Category: Theatre

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Theatre

Equivocation, Part II (The One With The Children)

We opened on Tuesday, March 30, to a full house, a generous house.  I felt it was a particularly good performance.  I was pleased with my own track.

Wednesday was also good.

Thursday morning was our first student matinee, at 11 AM, predominantly middle schoolers and some high schoolers.  Before the show the actors noted how refreshing it was that they were actually performing the entire show – no cuts with regards to length (2:45); language (everything from “whore” to what is called the dirtiest word in the English language); or nudity (4 of the 5 actors get down to briefs).

Of course, the first appearance of underwear in the show (10 minutes in) was met with cheers, whistles, and maybe worst of all, laughs.  Don’t worry boys, they’re just 12 year olds.  Don’t even know what they’re looking at.

When I was in 6th grade my class traveled afar (I think it was Delta College in Stockton) to see an afternoon of 5 short plays, all of the horror genre: Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, The Monkey’s Paw, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Necklace, and for the life of me I can’t remember the 5th one.  It was a really good field trip – too bad programs like that are falling by the wayside.  I wonder if I was really as attentive and appropriate an audience member as I am in my memory.

In 7th grade I went on the New York/DC trip and we saw The Phantom of the Opera.  And while the cool thing to do now is to roll your eyes at Phantom, I have seen it like 4 times.  I think it’s the perfect show to introduce a kid to theatre: it has everything, spectacle to romance to familiar story and music.  Again I wonder if 12 year old me was a good audience member.

High school found us back in Stockton a couple times for productions for Academic Decathlon.  We would go out for the day, someone would teach us about the art stuff, they would do all the music, and whatever bonus category could be worked into a performance.  One year I watched opera singers and noted how much they spit while they were singing.  Another year (the same year?) they did a staged reading of a dramatic adaption of the book we were reading, Cry, the Beloved Country.  I judged them for having scripts in their hands.  If I knew then what I know now…but I guess that wouldn’t be as fun.

I had convinced myself to give the student matinee kids a break: sure, they’re going to giggle when one man cries into another man’s lap, or when one actor undresses another, but as the actors had agreed before the performance, if seeing this show can hook one kid it will be worth it.  When one little girl (7th grade?) said in the talkback that seeing the show was amazing and had meant so much to her, you could see all of them melt.

The second student matinee (this Tuesday morning) was all high schoolers and was much, much quieter – there wasn’t any giggling but there wasn’t really any response at all.  (Although when two of the actors kissed they did make the 90s sitcom “wooooo!” sound.)  They all stuck around for the talkback though and they were very vocal and very smart.  Maybe I don’t give kids enough credit.

So we are now 12 performances into a 42-performance run, and so far it’s been going well.  Energy is down, with everyone, even after a day off.  Hopefully once everyone gets used to the 9-show week schedule it’ll pick up.  And thus ends my Equivocation update, Part II.

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Awesome Being a girl Theatre Work

Equivocation, Installment 1

In college and in New York City, the theatre stereotype was always easy, right?  Most male actors were gay.  Sure there were the straight ones, but if you found youself guessing, you would err on the side of gay.  Of course there are always exceptions to the rule (one of them is the nicest exception I’ve ever found) but I don’t think too many people would argue with me here.**

**Actually suddenly all I can remember are the straight guys in the Davis theatre department.  But I know there were un-straight ones too.

In rehearsals for Equivocation, I’m finding myself faced with 5 male actors, and I’m having to drastically and somewhat ashamedly reassess.  In the first 3 days being in the room with the actors, I have learned that 3 of them have children, 2 of those 3 are married, and 1 of them just recently had his heart broken by a long-term girlfriend (aww…).  That leaves 1 actor who I still don’t know about (not that I have to know) and I’m too ashamed to hazard a guess here.

Besides, I’ve discovered the new actor stereotype: the green domestic who’s a healthy and conscious eater.

Of the 5 men, 3 of them have arrived at rehearsal with loaves of wheat bread, jars of peanut butter and preserves (not jelly, what are we, 5 years old?), mayonnaise and mustard and fixins.  Bunches of bananas and individual serving cups of fruit cocktail.  On even the shortest 10 minute break they race to the kitchen to make open-face sandwiches and mugs of tea.  The men gather in the concessions area and share peanut buttery knives and talk about Tupperware carousels and diaper genies.  Composting methods and child discipline.  Today I heard them discussing high fructose corn syrup and one was literally (but I think unconsciously) quoting the commercial: “It’s natural, made from corn, has the same properties as sugar and is fine in moderation.”  Earlier this morning they were bragging about how little garbage they produce: one said his household puts out one bag of trash per week, and the rest of their waste is recycled or composted.  Another admitted his household put out a couple bags per week, but “we have two kids.”

And then there’s me.  For lunch I had half a store-bought mac and cheese, a Yoplait, and a Coke Zero Vanilla.  And a Kit Kat.  I use lots of paper towels – washing my hands, cleaning, making paper cranes.  We probably take out a bag of trash every other day and while we do recycle, we do not (currently) compost.  Sometimes I leave the water running while I brush my teeth.  I don’t carpool.  (How far should this list of faults go here?)  I drink too much Diet Coke and not nearly enough water.  I leave my phone charger always plugged in.  My car might be due an oil change.  When I said I had a Kit Kat for lunch, it might have been 2 Kit Kats.  But they were small.

Coming up soon: A list of Good Things I Do.

I guess my point is that I think it’s kind of endearing – these men coming in carrying grocery sacks and telling stories about their 4-year-olds.  I’m going to hold on to this as long as I can because I think as we get closer to opening, they might get less endearing.  For now though I’ll eavesdrop on their stories and share their strawberries when they offer them to me, and I will never, ever, talk business to them while they’re on a break.

The Equivocation set going up

Categories
Endings Theatre

Longer & More Introspective Than I Was Expecting To Be

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!

Categories
"Other people" Being a girl Theatre

I think I got hit on today: an update

Oh, also!  I found out the story behind the hitting-on-me guy.

After a couple more Incidents which were puzzling to me (aside from the “no thank you” conversation, he is just not the type of guy who I would expect to be hit on by), I confided in Liz the Stage Manager.  She laughed a lot but told me that she thinks he’s just a friendly theatre guy.  I said, “You’re right, you’re right,” and let it go.  Then the next day, she leaned over during notes and said, “I have a story. About HENRY*.”

Later she told me (and then even later Henry himself confirmed) that Henry moved to the Bay Area for a girlfriend 3 years ago, thinking they would be engaged within a year.  After being in a relationship for 5 years, she broke up with him on Christmas Eve.  This last one, like less than a month ago.  Ouch.  So now we’re both really really sweet to him, and let him talk on the headset about wine and steak au poivre.  He’s actually a pretty nice guy.  (Although whenever he says “Woot” over headset I can’t help but groan a little inside.)

*Name changed to protect the innocent (if not innocent, then at least not guilty).

Categories
"Other people" Being a girl Theatre

I think I got hit on today

Here’s what happened.

On a ten-minute break I went to the kitchen to wash the myriad glasses we use in Sunlight.  Two of the tech guys were in the kitchen (both of whom I’ve tried to talk to in a friendly manner in the past, and who have been hella socially awkward/rude back to me).  One of the tech guys said, “I have a question for you – are you a vegetarian?”  I said I wasn’t and he said, “I like you more because of that.”  Then he said, “What’s your favorite hard liquor?”  I admitted I like tequila.  He said that’s better than vodka.  Is it?  Then he noticed (?) my ring and asked if I was engaged.  I said I was actually married.  Then after a weird pause he told me my ring looked durable, and his friend makes rings out of titanium.  Or something.  I left shortly after that.  The weirdest part was the other guy watching silently the whole time.  He has a huge beard.

I guess what this teaches me is that, those socially awkward tech guys from college may grow up, but they don’t always gain social skillz.

Categories
Sentiment Theatre

Christmas

For Christmas we went to Lakeport (we drove up on Christmas Eve really late) and spent the first Christmas ever with my parents.  My mom made cinnamon rolls and we ate candy all day.  Then we went to see Sherlock Holmes, but it was basically sold out (Lakeport Cinema 5 what??) but we saw Brittany and her HUSBAND and her dad and her brother.  That was weird.  Then we bought tickets for a later performance and came home and ate more candy.  When we went back to the theatre we got really good seats, and then sat around…and then saw Jacob and his entire family, and Ian Fuller and his dad, and the Andres.

I used to get so annoyed whenever I was in Lakeport and had to go out in public anywhere…because EVERY time you go out, to the store, to the gas station, wherever, you WILL run into someone you know.  But this time it was fun.  And the last time I was there, I hung out with Kirsten and her mom and her brother, and then I went to Alyssa’s house and hung out with her and met her husband…Lakeport is super fun when there are people to hang out with.  So this explains why Drew used to like to come home to Pacifica from Davis – because he could hang out with people.

Then Jacob texted me in the movie and told me to come over to his house and hang out with him and Ted and Ian, but I declined because of my family Christmas time.  Finding balance.

Sunlight

This is the show I’m working on right now at Marin Theatre Company (www.marintheatre.org).  It’s a world premiere and the show is GREAT.  I love the script, I think it’s so well-crafted, and relevant to today’s world.

I am a production assistant (basically a combination of ASM and wardrobe) and yesterday I got told I am “great at being on book.”  That might not sound like a great compliment, but it sort of made my day.  I’m going to be with MTC for the rest of their season so I’m getting really invested in it.  So far I really like all the people, and it’s been a really fun couple weeks in rehearsal.  (And payday is tomorrow, thank God.)

Everyone should come see this show.