds to shake hands goodnight, and he says "maybe one or two times, we --" before Daddy cuts him off. Mama and Maggie started a notebook of what he may have been about to say, and cast filled it with filthy innuendo. Thats our gift to him.

In our dressing rooms, we start to disassemble the roles, and trade notes on new projects. Brick is working in Waiting for Godot. Mama will direct 'Night, Mother. I never learn if Mae got a part in Fourth Grade Nothing. Me, I 'm gonna make mini-comics, go back to the gym, and make that painting to fill the living room wall. I've cleared out space in the garage to paint, and my wife bought me a swank easel last year to get me started.

But before we leave, we have to strike the set. It doesn't take long at all. Maybe 90 minutes, and the majority of that is taking apart the set walls. The crew hand out drills with screwdriver attachments, size up the abilities of the cast volunteers, and point us to appropriate jobs. I move 12-foot styrofoam columns, which I learn came from a movie set. I help to take apart doorways and remove brick facades, separate the columns from their bracings, take apart wall molding, and move pipe weights out of the canvas drop behind the stage.

I've got the Super Bowl on TiFaux, and some pals are coming over tonight to watch. They won't start the game til I get home, and when I see that it's 7 p.m., I have to go. Luckily, we're essentially through. The next play stage construction will start soon. I thank the designers for letting me help, and they thank me for staying. That's when I notice I'm the only actor left. The set designer tells me about the season-ending comedy play coming up; his friend wrote it and it sounds good. The stage manager asks me to come back for more shows, and I tell her the comedy sound like my next best bet. We hug goodbye, I run backstage to get my stuff, and run out the door to get to my car, drive the hour home, and start the game with Your Sis and pals. I got beer, snacks galore, last-performance notes to share, and a a full evening of TV. It's a good ending to the day, a good ending to the play.

And to this journal, I suppose.


Previous entires
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
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity
Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night
Day Twenty-Seven: Second Night
Day Twenty-Eight: The Show You Saw
Day Twenty-Nine: Brush-Up
Day Thirty: Back to Work
Day Thirty-One: A Spreading Plague
Day Thirty-Two: Cast Party
Day Thirty-Three: The Cast Gift
Day Thirty-Four: Slapstick
Day Thirty-Five: Dinner and A Show

Day Thirty-Five: Dinner and A Show

Brick has a line in Act III when he walks back onstage and pours himself a drink. He doesn't realize for a while that everyone has watched him silently. He looks around and says "I'm sorry. Anyone else?" It's a small joke line. Today, we arrive to find he has given us all small Maker's mark whiskey bottles with his line taped to them. It's a good idea.

Your Sis and I eat dinner at The Noodle Shop a few blocks over from the theatre, and I overhear the waiter talking to another patron about Brick. I pipe up to say I'm in the show, and the waiter, it turns out, has worked with Brick and our director at the Asheville theatre. We trade some shop notes during the dinner. Your Sis is catching Romeo and Juliet tonight, and we have a dessert date for after our shows.

I put in my order for the official pictures. Only three: two of Gooper and one cast photo. I brought The Power Of One, a South African novel with me tonight. The stage manager assures us backstage that the stereo feedback problem won't happen again.

It's a big and responsive crowd tonight. Maybe our best yet. One of Mae's real daughters demands I add to the art bulletin board. She's slapped up a dozen drawings, and I only have two. I post up a Spider-Man sketch and given him some Gooper dialogue. She also assures me later that the magnets can count as new art. During Act II, Victoria has to leave suddenly, and she's replaced by one of teh backstage assistants. I show him what page we're on (the first time Ive looked at the script in about a week). About ten minutes later, Big Mama fails to make her third entrance of the act. The offstage managers can't leave to find out what's wrong. I walk around the green room, and I don't hear anything amiss. Sounds like she's in the dressing room. She just missed her cue. The actors onstage handle it smoothly.

Act III goes much better than last night, and the crowd is awfully appreciative during the curtain call. You can tell who has family in the crowd when they take their bow. Maggie, Mama, and Daddy walk out, and the audience seems to double in size. Even if it weren't family and friends out there, they deserve that kind of response. They worked hard tonight. The curtain closes on us, and Mama tells Daddy and Brick how she missed her cue. All I can think of is "just one more time." Then I change quickly to meet my honey for cake and beer.


Previous entires
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
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity
Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night
Day Twenty-Seven: Second Night
Day Twenty-Eight: The Show You Saw
Day Twenty-Nine: Brush-Up
Day Thirty: Back to Work
Day Thirty-One: A Spreading Plague
Day Thirty-Two: Cast Party
Day Thirty-Three: The Cast Gift
Day Thirty-Four: Slapstick

Day Thirty-Four: Slapstick

It's a gamble to skip a line-through between performing weekends, even if you've been off-script for a month. I believe it's been a month to the day since we started rehearsing without the scripts. The concern isn't so much that you'll forget lines (although it's inexcusably possible) so much as you'll forget the rhythms. I mentioned last week that even though my brain could accept that no time had passed between performances, my muscles knew better. Tonight is a night we must chalk up to five days away.

I didn't look at the script since last weekend, and only then because my mind somehow forgot the word "eventualities" while I was reciting lines backstage. I don't like looking at the script as my mind takes new photographs of the script pages and erases what I had saved and used before. This smooths over the grooves in my head that allow my mental record-player to produce the lines. I also haven't run my lines since Sunday's show. My mind would start them during the time away, and I would turn the channel to anything else.

When I awoke today, though, I knew I needed to dust off those grooves, and I hit the shower and ran my first two acts' worth of lines. This takes less than two minutes. I didn't want to go through my Act Three lines until I was backstage and repeating my normal performance routine. Don't jostle the jukebox. Don't reinvent the wheel. Acting is habits.

After a surprise dinner date with Your Sis at a local burger joint, I went to the theatre and handed out the magnets. They went over well, I think, and people asked how I made them. The kid wrangler stated I had too much time on my hands. Yeah, I s'pose. The time away had left the kids with a surplus of energy, and they are virtually exploding with antsy volume. I feel pretty blase about going back onstage to start this last weekend. I feel no anxiety nor do I feel senior-itis to end the run. If I had more to do, I might feel the pinch of obligation. Even without reciting my Act III lines, I can feel them at the ready. You know the gangster movies where someone thumbs through a stack of bills and feels confident all the loot is there? That's what I feel like. But the time away, like I said, can make old movements feel awkward, and things go awry.

First, Big Mama has a door problem. She makes her appearance by trying to barge into Bricks bedroom. She grabs the doorknob and complains that it's locked. Before Maggie can unlock it and let her in, Mama walks around to the other bedroom door to enter. But tonight, Mama grabs the knob and the door jumps open on her. She doesn't manage to wiggle the knob in place. I'm standing offstage with her for my shouting lines, but I can't see any of this. I only know something's off when she tip-toes by and whispers "the fucking door came open." When she comes back offstage, she says it ruined her concentration, but she sounded fine to me. I try to reassure her.

When I get onstage in Act II, I see just how small a crowd we have. The snowy weather has kept folks away, and this is our smallest crowd since we opened. I get my lines out, carry the cake OK, and get off with no problem. I even finish my Tom Wolfe novel. But the crowd is detached from us, or rather we don't have the zest to win them. Big Daddy doesn't get the usual reactions. Our timing feels off, the show feels slow. Mae slips a line and says "Did you call for Big Gooper, Daddy?" That leads to some off-color jokes. When Brick falls to the floor in Act To, his glass breaks for the very first time. Daddy scoops up the pieces without missing a beat, but Victoria asks me to warn everyone backstage to be careful. We're somewhat used to watching the floor by now; we've stepped over ice puddles for two weeks now. By the time Act III rolls around, it feels like we're wearing Jacob Marley's chains.

First of all, someone in the sound booth goes crazy with a microphone and fiddles with the volume. This causes waves of hum feedback coming from the fake radio onstage. It's obvious to everyone in the theatre. We're practically yelling over it. We're all shooting looks to figure out how we can walk over to improv a reason to disconnect it. It's all we can do to keep ourselves from stopping the show cold and asking them to fix it. No one does, and eventually it dies down. But it rattles Mama, and she drops a line. Mae covers well, and we move on. But the show feels like it has no life despite our proper projection and emotional marks. And when we take our bows, and the curtain closes, I'm ready for hard liquor.

I do have to mention though that the reverend and doctor nailed their lines tonight. It made the murmured onstage banter between the three of us a little lighter.

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
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity
Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night
Day Twenty-Seven: Second Night
Day Twenty-Eight: The Show You Saw
Day Twenty-Nine: Brush-Up
Day Thirty: Back to Work
Day Thirty-One: A Spreading Plague
Day Thirty-Two: Cast Party
Day Thirty-Three: The Cast Gift