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Live theater — it’s live
Last night was the first night of The Wrathskellar. It’s been named an Editor’s Pick by Boston.com…. Anyhow, back to last night. Last night was what was termed an ‘Open Dress Rehearsal’. Tickets were $5, and the audience was warned that there might still be a few ‘rehearsal moments’. Sure enough, right in the very opening there was a missed lighting cue (not that anyone but us knew), but that’s how it goes. Live theater is an intrinsic gamble, because you never know -exactly- what’s going to happen the way you do with fixed mediums like Cinema.
What happened next though was one of those things that you can’t ever really be ready for. Betty Blaize, one of our performers, was in the middle of her sword dance and fell. Hard. And landed on her foot in the process. Work lights went on we got her backstage, and in a few moments her ankle was the size of a tennis ball. But the show goes on, so while we got her some ice and got her back to the dressing room the work lights and house lights came down and the next act went on. Betty got dressed and because she was an integral part of the last two numbers of the first act, we skipped those and went to intermission early. She was taken to Mt. Auburn hospital. She has a bad sprain, but nothing broken.
It does mean we’ll be reworking parts of the show to eliminate or replace her numbers. We would just cut her dances entirely, but she’s part of the only duet piece in the show, and it’s very relevant to another performers plot line. We’ll figure it out.
Otherwise, everything went fantastically. All the numbers are excellent and really tight, and the audience loved them. The Q&A session with the audience went -very- well and I hope the cameraman was recording that, because there were some nuggets there to be sure. The photographer got some good shots, and we chatted with a press member after as well.
If you like dancing, Dresden Dolls, Yma Sumac, dark humor, hula hoops, Buster Keaton style physical acting, good tech tricks, singing, burlesque, jazz, or just like live theater and want to support local artists, go buy tickets now! Still seats available, but it turns out there are only 72 chairs set, so I expect some of the nights to fill up. Tickets are $13 for Wed and Thur, and $18 for the weekend shows, and are worth every penny. Cheap for a live show. Saturday there is a special lecture with Miss April March before the show. The lecture is $10, or you can buy a $25 combo ticket for the lecture and the show, saving $3.
I know some of you are planning on going Thursday, and others on Friday, so the rest of you need to get to it and join us!
Originally published at lebor.net. You can comment here or there.
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My favorite "the audience really doesn't notice" story: I was running sound for one of Wellesley's theater productions my sophomore year (I think?), so I'm up in the catwalks with Stacey, a fellow techie, who's running lights. One of the night of the performance, Rob, our theater ghost*, decides to screw with us by messing with the lights so they're flickering. Badly. REALLY badly - there's no way it's not noticeable. Poor Stacey's going crazy trying to do SOMETHING to fix it short of shutting everything down (we are, of course, in the middle of one of the dramatic soliloquies). Finally, she does the best thing she can think of, and picks the light board up to about three inches off the table and drops it, making a small crashing noise. It works, and the lights behave themselves for the rest of the performance.
After the performance, somebody complimented the director on the thunder & lightning effects she put into the dramatic scene.
So even if they notice the errors, they'll assume they're intentional.
* I am perhaps the least superstitious person I know, and I don't believe in ghosts or supernatural crap or anything - except when it comes to theater and baseball. :)
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