The Show Must Go On!

We had our second-to-last show on Saturday night. The weather was unbelievably bad. About an hour before the downbeat we experienced a massive severe thunderstorm. Many of us were standing on the porch to the wardrobe house, watching the lightning get bigger and listening to the growling thunder. In one fell swoop the sky opened up, the wind picked up and we were caught in a deluge. The trees seemed to touch the ground as they were blown this way and that. Later driving home there were branches and full trees all over the roads. It was that bad. You can see in this first picture that the air was a strange color. It's that greenish haze that settles in when the air is ionized. It's tornado weather.

I used to be terrified of storms to the point that I would cause bodily harm to those who attempted to change channels from the Weather Channel if a dark cloud appeared in the sky. I would hide in the corner of the basement and listen to weather reports on repeat until I was satisfied that no danger was in sight. I'm not like that anymore. Myself and the cast and crew stood in the doorway and watched the rain and hail and lightning and thunder with glee. The electricity went off and we squealed with delight in the late-afternoon shadow.

The problem is that the electricity didn't come back on. Oh sure, the theater has emergency generators that kicked in, but it's not enough power to run a show. As we got closer and closer to showtime, the powers-that-be became nervous that we wouldn't be able to perform. No power, no stage lights, no monitors, no calls, no performance.
Eventually a decision was made, unprecedented in my meager experience (and many of the others' as we began to talk) that we would present the opera in a concert version for at least the first act. All of the generator power was channeled to light up the pit and send a few flood lights both onto the stage apron and into the audience for people to see. Everyone was in costume so we would keep it that way, but chairs would be set up on the stage and the chorus would sit in two rows with principals along the side. The principals would have free range of the stage apron while they were singing and the chorus would simply stand when needed and sit quietly when they would normally be off stage.

As soon as the decision was made, everyone kicked into high gear. There was this sense of adrenalin coming from the unknown. We were going to give a concert in veritable darkness, no monitors, no stage lights, barely enough light to get on stage and sit. There was no way to make backstage announcements, so everyone gathered in the green room to wait for the stage manager to tell us what was happening. My two dancers were asking if they even needed to be there. I told them to hang around until intermission because if the electricity came back on, we would do the fully staged version of Act II. (which didn't happen).

This is why I love live theater. It's these crazy moments of improvisation that make my job amazing. Everyone who works in the performing arts has to be so incredibly adaptable because life is uncertainty and theater is risky. I stood in the relative darkness of the backstage area and watched the chorus climb into their seats (the second photo). The nerves were palpable. Several singers had expressed memory nerves because their muscle memory had so closely equated what they were singing with what they were doing. There's that moment of worry that they wouldn't be able to remember the words and order if they weren't handling props or doing the movement they'd executed so many times. They weren't sure what the experience would be to sit on stage for the entire show.
We made it through beautifully. Maestro Wachner indicated to the chorus when they should stand or sit and the principals did a less kinetic version of their staging (sans props and large set pieces). When we got to intermission, Michael McCleod, our artistic director, came on stage to announce that we would continue straight through since there were still no lights and the rain was so heavy that intermission would be difficult to achieve with no shelter out of the theater. That's a photo of him cupping his hands to amplify his voice up to the balcony. The assistant stage managers brought bottles of water out to the chorus since they wouldn't have a chance to leave the stage.

And so we persisted. My Orpheus and Eurydice still did their second death sequence, which was actually pretty spectacular in the low light with the chorus getting broken up behind them. I sat in a box on the right side of the house with the assistant conducter and another young artist. I was nervous and grinning and watching every split second decision made by each principal as they decided how to stage themselves and how far into the blocking they could go with this improper, truncated space.

The ovation was deafening, far outweighing the pouring rainstorm and thunder outside. Our audience went with the changes completely. We gave them everything we had.

I went backstage, thrust into blackness, afterwards to congratulate. Singers were in their blackened dressing rooms trying to change as quickly as possible. The dark air was punctuated by little blue lights held in the teeth of wig and makeup crew as they rapidly pulled hair pins out of wigs and tried to light pathways up and down stairs. It was like a secret society...

The show must go on, truly. With each trial that presents itself in this little world of theater and art, I slowly discover what me and my colleagues are capable of dealing with and achieving.

Three more days until the end of this adventure. Our final show is on Tuesday. Hopefully with full power.