September 26, 2005

It's curtain time, and away we go!

I'm tired. Exhausted. Long, long, loooooooooooooong weekend! Three performances. A lot of trying to relax. A lot of expending of energy. A lot of being cold.

I hate my body temperature, I just want this known. It can literally be 80 degrees, and I'll be freezing. I cannot get warm in any indoor venue at the moment, even though it's been mid-seventies. No, I am actually freezing. Wearing my sweaters, pants, shoes, socks, jackets; everything I can think of. Sadly I'm shivering 90% of the time.

The show this weekend was . . . an experience. Opening Night was the performance where I knew people. My parents came. Janina came. Uncle Jacque and Aunt Laurie came. Kirsten and Shonna came. And I sucked. I'm not kidding. Every dance had to be screwed up by me in some way. Literally, every single person's hands would be down, and I would put them up. For "Stiff Upper Lip" there was a section where everyone onstage was moving, and I was looking around like a moron. I looked over my shoulder at one point in that song, and saw Andie and Marcus staring at me like "Lynette, what's wrong with you?" I realized it was the last "Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight!" We punch our fists out in a very definitive fighting manner. Andie and Marcus told me that they always watched me at that point because I knew what I was doing. Obviously, not on Opening!!!! I thought it was funny when Dave was pretending to vacuum, and Lynne and Mandy had to tell him to turn it off. The vacuum didn't come on at all, so their yelling, "Everett, turn that thing off!!!!" didn't make sense. I asked Bob if the vacuum's noise was one of those high pitched noises that only dogs and people in a musical theatre show could hear.

Our second performance went really well. Well, at the end of the show that all went kaput! The dancers were dancing and a curtain came down too early. It hit some of the dancers in the head!!!! The fly rail techies, whom we all assumed must have been drunk, were bringing curtains up and down like crazy. We did well with the rest of the finale. Then, at the end, the curtain was coming down and stopped. It went back up and wouldn't shut! The audience kept applauding and we had no idea what to do (it's not so easy to do an encore bow in this show). Some of our cast members started to stand and kneeled back down. The audience rose to their feet. We all kept the grins plastered to our faces and muttered, "Bring the stupid curtain down!" The audience began to stand, still applauding. One of the dancers began to wave at the audience. The entire cast heaved a sigh of relief--someone was being smart! We waved and the curtain down. We were determined to get a standing ovation, even if the audience wouldn't get to leave so we could get one!

So, that was this week's adventure. Time will tell what next week will bring. EEK!

The song lyrics come from "Another Openin', Another Show," from Kiss Me Kate.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know what, Lynette, I think your problem is that you just don't have enough to do. Seriously, though, I'm so glad you are staying with theater! All these events are going to be great memories later on.

Kathy

Anonymous said...

This most recent disaster doesn't sound half as bad as the Unsinkable Molly Brown about a decade ago in a small Colorado community. At least the "young" Molly (I wonder whatever became of her) wasn't falling into a barrel, the bed wasn't collapsing, the 100-year old beam supporting the act curtain didn't start falling on the actors.

And what about having to play the final act of the run to flash lights since all power to the area had been knocked out?