Last week I reported that I would have my first performances for NextStage on April 21 and April 23. This post is about those experiences.
On April 21, I put on my costume for Ferris Wheel and loaded my costume for Emotional Baggage in a backpack and walked down to Garfield Park Village, where the show had been scheduled. The staff were surprised to see me and the rest of the cast—it turns out that our “booking agent” had neglected to confirm the date and time with them, so the event had never made it onto their calendar. The activity manager graciously allowed us to use the space and even went around seeing who was awake to let them know about the pop-up performance. We ended up with an audience of about 6–8 people, so we treated it as a tech/dress rehearsal, which we desperately needed, as none of use had rehearsed with background music.
For Ferris Wheel, after I made my entrance and sat down in the “ferris wheel” seat, I realized that I had not changed my glasses and was still wearing my distance-viewing glasses, so the script that I shared with the other actor was completely out of focus—just a grey blur. I had to do the entire play from memory, which I had not practiced! Luckily, I could remember all the lines, but I was a bit slow on some of them. I experimented with wearing a straw hat as part of the costume, which looked good for the character, but which the director decided not to use in future, as it hid my face too much. At the end of the play, we had set up a thunderclap to signal the last piece of business for my exit, but the sound person had been up until 3 a.m. the night before setting up the sound tracks for all the plays, and instead of pushing the button to trigger the thunderclap, he tried scrolling forward for it. After about a 10-second delay, I made my exit without the last piece of business. We also decided to stop the carnival music after the entrance, rather than having it run quietly in the background throughout the play.
For Emotional Baggage, my costume glasses were fine for seeing my script (though I’m pretty much off-book for that one also), and the play went ok (though we had to have an understudy for Amber, as the actor had tested positive for Covid). We had a bit of delay starting that play, as the sound engineer was also one of the actors in it, and he had to change into costume before the play (not having realized how long that took). The exit music did not run quite right for our exit, but no major problems.
On Sunday, I again had both plays. Ferris Wheel went fine—I remembered to put on my computer glasses, so I could see the script. But once again the thunderclap was way too late for the final business.
Another play in the line-up (Paper Walls) had some trouble with the soundtrack (again, the sound engineer had been up to 3 a.m. working on it)—the soundtracks he’d found and put in his Dropbox had not yet been synced to his iPad, and the venue had no WiFi. The play called for some off-stage sexual moans, a clatter, and some indistinguishable chatter. I got a script with the sound effects marked and provided live sound effects when the sound track did not cut in. For the clatter, I knocked over the folding chair next to me, which was very loud and startled the audience, the actors, and the sound engineer. The director and I did the chatter (mostly vowels).
The final play of the performance was Emotional Baggage, for which we had yet another understudy for Amber. The actor originally intended for the role had tested negative for 4 days and was in the audience (wearing a mask), but was not yet ready to perform. There was one muffed line (by an off-stage voice), but no major problems. That was our biggest show (7 of the 8 plays—most performances have only 4 or 5 of them), and so we had a cast party afterwards at the director’s house. Her house is at the top of a steep hill, which I have had to walk my bike up a few times for rehearsals. After the performance, because her house was only 1.5 miles away from the Midcounty Senior Center where we performed (rather than about 6 miles from my house), I almost had enough energy to cycle all the way up the hill—I only had to walk the last 50′ or so.
On Wednesday, we were scheduled to perform at Montecito Manor in Watsonville, so I biked to Live Oak to the house of one of the actors and rode in her car with her down to Watsonville. As we were about 2 blocks from the venue, she got a phone call—the performance was cancelled, because our booking agent once again had failed to confirm the schedule. Our director was livid, as she had already told the agent last Sunday to make sure to call every venue the day before to check that everything was in order. So we drove back along Freedom Boulevard (a scenic route) without having done any performance. It turns out that the first person to show up (after informing the director that the performance was not on) stayed to give an informal pop-up musical performance for the residents, which was apparently appreciated.
Our performance for tomorrow (Friday) at the Brookdale facility in Scotts Valley had been cancelled earlier in the week, because of a norovirus outbreak that made them isolate the facility. So someone had the clever idea of moving the Friday performance to Montecito Manor, which the management there was fine with, and it seems like everyone who was originally available for the Friday Scotts Valley performance will still be available tomorrow for Watsonville. So once again I’ll bike down to Live Oak and get a ride down to Watsonville. I wonder what will go wrong this time.
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