7 posts tagged “stage”

The play is over!  Thursday was the pickup rehearsal, with performances Friday night and last night.  We struck the set last night, so Friday night we had the cast party at my house.

Last Sunday was the matinee performance, and I took my camera in because after the show we did show shots, where we basically go through all the scenes in costume and do the blocking so they can take pictures for the theater group's website.

 

I took this one backstage before the performance, with all the girls getting their stage makeup on.

Sure this is community theater, but who says we don't get paid for it?  Donuts and coffee kept us going... though of course one of the other actors had to buy it and bring it in.

Michelle is the wife of one of the actors, and as such she got roped into being a stage hand.  Her son Talon is here signing posters with her.  Each actor, stage hand, and tech got a poster, and as a result each of us had to go through and sign each one, which takes a while.

And here are the show shots.  Of course, I didn't get any of the scenes with me in it, but Strix was there and took shots of all of them with a nicer camera than what I have.  You can see her shots on her Flickr page.

From Act 1:

I didn't get many shots of Act 2, mostly because I was in most of it, but also because the stage lighting was much darker and most of my shots came out blurry.

Act 3:

 

A shot of the set with no actors on it, with Act II lighting.  Act I and Act III take place entirely in the house, on the left side of the stage (stage right), which was set up on a giant rotating platform built just for this play.  In Act II, the house is rotated around as you see it here, and all the action takes place on the right side of the stage (stage left) where the tree and rocks are.

The moon played a large part in my Act II scenes, so they projected it up on the wall off stage right.  Of course, it has a fire alarm right in the middle of it.  Pretend it's a Lunar colony, okay?

Joey, in the red dress, between show shots.  She was playing my character's wife, and here was dressed up for Act III, with a leaf still stuck in her hair.  Lisa, right, was the show's director, and she's telling us who's up next.

Strix, taking a picture in the dark.

Lisa, making herself at home.

The only decent shot I got of the after party Friday night.  I took this from the loft while my friends played 80's trivia.

So that's all for now, and I'm caught up.  Until next time.

We had a pickup rehearsal for A Christmas Carol tonight at the new theater.  It's about three times the size of the Little Theater, where our first two performances were, and it's generally a much nicer facility.  I'm looking forward to performing there tomorrow and Saturday.

In the meantime, I did what the director for the next play, Dear Brutus, asked, and wrote up an analysis of my character.  Here it is:

My interpretation of Will Dearth:  Will was once an aspiring artist, and met Alice while he still had high hopes for his future.  She, however, had high hopes of her own, particularly of marrying an ambitious man.  Perhaps she thought, but did not say, that he would outgrow his artistic phase and pursue more lucrative means.  Instead, he kept at his art, and she became more and more bitter because of it.  She caste him in the role of failure, and he increasingly accepted the role, until his loss of joy made him incapable of creating.  He says he is a waster, but it’s obvious they have some income, because they are at least better off than she would have been as Mrs. Freddy Finch-Fallow, so I imagine he is employed in some non-descript, dead-end position.

 

J. M. Barrie’s marriage to actress Mary Ansell was, by some accounts, sexless as well as childless.  The childless part of Dearth’s marriage could be a projection of Barrie’s own regret over not having children, and if the animosity Alice feels for Will is a reflection of Mary’s feelings for James, then it’s easy to believe that Barrie’s marriage was sexless, as it is difficult to imagine Alice and Will being physically affectionate considering her hatred of him.  Barrie divorced Mary when she refused to end an affair, and so it is possible that the Dearth story line in Dear Brutus is a form of wish fulfillment – wishing that he could show Mary that her life would not have been better off without him so that she would appreciate him more.

 

Other things we know about Will Dearth:

 

He is highly educated, or at least educated enough that he can effortlessly toss off a quote from Horace, “O matre pulchra filia pulchrior,” which means, “Oh, beautiful mother with an even more beautiful daughter,” and purposely mistranslate it to tease Margaret.

 

He is good-spirited, being very willing to take the blame for his failing marriage in his real life and willing to happily give money to a beggar in his fantasy life.

 

He loves his daughter, Margaret, to such an extent in his fantasy life that he doesn’t miss being married.

 

He has the dry wit that comes with intelligence and self-confidence, even when he allows himself to be verbally degraded by his wife.  Perhaps, even though he allows her to abuse him, he does not really believe it.  This could be a bit of a martyr complex.  He needs to be needed by someone, and in the absence of Margaret or the love of his wife, he allows her to use him as a scapegoat.

 

The performance went extremely well tonight, even better than last night, and then we struck the set.  We're playing again next weekend, two performances, but at another theater on the west side of the county.

Since we struck the set, we had to adhere to an old theater tradition, and thank the ghost of the theater for allowing us to perform there.  The tradition is, you ask the ghost for permission before you start setting up the set, and you thank him after you tear it down.  If you don't, accidents will happen.  I don't believe in ghosts, obviously, but it was fun.  A Navajo member of our cast also said a Navajo prayer and left an apple for the spirit, so we had a multicultural end-of-run ceremony.

I guess what my fellow thespians said was true - a bad dress rehearsal is a sign of a good opening night.  Everything went extremely well, with only a few minor hitches (such as some slighltly delayed entrances, mostly due just to the large number of actors).  I was also somewhat irritated with the number of people who ignored theater etiquette and took flash photography during the performance (rude!), but that had nothing to do with us, of course.

So there you go.  A successful stage debut.  ::bow::

I was extremely disappointed with our first and only full dress rehearsal tonight.  To put it mildly, it was terrible.  Opening night is tomorrow night, and I'm not at all confident in how it will go.

Again, I am playing a very minor character that only appears in two short scenes.  Even so, the second scene I was in was a disaster, with my partner on stage forgetting all his lines.  I advised him - strongly - to practice tonight.  This is my first stage performance, and I don't want to look like a fool.  If he forgets his lines, the audience won't know that it was him screwing up and not me - they'll just know that the two of us are standing on stage not saying anything.

This was also the first and only rehearsal in makeup.  I'm a 35 year old man, and I've never worn makeup, except for that time I woke up in Tijuana, but I won't talk about that.

Bosworth, in makeup.

The makeup was heavy, but they assured me that it would look good on stage under the lights.  I'm not so sure, but I'm not an expert on stage makeup, so I took their word for it.  Just the act of allowing them to put on the eyeliner was enough to make me glad that I am not a woman.  Or a transvestite.

So, at rehearsal last night, the director tells us to that only those of us with costume changes during the performance need to wear our costumes.  This is what the costume manager also believes, so, no hurry, she's still got time to make those last-minute alterations, right?

Wrong.  We show up tonight, and the first thing everyone hears is that the photographer from the local newspaper is coming, and we all have to be in costume.  Terrific, so I put on my costume, which is not meant to be worn with a sweater underneath and with brown shoes, but hey, that's all I had, and of course the pants haven't been taken in, yet, and the hat hasn't been padded out, yet.  Lovely. 

Tomorrow, I'm bringing a belt.  I don't care if it's not period.  If my pants fall down around my ankles while I walk across stage, they'll have a very different kind of show on their hands.

Meet Bosworth.

Tomorrow is full dress rehearsal, and Friday is show time.  There are still a good number of kinks to be worked out, and since this is my first play, I don't really know how normal that is.  There are a large number of children in this thing, and keeping them under control is quite the ordeal.

I got a part in Dear, Brutus!  The Director is aware, if she read my dossier, that I'm rehearsing for my first play now.  At least, I hope she knows that.  I haven't been in my first play, yet, and I've landed a part in a second play, which will take stage in February, and it has a hell of a lot more lines.

In A Christmas Carol, I have eleven lines, total.  In Dear, Brutus, playing the role of Mr. Dearth, I have 147 lines (I just counted them).  It's a real character, going through the whole range of emotions, not a one-scene stereotype.  The play has several characters and parallel story lines, but if one character had to be picked out as the "lead," it would probably be Mr. Dearth.  Please excuse me while I have a paralyzing anxiety attack.