Day Twenty-Six: Opening Night

Opening night begins with a mixed bag of traditions. People give gifts of various investments: Mae hands out candy, Mama hands out roses, the doctor has cat magnets bearing the names of each member of the show, the director gives out cards thanking and congratulating us. I plan to give out my items next week. My previous theatre handed out fridge magnets of a show's poster image and bearing a memorable quote on the back. I wanna continue that, and I'm working on new artwork of the magnet. The new managing director offers us all a glass of sparkling cider to toast our work. We're given a copy of the program with our bios and photos. The director officially turns over the show to the cast and crew, saying his work is done. It's a little party, and then we approach curtain time and settle down to work. During warm-ups and prop check, we discover the crew repainted the floor, and it's now a deeper black.

It's a great crowd (they applaud the SET!), and the previous night's string of chaos has got me ready to knock this one out of the park. This is when I remind myself that I have gotten roles in every show I've auditioned for, including walking off the street to get roles with three theatre companies. Deep breath, straighten the tie, check the hair and makeup. Overture, hit the lights, this is it, tonight's the night. And oh what heights we'll hit, on with the show this is it. Can you believe there's at least two generations of kids who never heard the theme music to CBS' Saturday morning Warner Brothers cartoon show? Wait a minute. You're one of them.

I have to admit that I'm starting to count down the days of the week now. We have two performances left after tonight, and we all murmur just how ready we are to have a break. But we must zap up our energy when we're onstage. During the show we trade notes backstage on reactions. Gooper seems to get the biggest laugh of the show when he insults mama in Act III. Big Daddy's profanity shocks them into laughter. Brick gets some laughs. The wealth is spread out, it seems. During an Act I fight scene Brick, unfortunately, lands mouth first on the foot of the bed. It's near the end of the act, and he ices his mouth before Act II. The Act II fight scene between Daddy and Brick spreads ice cubes on the floor and word quickly moves backstage to be careful. This is such a good crowd that we anticipate going back on stage for them. They catch a lot, and we can be more subtle.

Act III goes great. We run right past one of the reverend's lines, and I screw up a word, but otherwise, the energy is solid, and it flies by. The cast moves over to a downtown Indian restaurant for a small party. I walk out to my car right before to discover someone has stolen my license plate. I file a police report over the phone and walk to the party and find seated Your Sis, Kathy, and Travis. I had no idea they were coming tonight. I just unknowingly performed in front of them. I make introductions and sample some alky-hall and curry chicken.

It's a great night, and I can celebrate the start of the end of the production with my girl and my pals. I don't even care about the license plate.

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
Day Twenty-Five: Calamity

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

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.

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.

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.

Day Twenty: Back To Words

The crew is polishing up the set, and we are back in the lobby to run lines. And this time we really run lines. We have our approximation of set pieces but we are instructed to dispense with acting and just say the lines, quickly and correctly. And we do, and it is a trick.

After weeks of delivering dialogue, one tends to memorize the cadence of it more than the words. It all becomes a giant song, and you walk in, hit your notes, and walk off. You might have Big Daddy operatic notes or a small solo like Gooper. Either way, the words start to vanish for you, and you're left making certain sounds at certain times. An exercise like this reminds you that the words have meaning, and that you can't ignore or forget what those meanings are. This is why some plays feel hollow. The actors have drifted away from the significance of the words. Of course they might be bad actors or they're directed badly or it could be an off night. But let's stick to my point which is this: You have to get back to the words.

Because we're speaking them tonight at Mach 3, we don't get the usual time between our lines to excavate our next lines from our memory. We're moving in a sort of cruise control, and this tells us and each other how well we have individually reconstructed the scripts in our heads. Unfortunately we only tackle Acts I and II, and much of Gooper's material goes unspoken.

When I'm in the wings in Acts I and II, I have plenty of time to ready my next lines. I envision the script pages in my head with my lines in highlighter. I know that Gooper has three lines on the right-hand side of the book when he's offstage in Act II. A little later, his lines start on the left-hand side, and he has four of them in one batch alternating with Brick's. It's a visual memory of what I have to do for that moment, but the words are memorized as audio not video. I hear them in my head or I remember the flow of the sentences. But the majority of my lines are not remembered as ink on the page. There are a few lines that emerge in my head during the play as printed words, and I've purposefully rigged them that way to help me through trouble spots.

Tonight, the older girls practice their big moment in Act I when Gooper's daughter mocks Maggie. They are alternating the role each night. It doesn't matter who has the lines as the child isn't identified by any character. A girl runs in, mocks, runs out. It shows Gooper and Mae talk aloud at home about their notions of Maggie and Brick. The kids are aping their parents. We still have no servants for the offstage lines, and we are exactly one week from our first audience.

I feel pretty OK with this small amount of time left. I have about five more rehearsals to get my Gooper settled, and I think that's plenty of chances.

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

Picture of the Day
A recent 3D NASA map of the dark matter theory of space. Scientists suspect dark matter might make up 99% of space, but it exists outside our perception. It's all theoretical, but dark matter provides a solution to some of the weaknesses of Einstein's theories. Gravity doesn't work the way it should, and dark matter helps explain that. But to those wary of such ideas, this has to sound like magic and no more advanced than any religious theory of Creation. That's a tiny Hubble on the left.

Day Nineteen: There Is Not A Doctor In the House

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing has 80 callbacks. EIGHTY! That's a South Asian army. All these hopeful kiddies present means parents are bogarting our parking spaces, and it takes a while for everyone to arrive at the stage. The costumer has outfits for various folks like the reverend and Maggie and Mama. Mae tries on another dress, and it's brilliant scarlet. It might be too much strong for anyone other than Maggie, the lead. Doc is out of town until Sunday, and the director tells us to make the play march tonight. Curtail the dramatic pauses and finish quickly.

The stage manager tells us that we will take photos right after the first Sunday show, a move that I disagree with. It's better to take pictures before a performance when we're not drenched with sweat, make-up running down our cheeks. We're also having an opening night dinner after the show and the cast receives one free drink each. I will have to pass as no one I know will be there opening night, and I have to drive home. We're to arrive this Sunday at 12:30 for the tech rehearsal, and we'll stop at 5 for dinner before running through the entire show.

She also has a prop table for us. Butcher paper covers a long table, and the outline of each item is penciled in and labeled. I have two props so far, a briefcase and a birthday cake. It's just a block of bluefoam tonight, but we're trying the stage candles tonight to see how well they burn.

The stage has even more new items, including a chandelier, faux wallpaper, and bar items. As Reverend Tooker walks center stage in his outfit, a piece of the chandelier falls onto the bar, and now we think it's possessed by demons. Or maybe he muttered "Macbeth" under his voice. I dunno.

Because we're trying to hurry along, our rhythm is shot to hell, and we make mistakes. Doc's absence doesn't help, especially in the third act, when so many of us talk to him. The reverend still has line trouble, and because the majority of his stage lines are to Gooper, it throws me off as well. We're gonna have to sit down together so he can get them straight.

I leave the stage in Act 2 to get and light the cake, but the candles go out as soon as I re-enter. Later, I get to hand a lit sparkler to the youngest Gooper child for her crazy-brat screaming scene. She runs back to me and hands me the sparkler, and I try to find a place to extinguish it, surrounded as I am by lumber, sawdust, old paint, old curtains, and probably Warner Brother Acme bombs painted to look like Christmas ornaments. Big Daddy compliments me, saying it sounded like Gooper has some Big Daddy in him, and I assume that comes from my frustration seeping out during my big monologue.

After the play, we're told to move back in the wings to make our offstage lines sound further away from the audience. The director has some moments during his notes where he doesn't know what he was trying to tell himself. I see that happen every play. Thursday's run will be only for Acts I and II, and hopefully will be short. I will be there despite my minuscule stage time.

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

Picture of the Day
Maggie prepares to go onstage in Act 2. You can see Brick to the right, his left foot encased in fake plaster.

I Had the Night Off

It snowed all day here in Asheville but it only started to pile up around 4 p.m. Mayberry, of course, got the barest trace, but enough for Your Sis to get a 2-hour delay at work Wednesday morning. We met up for steaks last night, and returned home to watch TiFauxed shows.

"Simply Ming" featured recipes with mole sauce and a cooking segment with Queer Eye's Ted Allen. Now there's a guy who needs his own Food Network show. He's smart, funny, accustomed to a camera, and he's gay. The latter is just about the only untapped demographic the show left for a new host (the loud cajun, the large Italian, the dainty caterer, the tomboy chef, the Southern aunt, the hyperintelligent house husband, the japanese expert, the British partyboy).

We also caught a "Colbert Report" rerun, and Your Sis has become quite the fan. This from a woman who prides herself on a lack of funny bone.

I then read my monthly haul of comics and drifted off to sleep. This morning I awoke and ran my lines in the shower. Thankfully, Your Sis had already gone to work so she couldn't hear my Southern gargle.

I also determined what my first mini-comic will be, and it's a story I've had percolating for a few years now. I'm still waiting to hear back about Greenville activities for you.


Moving Picture of the Day
Bruce Campbell's Old Spice TV ad. I had no idea this existed until it ran during the Patriots-Jets game Sunday. And as it continued, the laughter built up in my belly until the ad ended, and I could bray like a mule. He's a geek god.

In the News
Bush unveils his not-so-secret Iraq plan tonight. Essentially, he's fighting bigger, not smarter. And then there's still the problem of making religion factions get along.

+ + +

Apple's new gadget is a mobile communications hub, providing phone, browsing and music. They also allegedly played Beatles music on it during the grand announcement which suggests iTunes can finally can distribute their music.

Day Eighteen: Goopercalypse

I arrive 20 minutes early to run lines with Mae. We're both playing with pauses and inflection, and that leads to mutual confusion about each other's next line. We sit on the stage couch and quickly hit our moments of quick dialogue. We're to interrupt the other a lot, and we want to appear to be literally thick as thieves. Mae and Gooper are another example of a bad marriage, but they have the same goal, unlike the relationships of Daddy/Mama and Brick/Maggie.

Before we rehearse, the director says he indeed wants Gooper to bring out the birthday cake in Act II. We had talked about this before. I'm handed a square of foam padding for now, and I walk in as the kids gather to sing to Daddy and put the cake on the coffee table in front of everyone. It leaves me with little time to get out of the audience's way, and we'll clean that movement up later. During rehearsal, I notice other actors walk behind the gallery windows, so it's not just Gooper, and it will appear intentional to the audience. The costume director shows me the shoes she found for me; they fit, and I volunteer to bring in brown shoe polish for them. There are more auditions tonight, and a stream of people runs past the stage-right wings and out to the lobby. The kids are a little energetic tonight too, and things get distracting. There are some problems with lines with all the movement and noise.

The reverend and I try some stage business, and we both miss our cues as we navigate the new stage-right wall edge. I have my worst night so far, and blank utterly on a line in Act III. I even say the same line twice because I assume someone else made a mistake. The stage manager shouts out what I'm supposed to say, and I pick it up, a little shocked. I now have a sense of distrust in my lines, and that anxiety helps the performance, I think. Gooper feels edgy for the rest of the show. In fact, the doctor compliments me after the run-through, and it's all I can do to deflect it by saying I bumbled my way to the end. Big Mama, however, EMERGES tonight, and she hits her Act III moments dead on. She even backs me up when she confronts Gooper. She's never bowed up to him before, and because this is her moment, I go with it, stepping back and giving her as much unease as I can, and after the line screw-up, it's considerable. So now I'll run my lines mentally every night just to ensure I have them comfortably accessible before I go onstage.

Mae comes around after rehearsal to mention an Act II line she's stretching out for effect and asks if I can give her that moment before cutting in. It's something I've done every night, assuming she's forgotten something. But I know now to wait until she's through. The post-show notes are short tonight. The director says I'm to really yell for Mama as Act III begins, and I'm to learn a fieldhand song to join an offstage chorus at the end of Act II. Tuesday is scheduled now to be for certain scenes, and I learn I have the night off. I also see my costume hanging in the dressing room, and it has no bowtie. Just a regular tie. Good, I won't have to relearn how to tie it again.

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

Picture of the Day
Before we leave, we're shown the cards and posters for the show. The theatre website also has a write-up about the show.

Day Seventeen: Molding the Gooper

We're two weeks from opening night, and this is my first Sunday rehearsal. The stage has an expanded set (see below).

You might not be able to see it but the back of the set is not a full wall. The big windows will float in place. The same trick was used in Greenville's Glass Menagerie set to suggest the play is set in abstracted reality. So far, Gooper is the only one who walks behind those windows (as he searches for Big Mama), and I wonder if the audience will see just one actor move there the entire play and think it was a mistake.

We start at 6:30 instead of the usual seven. The theatre is holding auditions for Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing backstage, and we're to use the lobby bathrooms. I remember that book fondly from my elementary school days. While Act I commences, I ask the theatre office manager (with whom I share a high school) about the show and whether certain scenes from the book make it into the play. Big Mama wonders if her son will get a chance to try out; he's currently playing Gooper's eldest son.

I mentally run through my lines as the play continues. Tonight I try some new acting touches in hopes of fleshing out the role a bit. Now that the lines are solid, I got to get to acting. There are two considerations at work:

1) This is Tennessee Williams. It's not naturalism. People say and do things in stylized manners. Yet Gooper is straight-forward. He has no wasted lines, no heavy repetition, no space-staring monologues. So should I keep him a grounded, focused guy, or does he require some arched style to keep him in the same play as the other roles?

2) Whatever I discover works for Gooper has to be set quickly to maintain consistency. We're within 2 weeks of the first show. I can't throw off the actors, and I'd like to have Gooper fully realized by next Sunday's tech rehearsal.

The show goes by pretty well, and the growing set helps. Grabbing a prop or leaning on furniture allows for body expression to work with the lines. Unfortunately, Gooper does little more than pace and stand. And that leaves me with idle hands, and I worry I'll repeat my gestures too much. Hands on hips, fingers kneading the forehead, arms crossed, hands wringing. Except for a moment I improvised early on, Gooper doesn't touch anyone. He is physically isolated. There is a moment at the end where he stands at the bar, and I hope to dramatically slam down a glass to show he's barely holding back his frustration.

Big Mama has stapled two script pages to the wall so she can read her offstage phone calls. I've seen this twice before in my other two county theatres, and it's something I can't do. But then again, I'm not a mother with a full-time job. Whatever gets her through the night, it's alright. There are some calls for line tonight, but we've been away from the stage for two days. This is the time to do request help. Next week, when we're a few days from the opening curtain, we'll work on improvising our way around mind blanks.

We finish about 9:15, and the director gives us notes. We're all seated onstage, and he has detailed instructions for everyone. I'm to slow down my offstage lines, and I can easily do that by getting prepared earlier. We're all told how to pronounce "reverend Tooker" -- it's "took her," not "TWO-ker" -- and Mae and Gooper are complimented on their moment of mocking Brick in Act III (one of Gooper's most dickish, older brother moments).

I make notes about how to move differently in the next rehearsal, hoping it will underscore his frustration with the proceedings. I want him to leave the stage defeated. The play has no concrete conclusion. It ends, yes, but the story is not definitively over. I want Gooper to sell the probable post-curtain story.

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

I spent the weekend hanging out with some Bervard College buddies. One drove into town to meet a date, and the other is a beaming mom of a two-year-old. Much food was eaten.

The NFL
Eight teams remain, and Your Sis and I have chosen two of the survivors: New England and Philadelphia.

Picture of the Day
The set, it grows.

Day Sixteen: Let's Just Get It Right

We're back in the lobby tonight as stage construction continues. I haven't looked at my script at all since Wednesday, and I'm feeling wholly confident about my lines. And that usually means trouble. A small flutter of nervousness is required for stage work, else you get complacent and over-confident and your lines scamper off into oblivion. My worst stage work has resulted from a lack of anxiety. Not gut-crushing anxiety (although I used to take Immodium before every performance back in South Carolina), but just enough to make your ears stand up. I run my lines once after work and again stumble over the "poisoning of the system" line. I repeat it five times to get it right.

At the theatre, the director tells Big Daddy and me that he has trick cigars for us to use. I'm already thinking for dickish ways for Gooper to light it, maybe lighting a match on the doorframe. We all sit on the improvised furniture to take notes from last night. Act III is so new to folks that we don't have many notes for it, but there are detailed enunciation notes for Acts I and II. I am again reminded to say all my Act I lines offstage left. I glance through the script as notes are given, and I discover that my memory is so active that I'm memorizing random lines as I read. So I stop. I don't need confusing bits of dialogue orbiting my lines. The director suggests we start "imaging" our lines, meaning we're to visualize what our character wants in each bit of dialogue. I think I'm OK on this. I know what kind of guy Gooper is and how he might behave, but I won't cement his reactions to others until we're closer to performance. I believe in consistency onstage; I don't want to throw off the other actors with inc front of an audience. They;ll do enough to distract us on their own.

As we run Act II, there are still planty of problems with lines. Some of us grab scripts midway. The assistant stage manager is offering lines when prompted and sometimes when she's not. In one moment, Gooper starts his sales pitch and corrects himself to find the right angle. I do this and sell the correction with a hard stop, a chuckle, and the next words. Victoria thinks this is real, that I'm really confused, and she says "no, you're OK." I'm now really confused. I knew that was right, but did it not come out right? I stare blankly at her, and she again assures me I had it right. Then I realize what happened, but I don't want to point it out. She bought my gesture as real, but there's no need to delineate that. Let her think I slipped up. Let's keep the scene moving. But now I'm lost. I can't remember where to pick up from. Or rather, I know where I am, but I can't find the words to start again. I take a second, find the place mentally, and start just as Maggie, trying to spark my memory, starts her line before mine. We're talking all over each other. We both realize it, crack up, apologize, and pause. She says her line, and I get back into the sales pitch. I have prop paperwork to show Big mama tonight, and it helps the acting. I'm already using it in gestures. It feels natural.

Unfortunately, I do miss a line tonight as Doc Baugh has trouble with his. Now, I'm starting to worry about him and the Reverend. They have the fewest lines of any adults in the play, and they are among the oldest. I've had my moments onstage with older men who have line trouble. They've blanked. Horribly. And I'm beginning to wonder abut these two. Nice guys. Chatty. Happy. But if I can sit myself down and get Gooper's lines, they can get theirs. They have maybe thirty lines between them the whole play. When Doc has his trouble in this scene, it throws me off. So I'm going to have to prepare for this kind of moment in front of an audience. I'll need emergency cue lines in my head for them and may have to adjust my lines to pick up where they dropped off.

After running Act III, the stage manager hands out scraps of paper noting where we deviated from the script. I don't have many citations, and I can correct myself over the weekend. The rest of us are dismissed as Maggie, Brick, and Big Daddy work on scenes from the first two acts. It's an early night. We pick up again Sunday night, my first Sunday night rehearsal of the play.

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

+ + +

The NFL playoffs start tomorrow, so let's take a look back at the picks Your Sis and I made:

The NFL
Her Teams
New England (12-4), NY Jets (10-6), Oakland (2-14)
Philly (10-6), Detroit (3-13)

Oakland's coach quit after one season, Detroit's offensive coordinator (a former head coach in St. Louis) is rumored to be a frontrunner for the now-vacant Miami Atlanta and Miami jobs. New England and the Jets play each other this weekend. Philly plays the New York Giants this weekend. The playoffs are on, and if you lose, you go home.
Number of her teams that could win the Super Bowl: 3

My Teams
Miami (6-10), Pittsburgh (8-8)
Philly (10-6), Carolina (8-8)

The coaches of both Miami and Pittsburgh left this week, and Carolina stumbled to a .500 record to end the season.
Number of her teams that could win the Super Bowl: 1 (and it's one that she picked also)

Picture of the Day
The 300 posters are out in Great Britain. This is the best one.

Day Fifteen: Act III Anxiety

I spent more than an hour between work and rehearsal going over my Act III lines to the point that my head was aching and I was mixing up their order. I had to stop. I worried that I had jumbled myself up beyond repair for the night with only a half hour before I was to show up at the theatre.

I arrive to find some construction progress. This is the set with a tad more decor. We have the shell of a stereo and a newer coffee table and a few props including those for the bar.

I was growing more and more impatient and anxious to get Act III rolling and see how well I knew the lines. The reverend and doctor were going over their scripts in the wings as we readied our entrances. And then the announcement came that we were to start from the top, meaning the beginning of the play. Act III would not start for another 2 hours.

I had the Act I and II lines cold, but discovered that the director had decided to Gooper would say all his Act I lines from stage left, not stage right as I had delivered them before. Big Mama heard my first line to her and asked where I would be. When I heard the director tell her, I jogged to the other side for the rest of the act's lines. I'm not standing in place the whole time. I recognize when my lines are coming due and can wander backstage to view the set pieces or chat with actors or sit and sketch. But I don't look at the script. Not at this stage of the play. I would only do that if I badly fumbled a line or a cue. I spy a box of old telephones, a fleet of hanging chandeliers, a 1965 Americana annual (with articles about the proposed Gemini space flights), and the gobos used to create shapes on the spotlights.

When Act III does roll around, it goes badly for the cast. They simply haven't studied the material to the degree I have, and again, it's because they have more lines to cover throughout the play. But also, Act III is the busiest for the actors. Everyone is onstage, milling around and turning to address each other. So when I have my minor slips, I don't feel so bad. I'm the only one pf the major characters not calling for a line. At one point, I don't shout a line during an argument. It's not necessary, but it is there, and I catch eye contact with the director to let him know I realize the error. I also had trouble with the line "It's the poisoning of the whole system due to the failure of the body to eliminate it's poisons." I'm not worried about acting tonight, just getting the right lines out loud.

When we're through, the director says he'll give notes to us before Thursday's rehearsal to draw tonight's work to a close. It's 10 p.m., and the play is running right at 2 hours and 40 minutes. With one planned intermission, we have to trim that down.

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

Picture of the Day
The set so far. That's Doc Baugh on the left, looking at his script.


In the News
The new Congress is sworn in today with a "100 hours" plan for pushing new legislation. This is a bold move, but foolhardy. They Dems haven't enjoyed this kind of power in 12 years, and they're rushing to get all their platform items addressed before the inevitable scandal derails their momentum. It's been two months since the election, and while they may still be flush with excitement and ceremony, we the people have considered them the majority since the results were announced. The party loyalists may have great expectations about progress and reform, but that's a minority within one party. Inevitably we will hear soon about how the New Boss is bullying the Old Boss by skirting house tradition and courtesy, and that's just the schoolyard bickering that creates constituent apathy. Also, Bush seems intent on doing what he planned all along in Iraq, regardless of a perceived Democrat mandate.

The crucial matter for the Dems is to scotch the long-held stereotype of their party as free spenders and pro-bureaucracy. The GOP has inflated the budget deficit to finance a larger government. The Dems have to trim spending to finance their core programs without raising taxes. They do that, and they take away the accusatory GOP cliches. The GOP has to decide which philosophy segment to pursue: Log Cabin, neo-con, moderate, etc. and gel around that in preparation for the 2008 election. But it's much more likely the party will move centrist to separate itself from the administration.

Day Fourteen: The Lines

First of all, I had to shave for Gooper, and now my face is freezing cold. I feel every stir of the air upon my chin.

Because the stage crew is assembling the set, we're rehearsing in the lobby tonight. We move around some benches and tables to make a small recreation of the stage. Maggie isn't feeling well. We get the new schedules, and it starts to dawn on everyone that we open in about two weeks. This means we'll rehearse or perform 13 days out of a 15-day stretch starting Sunday, Jan. 7 and ending on the 21st. The 14th will be a tech rehearsal so the lights and sounds can be set. That's always a long day for everyone.

Tonight we try Acts I and II without scripts. The stage managers will prompt us if we need it. I have this set of lines down cold. Gooper has maybe 20 lines total for these acts. The principals however have a shitload. Maggie and Big Daddy ARE Acts I and II, respectively, and the very least I can do in this production is to have my lines down so the director and managers only have to worry about the main characters. They do call for lines a lot tonight, including an unfortunate moment in Act II when Big Daddy is flummoxed by real, mysterious people outside the lobby using their outdoor voices. It knocks him of the rails for a while. There are many calls of "line" from the actors as they try to move forward.

I am starving as my body adjusts from two weeks of holiday eating. I ration myself a candy cane throughout the night as I'm offstage for most of the play here. I sketch an awful lot. There's no way of knowing how well the play is shaping tonight, nor well we know Wednesday, as this is the first time we're really forgoing the scripts. I already feel unshackled and can give Gooper some small moments of eye contact and significant posturing.

The kids, who have the fewest lines, aren't very sure of what they're doing, and I wonder how much time they are practicing with their parents. The director treats them like any other member of the cast, which I endorse. When they screw up (as we all will) we stop to get their material right before they can commit it wrongly to memory. But I wonder how much the nightly notes will adhere to their brains. I also wonder how much all this business around the rehearsals distracts them.

Running lines at home and among the cast are distinct; even I (a seasoned pro in comparison) get nervous as I prepare for my cues. I know what they are, and I know what I'm to say, but the actor before me may have memorized the line differently, and I have to be ready for that. The process for the play began with a rough notion of Gooper throughout the play which helped me memorize lines, leading to a broadened idea of how to perform Gooper. What I'm doing know is vastly different that how I started, and this new incarnation will sharpen greatly in these next few weeks.

Act Three is Wednesday night, and I spent the weekend cementing the lines of memory. I've run in them literally in my sleep, and correctly, I might add. And I find myself reciting them mentally before I doze off at night and right after I wake up. It's memory boot camp fueled by panic that I won't be prepared. Frankly, there's ego involved. I want to be the first of the six major character actors to have my stuff ready. And as the one with the least lines, I should. As nice a role as this is on its own, it's also an investment role for future shows. I want to show them I'm a good, reliable actor to have around.

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

Picture of the Day
This is the stage-left side of the set. The bed headboard will fill the large, open space.

Day Thirteen: The Quickie

It's been a week since my last rehearsal, and this week is shortened because of Christmas. Tuesday was for Act One (I'm offstage). Wednesday was for Act Two (I'm onstage for about ten minutes). Thursday was for Act Three. But we knew that Big Mama would not be there as she was driving back from Texas. I've spent this holiday break going over my lines, and Act Three is a mess for Gooper. His lines are arbitrary and repetitive. It's been a struggle, and Thursday provides my last runthrough before we move offbook next week.

I luckily survived two hours of ice skating at the civic center and will not have to act with a real broken leg to match Brick's fake one.

Big Mama is indeed not there. But neither are the kids. And neither is Mae. She, I learn, has a death in the family. But she didn't leave a message about her absence. And the kids are definitely scheduled to arrive. We sit for a while, and Les the director says we'll salvage the night by doing a simple run through Act Three. No movement and without scripts if we can manage. I can do some of Act Three off-book, but I was planning on the stage movement to cement lines in my head. Big Daddy asks for lines a few times as does Maggie. But Brick, I think, has his lines down. Doc Baugh has some trouble but not much, and Reverend Tooker is reading for himself and Big Mama. The Director reads for Mae.

We finish and chat for a bit. Mostly we share theatre horror stories. Like how, for Student Prince, the Spartanburg Repertory Company decided to use a real dead chicken instead of a plastic one for a minuscule punchline. My character (one of two I had for the show because Spartanburg men refuse to work musicals) carries in the chicken to prove the Prince's valet could hunt. It doesn't serve the plot at all, but they decide to worry about this detail. So they buy a frozen chicken and hand it to me. And the show ran three weekends. With one thawing chicken in a cooler with no ice. And I got to carry it. Big Daddy mentions that he had to wear a foam fat suit in Atlanta during an outdoor summer theatre show. And they only washed it once. The director says that he was cast as the cook for Mother Courage and Her Daughters, and he was required to pluck a real chicken onstage.

The production meetings held before rehearsals allows the crew to hammer out details, and discussions apparently moved back to the language. The director says we might cut "fucking" out and tells the true story he heard from the new managing director:

A box-office employee answers the phone to hear an old lady.

Her: Does your current play have bad language?
Him: Yes, it does.
Her: Is the f-word used?
Him: Yes, it is.
Her: How many times?
Him: I don't know.
Her: (pause) Seven times is acceptable.

We then talk about theatre prudes, like the old people who walked out of one of my Barefoot in the Park shows because the young wife walks around in her slip for ten minutes. This was also the young, local all-girls-college actress I got to kiss every night for two months. God bless theatre. Big Daddy says he advised a local Baptist group to see Ah, Wilderness! at his theatre only to see them walk out, hold a prayer meeting on the theatre steps and demand their money back. All over one line: "They're making a preacher out of you." Victoria the Assistant Stage Manager says a group of home-schoolers left a recent Once Upon A Mattress show when it became obvious a pregnant character wasn't married.

The director then says we're to go home and come back Tuesday to run through Acts I and II. We're to be off-book. I call Heidi and meet up with her family on the corner and tell them they didn't miss anything, just a bunch of actors sitting around. I've got six days to nail down my Act Three lines, and I can do it. I just have to sit down and do so.

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

Moving Picture of the Day
While we were away for the holidays, the new Fantastic Four sequel teaser was released. All us geeks are aflutter over the inclusion of Silver Surfer, for not is he a cool '60s bit of design, but he almost guarantees the inclusion of Galactus, the World Eater.


Galactus remains Marvel's signature cosmic entity after his introduction more than 40 years ago. But will we see the classic Space Pope Kirby design or a new modern version?