The Countdown Continues

Welcome to my home for the next couple of days: the tech table. Basically, a board slung over two rows of seats in the house, I'll spend countless hours here in the dark over the next two or three days with Lillian, Sherrie Dee and our lighting designer, Robert Wierzel. We'll watch the light cues and make sure they're all copacetic and I will try hard not to fall asleep and wait for Lillian to give me notes (and hope I don't have to light walk which requires me to get on the stage and stand in the light for inordinate amounts of time).

I actually don't really mind lighting sessions. They aren't generally hectic and I've always found theaters calming when they're dark and quiet. I love walking into a theater's house early and sitting in the dark, pretending to only half exist. It grounds me and prepares me for the harriedness of the rest of the evening.

Like yesterday, for example. Lots of hectic, harried energy flying everywhere. Trying to get two acts staged in three hours. Next to impossible. I really felt for Lillian, who was beside herself and almost on the verge of rage when it came to the schedule and its scant hours. The singers worked fast though and some of the things we thought would be major SNAFUs turned out to work okay - Minnie's quick change in Act II for instance.

We had some gunshot issues (the offstage shots were so loud that we ended up banishing the prop guy to the ends of the earth to make the shots sound distant. . . I think he might be shooting the gun in the parking lot). We had some entrance and exit issues in Act III which resulted in a lot of chorus men wandering around with a somewhat vacant, yet troubled expression playing on their faces.

We had a baton issue that had nothing to do with anything...by the end of the evening, we had released all of the singers and we were working on a moment when the cabin door is supposed to swing open on cue. All of us were a bit slap happy being that it was 11 o'clock in the evening. Lillian, Doug Kinney-Frost, Andrew Bisantz and I were hanging over the pit looking down on Stewart Robertson and Sergio, our repetiteur, and Stewart was joking that he could make far-away gunshots with his baton. He braced one end against the lip of the pit and starting twanging the other end to make a vibratory sound, when he fractured the whole thing in half. We all burst into endless fits of laughter as Andrew said, "That'll teach you to play with your baton." Such a ridiculous thing to laugh about but none of us could even breathe. That's what happens when you spend long hours in a dark building trying to do impossible things with lights and voices.

Like I've said time and again . . . we laugh to keep from crying.

So, today is our first dress rehearsal, which adds a whole new dimension to the rehearsal process. Everyone will be in costume which will suddenly render them unable to do any of their correct blocking or acting. Costumes and makeup are a huge adjustment, especially when they involve odd hats and big coats that no one is used to wearing. I am feeling lucky that we got to work with the real pieces for Minnie's changes last night. Otherwise, I think Act II would descend into madness.

In other, non-opera news, I'm feeling like society down here is back to normal, at least in my circles. There are still street lights down, but I bought milk and cheese at the grocery store a couple of days ago and every place I go has lights and air conditioning. I only know a couple of people without power and, for them, I hope constantly that their lives will get back to normal soon as well.

I couldn't sleep last night so I got up and watched "Melinda & Melinda," that latest Woody Allen film. I thought the device (two playwrites talking about taking a story and changing it into a comedy or tragedy) was fairly pandering, and I didn't find the comedy side all that funny -- I thought both stories were pretty depressing actually, even though the comedy has a "happy ending." However, the performances were pretty good. I love Radha Mitchell (Melinda) in everything she does, and Will Ferrell actually did a nice job as a married man who falls in love with Melinda and can't figure out how to get out of his relationship. I was also fond of Brooke Smith as the sensible friend. She gave a really, well, sensible performance. So that's that. It didn't sing for me, but I didn't hate it.

Otherwise, I'm missing my boyfriend, John, terribly, and glad I have my cat here to hug. This disparate life is necessary for me right now but not my ideal. As much as I've fought it in the past, I really do need roots to bring me down to earth.