Sunlight closed yesterday. When I woke up feeling slightly head-cold-y I knew it was going to be a long day. Over the next 12 hours the cold settled in, through 2 shows, strike, and then the obligatory going-out-for-a-drink which I avoided through the entire run of the show. By that time though I couldn’t stomach the idea of alcohol (I was light-headed already from sinus congestion) so when Liz the Stage Manager asked if she could buy me a drink I wimped out and asked for a diet Coke. Which came with a peppercorn (?) in it.
Closing was kind of a weird experience, it’s just not the same as it was in high school and even in college. I remember getting major post-show depression and it just hasn’t happened in years. I thought it was because for the last 4 years all the shows I’ve worked on have been in addition to a job, and so closing them has just meant that I get to go back to working only 40 hours a week. Turns out that it’s actually not that pessimistic – everyone agreed that closing (and opening) just don’t mean as much when it’s your job, and it’s just another show. Jen the Production Manager said her parents were still saving all her programs and ticket stubs on the wall of their laundry room and I grinned from the familiarity: my parents moved their wall of theatre stuff from the hallway to the laundry room sometime while I was in New York. Although I guess they’re not even saving stuff anymore, my mom told me they threw their Sunlight programs away like the day after they came to see the show. That’s fine, what are they going to do with that anyway?
I still saved a program and I still felt a slight urge to ask the actors to sign it…but don’t worry, I resisted. I have learned a thing or two.
I was thinking about past shows and some of the past facilities I worked in, and how great Marin is in so many ways. I thought maybe I would share some of them.
Brilliant Traces: Well, we rehearsed and performed inside a school during the summer.
A) Rehearsals were on the 5th floor, air conditioning controls were on the 1st floor, and I often had to run up and down the stairs several times in a 3-hour rehearsal period.
B) It was summer which means the school was locked most of the time, so if I arrived and the actor (who worked at the school) wasn’t there yet, I had to wait outside.
C) I often ended up washing the dishes in a drinking fountain.
Kraken: One of my least favorite theatre spaces ever (Soho Rep) – an unmarked door in a fairly dirty part of Soho, it always reeked like someone had just peed on it (which they probably did, it was set back in the wall and next door to a bar, all the guys working on the show remarked it was exactly where they would go if they stumbled out of the bar and had to go). I washed dishes in a dimly lit dirty bathroom, which incidentally had no doors. At one point the toilet broke and I fixed it myself.
The Vietnamization of New Jersey: Okay, I actually liked this show and it was in Theatre Row so it was a great facility. But they did throw cornflakes ALL OVER the stage and it was crazy hard to keep it cleaned up during rehearsals…luckily I had two crew members for the run so they did all the sweeping and mopping work.
Eccentricities of a Nightingale: Giant bowl of “eggnog” which was really powdered milk in water. Washing dishes in a bathroom again! Except for when I would use the slop sink. And I hated the stage manager for some reason.
Recent Tragic Events: While this was one of my favorite things I did in New York (I really liked the script, the people, the time commitment, and my life while this show was going on), the theatre itself was incredibly small and the booth was really just behind-a-curtain in the back row of seats. For a couple of the performances, I know the audience could hear my stomach growl. But I can’t really complain about this because I still smile when I think about the entire thing. I loved buying a pizza from the $.99 pizza place every night, and I loved having to play all the sound cues (and there were a million) on a CD player, even when I had to change the levels quickly and precisely. I guess I did have to wash dishes in a bathroom again. Really, I just don’t like washing dishes in bathrooms.
Brunch: OMG. The American Theatre of Actors is terrible and I would never work there again, and I say that with complete honesty even if I did live in New York again. The guy who runs it is crazy and the director almost got arrested for taking out the trash. To get to the booth I had to climb up a ladder on the wall and I was convinced I was going to fall and die at some point in the run. The place was messy and dirty, and the house lights sometimes didn’t work at all and sometimes wouldn’t go off. Too many ladders and too many perishable props that had to be bought daily. I was in the grocery store on the corner constantly for limes and ice, down the street at the flower stand for roses, and in the ice cream store for balloons, all grossly overpriced but it’s New York so what are you going to do?
I guess I can’t say anything bad about TACT or TACT shows…
So I guess that leaves my two lists.
The things I will not miss about Sunlight:
-Snow. Sweeping snow, scooping snow, loading snow, shaking snow, finding snow in my clothes.
-Certain actors’ warmups
-The fight
-The smell of low sodium vegetable broth mixed with water. Gross!
-Cumulative hours of references to old films and actors that everyone else is unfamiliar with, but has to nod and smile along to, as one actor describes exactly what he’s doing with this line
The things I will miss about Sunlight:
-Liz the Stage Manager
-Hanging out and making fun of the actors during intermission (when they turned on the charm they were really awesome)
-Headset chatter and movie games with Liz and Myles the Board Op
-Only 4 actors! Minimal laundry!
-The last 30 minutes of the show when I had no more duties and could just sit on the floor in the dark and drink Juice Squeeze
But we start Equivocation this weekend and so I am not feeling too sad. Onward and upward!
The Cameraphone Diaries 