Category: Theatre

Categories
Drew Nonfiction Theatre Work

Straightforward

This weekend we started tech.  The show in the other theatre at MTC closed this weekend, so there was an unfair juxtaposition there.  I spent a lot of time daydreaming about the close of this show and my return to normal life.

I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know when to leave a party.  I always have to go back for that one last show – that one last production – I thought I got over this in New York, I thought I figured it out.  But no.  And the first three shows at MTC were great and I had a great time, but then I had settled it.  And it’s not like, this time, I made some grand choice – I mean I literally took this gig as a job, but still.  I feel like I should have learned a lesson by now.

I’m waiting to hear back about a job application at another theatre.  I really want to at least get called for an interview.  I had good, really relevant references for this one.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Yesterday, thanks to Columbus, Drew had the day off and so I didn’t go in to the Opera either.  We woke up at a time which I once would have called early but now call semi-sleeping in, ate breakfast, hung out, went to the 11:45 matinee of The Social Network, did 3 loads of laundry, caught up on new episodes of The Office and 30 Rock, caught the very end of the sunset, shopped for and made dinner, and watched Date Night.  A really busy and fun day…but I could use another week like that.

Today it’s back into tech, but I don’t have to leave here for another hour and a half.  So far I have been cleaning.  I’m going to tackle the bathroom next.  Glamorous life here.  Hope your Monday-Tuesday is going just as well.

PS. Upside-down tomato branches have actually resulted in red tomatoes.  Wow.  We tried one and it was not very tasty.  Waiting on the others, maybe we got a bad one?  Oh well.

Categories
Memoir Religion Theatre Work

I did say it was indescribable.

Yesterday was the first day of rehearsal for 9 Circles by Bill Cain at Marin Theatre Company.  Being back there is really indescribable for me.  Driving up there was this huge mashup of feelings, from nostalgia for the days when I was paid hourly and contracted for longer than 8 weeks, to excitement at seeing people I’ve missed, to that crazy rush that floods you in the fall (you know what I mean).  We don’t get leaves turning colors in San Bruno, and I miss that.

Then add in the fact that I’m a little jealz of the people working on the mainstage show that opened last night (In the Red and Brown Water, part of the Brother/Sister Trilogy), and I kinda wish I could be back in the main theatre.  I did spend 6 months skulking around back there; I guess I was feeling a little territorial.  It’s cool, but it tinged my HAPPYNESS! with a little bittersweet edge.  Same thing when I thought of my friends there…we’re never going to be friends outside of work.  You know how you can just tell?  But I really love hanging out with them, like, between shows.  It’s so much fun, and I think I miss having guy friends around.  Where did all my guy friends go?

PS. Mill Valley is freaking gorgeous.  I think it must just look like Lake County and that’s why I’m so drooly over it all the time.  With leaves changing and clouds making dapples everywhere and everything smelling like woodsmoke and apples (or did I just make that up?)…  Even now I’m like flailing around in my chair trying to get out my feelings.  This is why I’m not a poet.  Ah beauty!

On my way home I stopped at Target and then store-hopped around the shopping center.  Running errands like this, especially when the sun has already set, makes me think of Christmas shopping.  It’s like around the corner!  Halloween stuff is everywhere!  Holiday time!  Omg!

Did I ever mention that in March/April, spring is my favorite month, but the rest of the year, it’s FALL?

Categories
Theatre Work

Take that, Iac

Yesterday was the final dress rehearsal for Aida at the SF Opera, and it was open to the public as well as to staff +1.  I took Molly as my +1.

It might be true that I’ve been listening to the cast recording of Disney’s Aida a lot.  So I’m kinda into all things Aida.  It’s like during Music Circus in 2003 when we were doing The Wizard of Oz, listening to the Wicked soundtrack during daywork, and I was reading Wicked.  Overload.

Opera is so fun, seriously.  I like reading the whole thing(supertitles), and I really like the parts where I get caught up watching and forget to read, but still follow along.  It’s just so big.

Because this was open to so many people, the house was just packed.  We were near the back of the orchestra off to the right side.  But there is another dress rehearsal (for Werther) this Saturday night that’s just open to staff, and I’m going to go check that out.  It’s another tragedy, I’m pretty sure Werther dies in the end.

There were times in Aida that I nearly risked getting my phone out and taking a picture, just out of excitement.  Since I managed to refrain, I had to draw some pictures of what I remember the show to look like.

I could only find watercolor paper, and crayons (actually I tried oil pastels first but it was a terrible disaster; and we have watercolor paint but no brushes).  So enjoy these three scenes from Aida (the opera, not Disney).

(That’s an elephant there, and Radames is riding it in.)

This morning I got Jared (New York roommate) to tell me the synopsis of the Disney Aida, including explaining the conceit of the show, with it beginning and ending in a modern-day museum.  This only makes me want to see it even more!

Here is an actual shot from their photo gallery…this is what I was going for.

(What? Did my pictures not look like this?)

Categories
Beauty Theatre Work

SF City Hall, and my face

Wish I could say I’ve been busy but really I’ve just been boring.  Next week should be more interesting though as I’m seeing a final dress rehearsal for Aida at the Opera, and then volunteering to help with their Opening Night gala…which is the Opening Night for the entire season, and takes place primarily in City Hall, and sounds AMAZING and I wish I had a ballgown and could attend. 

I was in City Hall today and fell in love with it.  If I was going to go the big-formal-wedding route (you know, in another dimension), I would want to do it here. 

 

 

Also, I just finished reading this book (Still Life With Husband by Lauren Fox) which stated that if you take a picture of yourself and digitally alter it to have two pictures: one of the right side of your face mirror-imaged and one of the left side, one will be subtly but significantly more attractive.  All I’ve got is a cameraphone and MS Paint, but you get the idea. 

LEFT SIDE
RIGHT SIDE

I realize it’s not a great picture under normal circumstances, and my haphazard cutting and pasting did not help things (tracheotomy scar?).  I do feel when I look in the mirror that sometimes the two halves of my face do not go together as well as I’d like, but after this little experiment I’d say I like my face with one right side and one left side.

Audience participation time!

Categories
Nonfiction Theatre Work

Sweet, free mandolin.

Tonight I broke out the mandolin (the musical kind) in the closet.

To make a long story short, I have this mandolin, which one of the musicians in Woody Guthrie loaned me, and when I tried to give it back to him closing night, he told me to go ahead and keep it, and keep practicing, and if he ever needed it back, well, he had my contact information and we’re both in the Bay Area.

I looked from him to the mandolin (in its Trader Joe’s bag, because he said he didn’t have a case for it) and back to him.  “How many mandolins do you own?”

“Oh, about eight or nine, I guess.”

“And is this your cheapie mandolin?”

“Well, you can tell how long it’s been since I’ve played it, by how out of tune it is,” he replied.  It was indeed out of tune.

At this time, I should admit in the interest of full disclosure that I had had a few or maybe several drinks, to celebrate closing night.  So while part of me kept saying, “Give him the mandolin, this is crazy,” the other part was like, “Sweet, free mandolin.”

So tonight, in admiring the craftsmanship of a friend’s mandolin (the kind you have in your kitchen and use to make crinkle-cut vegetables), I remembered my musical-type mandolin in the closet (still in its Trader Joe’s carrying bag).

We tuned it using a Droid tuner app, and then Dale attempted to play “Losing My Religion” (Drew’s request).  Allen Joe then played it like a guitar, quite successfully!  Here’s what I learned:

a) I forgot the chords I learned,
b) Maybe it’s my fate to listen to and admire the playing of stringed instruments, but not to play myself, and
c) I seriously miss that show and that crowd.  I kept wanting to announce, “I can restring and tune a guitar.”

Maybe this reaffirms the decision and phone call I made today – I’ll be back at Marin Theatre Company for at least 2 more months working on 9 Circles by Bill Cain.

Categories
Books cars Family Theatre

“Well, it was no Les Mis Junior…”

This afternoon, Drew and I headed up to my alma mater theatre company in Mill Valley to check out the teen summer conservatory production of Jason Robert Brown’s 13.  I saw it in New York and loved it, so of course I dragged Drew who had never gotten a chance to see it out there.

Man, if I thought the audiences liked Woody Guthrie…this audience was literally screaming in happiness after certain songs.  At the curtain call, the father (?) of the lead actor jumped up and did major fist pumps when his kid came out.  It must be amazing to see a person that you created, now a teenager and up on stage doing something they love.

But if we spent 2 hours in the theatre watching the show, we spent something like 3 hours in the car just getting there and back.  It took us a little over an hour to get up to Mill Valley, thanks to horrendous Saturday traffic.  When the show ended at 4:00 we booked it out of there to get Drew to work by 4:45 in the city…and hit major Saturday traffic coming back over the bridge (closed down to 2 lanes! wtf?).  He was only a half hour late but it was still super frustrating, making us both sit tensely and mutter obscenities at other cars, when we should have been gabbing about the teenagers.

When I left him, it took me a half hour just to get to the freeway.  I spent a lot of this time sitting at traffic lights through several cycles, leaning my head on the window and sighing deeply to show other people how annoyed I was, and occasionally yelling, some of which were swears.  Mostly the yelling happened when a dozen cars zoomed past me in the BUSES AND TAXES ONLY ALL THE TIME lane and then tried to cut in to our lane, in time to make the light I’d been creeping up towards for the last 5 minutes.  It might be true that when I turned onto the onramp to the freeway, a car from a non-turn lane turned next to me, then started to drive in the middle of the onramp, which is two lanes.  It might also be true that I honked at them and then sped around them.

After that I thought, maybe I’m too stressed about this, but the fact was I had been in the car for an hour and 45 minutes basically trying to get the 25 miles home.  I breathed deeply and later went to the gym to punch it out.  (Day 5: $6.40.)

I’m Zen-ed out now but I thought it might still be helpful to make a list of things I love.  Plus I’ve been collecting all these cameraphone pictures.

1. I love that on Tuesday my parents came down and the four of us went to see Wicked, which I’ve been dying to show them.  I love that they loved the show.  I love that my mom and I have been emailing each other just little updates about our day.  (She told me she found some blue nailpolish for her pedicure; I told her I was at work and was hungry but forgot a spoon for my lunch.) 

Here are my parents on BART (they are SUPER excited about going to see Wicked, you can tell):

I have no problems showing my excitement.  Shut up, I love this show.

2. I love our world map shower curtain.  I told my dad I had just bought a new shower curtain, and it was awesome, and he said, “What, is it like a world map or something?”  OMG, Dad!  You were kidding but now that you’ve seen it you realize how awesome it is.

It faces in so you can study while you shampoo.

3. I love the San Francisco Public Library.  I’ve been a member of the Peninsula Library system for awhile now, and finding it very helpful now that I’m working only part-time and really shouldn’t (I deliberately didn’t say “don’t”) spend money on books.  But I walk past the main branch of the SF Library on Grove and Larkin, and I gotta tell you, it’s very promising on the outside.  So on Friday I went in, even though they were closing in 15 minutes, and picked up a library card and admired the inside.  I can’t wait for next week so I can go browse.

The outside reminds me of Shields Library at UC Davis…

…while the inside is what Heaven might look like.

None of these pictures are of books.  But there are totally books there too.  And I walked out with my very own library card and keychain library card!  The library is a really great system, you know?  Free books!  Paid for by the government…or someone.

4. I don’t love leaving Lake County, but I LOVE the way the landscape looks, especially in the summer.  Driving from Lakeport to Davis and vice versa is my little deep down mushy Achilles’ heel.  I can’t help but think of being in college.  And in high school.  This one time, we (CSF, or Academic Decathlon?) were driving back from a field trip to Ashland, and there are no streetlights or anything out there, but I just remember that it was so bright because the moon was full.  I have definitely made Drew pull over on the side of the road and look at the stars from there.  You can see so many.

Speaking of stars, when I went home last week I remembered that I always forget how many you can see out there.  It’s not just, stars in the sky, it’s like the sky is made of stars.  And the Milky Way and everything.  I wish I could see that every day.

But in the daylight, I love this combination of blue, yellow, and dark green.

So now I miss my parents and Lakeport, I am sad because I can’t get any new library books until Monday and because Wicked is closing, and I want to take another shower so I can study Africa.

Categories
"Other people" Awesome Theatre Work

WGAS closing; end of contract

I want to talk about closing night while it’s still fresh in my mind – also, I’m putting off doing Shred.

We had two performances yesterday – the matinee a rehearsal for closing, is how I think of it.  My San Francisco friends L. and J. came to see it and they said they enjoyed it but that they had some problems with it, which I’m fine with.  As long as they clapped along with This Land Is Your Land (which they did).  In the matinee, a woman sat in the front row (which is in the stage lights for most of the show) and ate an entire meal: Tupperware, fork, she had at least 2 bananas, a couple beverages.  Pretty brassy.  At intermission the house staff told her to stop, but then right before we sent the actors out for Act 2, this crazy opens up her laptop.  Headset conversation went something like:

Syche [hiding how frantic I am]: “Um…um…Heath…do you see her…with the laptop?”
Heath: “Oh. Yup. Let’s see, what’s she doing.”
Syche: “The actors are going to freak out.”
Heath: “She’s shutting it down.”
[Minutes pass.]
Heath: “Windows takes a long time to shut down.”

Finally, Crazy closed her petite, pink, bedazzled laptop and seemed to behave for the rest of the show.

Also in the first act of the first show, we had a guitar problem, so I had to go out onstage in a blackout with a backup guitar and trade off with the actor, without him knowing this was coming.  This worried me because I know it’s really distracting to lose a prop with no idea what’s wrong, but he was fine with it and later said he could hear that the mic on the guitar wasn’t working.  Anyway, lots of excitement during the first show.

For the second show, the audience flipped their lids starting from the very top, applauding and cheering and going crazy, which is the perfect audience to go out on.  We had another mic problem at intermission but everything was fixed by the wizard sound designer who was also mixing, and I guess it was fine in the second act.  After the show, the actors came off in a huddled heaving mass and cried – not teared up, but cried.  I will never forget that.

We went out after and I’m VERY glad I went, and it was all around a good time.  So to Lisa, Megan, Sam, Berwick, Matt, Tony, Chuck, and Harry – I am really really glad I had the opportunity to work on this show.  I remember applying for this job last August, and looking at the shows I’d be working on, and not really having anything to say about a show called Woody Guthrie’s American Song.  But it’s really been much more than I could have imagined.  And to Doug, Ted, and Myles – thanks for letting me tag along.

But life goes on.  And today is Day 1 of unemployment and I am going to get stuff done and take names.  Then Drew and I are going to see Toy Story 3 and have dinner at Moss Beach Distillery, which I am very excited for.  They have a ghost who steals earrings, so I’m debating if I shouldn’t wear the nice ones.

Categories
"Other people" Awesome Theatre

Musicians and theatre people are…not the same.

This was just funny and I have never mentioned it, which is a shame, because it happened nigh on a month ago.

One of my Production Assistant duties is collecting valuables.  The first three nights I trekked upstairs to the musicians’ dressing room (they’re not technically sequestered but maybe it is for the best), and knocked on their door to collect any valuables.  Two of them declined politely, but the third had something to say.

Day 1
Syche: “Do you guys have valuables?”
“Harry”: “Yeah, here.” [Hands me valuables bag.] “It’s just full of weed.”

Day 2
Syche: “Hey, do you guys have valuables?
“Harry”: [Handing over bag] “Well, I had things in my pockets.”

Day 3
Syche: “Valuables?”
“Harry”: “Nah, I couldn’t think of anything funny to say.”

LOL.  LOL indeed.

Categories
Theatre Work

Woody Guthrie: My Latest Fling

Okay.  So the thing that has been consuming my life for the last few weeks is Woody Guthrie’s American Song, a musical that is mostly a revue of Woody Guthrie music (and I dare you to name 2 WG songs, not counting “This Land Is Your Land”).  The story is sort of about his life, and all the words in the show are taken from his writings, books, and journals.  The first act kind of wanders around the Dust Bowl in the 30s, showing scenes of life then, people are broke and barefoot but still have hope and pride.  Act 2 takes place in the 40s in New York City, where people have a little more money, and everyone has shoes (some people even have jewelry), and they are still hopeful.

I am not explaining it very well, maybe, but that’s because I haven’t figured out how to put into words this musical that – at every single performance so far, and that is 5 previews and 8 performances total – receives a standing ovation every single night.  And these are old people, people who (we joke) knew Woody Guthrie personally, people who did have friends on the Good Reuben James (show reference!).  They haul themselves and each other to their feet in order to clap arrhythmically because they are just so, so happy and so, so hopeful.  I thought it would be cheesy and silly, but it’s actually pretty inspiring every time I see it.  And they sing along!  My God, it’s just wonderful.

And who would have expected that this would be the show that a) has me working the hardest out of the 3 shows I’ve done at Marin, or b) we could really use another crew person backstage?  There are numerous set changes, and while the actors do a lot of the work, I spend quite a bit of time onstage looking rather out of place and trying not to make eye contact with anyone in the audience.  But I’m just grateful they didn’t want to costume me.  When I’m not onstage, I am most likely moving around quickly backstage, unless it’s the second act in which case I have a half hour break that I usually spend doing a crossword puzzle.  Sometimes a Cryptogram.

Overall, this show is pretty fun (more fun than I think I had expected) and it just extended another week, so it’ll be running through June 27th.  Maybe July 2nd, if it gets extended another week, although that seems ambitious.  For now though, it’s Monday, so I’m going to stop thinking about it and think instead about my new Jen Lancaster book and catching up on all the episodes of Glee that I’ve missed.

Categories
Endings Memoir Theatre

Equivocation, Part 3 (The One With The Toasts)

Equivocation closed on Sunday and I failed to write anything about it.  I had planned this “funny” post where I talked about how I had gotten my track down to a science, and detailed how I spent a lot time sitting in the green room or on the floor backstage, and jumped up at the precise moments to be where I needed to be…but the day that I started writing it was the day EVERYTHING went wrong.  One of the actors got a scary phone call 5 minutes before curtain and thought his child was sick or hurt, so the first 15 minutes was real hectic until he could get offstage, get someone on the phone, and make sure everything was fine.  Props were misplaced (not always by me) and right before the end of Act I, one of the actors spilled a tidal wave of fake blood (mostly corn syrup and red food dye) all over herself and backstage left.  While we made it through intermission and got her cleaned up, some of the spots on the floor backstage were missed by the mop, and so I spent a lot of the second act finding sticky blood spots and trying to clean it with baby wipes.

ANYWAY, Equivocation is closed now and that’s that.  It was a good closing.  The audience was very friendly and agreeable and on our sides.  The cast got to go back out for a second bow.  (The stage manager apparently LOVES encore bows and always wanted to send them back out, but this was actually deserved.)  The champagne toast onstage was very nice and everyone was happy and it was just a good note to go out on.  One of the actors tipped me (hooray!) and one of them gave me a copy of Middlemarch, because he had been telling me to read it ever since rehearsal.  That may very well be the nicest closing present I’ve ever gotten.  The tipping actor told me that the book actor must really respect me, because that is one of the highest compliments he pays (she’s known him for about 15 years).

I was sad for about 10 minutes and then I started in on the next project, which is 5 days of a reading of this new play called Carthage by Emily Schwend.  I really like the play and I’m stage managing and it fills in this week, which otherwise I would have had off.  On Friday we start prep for the next mainstage show and on Tuesday we start rehearsals and then I’ll just have hundreds of things to say about Woody Guthrie’s American Song.