Opening night was a success! I wish we had had a bigger audience but we are competing with two high school musicals (and since they are funded with taxpayer money they have a bigger budget for advertising than we do).
One of the things I get asked a lot is do you get stage fright? I would be lying if I didn't say that I was a little nervous, but by the time you go before an audience you have practiced so much that what you do becomes second nature. Plus you really can't see the audience because the lights on stage are so bright. And you really don't have time to focus on the audience because you have too much else to do. The only thing that is different, and which you can't rehearse for, is the audience reaction. If they start laughing at something you have to stop until they are done laughing, and you never know when that may come. Lines that sounded funny at rehearsal may fall flat before an audience and something you never thought was funny may have them rolling in the aisles. When I was doing Hair, the audience laughed at the very end where Claude gets shot by the Vietnamese sniper. Every time. I never did get that. That wasn't supposed to be funny, that was tragic. But Hair is a difficult play to follow because there is no plot in the traditional sense and maybe they thought Claude was just clowning around.
Another thing that was difficult about Hair was I had a part where I had to go right up to the edge of the stage and address the audience. I have to do that in this play too. But the bad part in Hair was that there was this little kid not five feet away from me--what were his parents thinking?--and I had to kneel down and look right into this little kid's eyes and sing a song that started out "Sodomy, Fellatio, Cunnilingus, Pederasty . . ." Let me tell you THAT was hard. Ok, maybe the kid didn't know what those particular words meant, but there were plenty of other things going on on stage that he didn't need to be taking back to his school or daycare or whatever, and you know kids, they will do that. But I got through it.
This time there were no little kids and I didn't have to sing any songs about sex, but I did have to have a conversation about sex, although it really wasn't about sex, it was about memories and what stays in your head after it has all slid away. I had to do a lot of thinking about my character and where she was coming from. After all, this is her husband who has Alzheimers and is rapidly approaching the point where she can't care for him, but she can't give up on him yet. I have to put myself in the place of someone who has slept beside someone else for a good portion of her life and given him two children (one who died in adulthood), someone I care for deeply, and to think of him being put in a home where he doesn't understand what is going on and is around strangers and will be sleeping alone in a strange bed while I am alone in mine and I don't know what is happening with him, are they taking care of him, will he wander around, will they tie him up, all these things I have to put in to my character even though they are not spelled out in the script. And this is what her son doesn't understand and I am trying to make him understand why I can't just put Dad in a home. I'm single, I've never even experienced a fraction of what my character has experienced in terms of relationships and yet this is what I am asked to play. They say I pulled it off well. I certainly hope so.
Well tonight I have to do it all over again. I blew a couple lines last night and will have to pay attention tonight, but at least I didn't blow the important part, the mother-son dialogue and that was what was really worrying me.
One of the things I get asked a lot is do you get stage fright? I would be lying if I didn't say that I was a little nervous, but by the time you go before an audience you have practiced so much that what you do becomes second nature. Plus you really can't see the audience because the lights on stage are so bright. And you really don't have time to focus on the audience because you have too much else to do. The only thing that is different, and which you can't rehearse for, is the audience reaction. If they start laughing at something you have to stop until they are done laughing, and you never know when that may come. Lines that sounded funny at rehearsal may fall flat before an audience and something you never thought was funny may have them rolling in the aisles. When I was doing Hair, the audience laughed at the very end where Claude gets shot by the Vietnamese sniper. Every time. I never did get that. That wasn't supposed to be funny, that was tragic. But Hair is a difficult play to follow because there is no plot in the traditional sense and maybe they thought Claude was just clowning around.
Another thing that was difficult about Hair was I had a part where I had to go right up to the edge of the stage and address the audience. I have to do that in this play too. But the bad part in Hair was that there was this little kid not five feet away from me--what were his parents thinking?--and I had to kneel down and look right into this little kid's eyes and sing a song that started out "Sodomy, Fellatio, Cunnilingus, Pederasty . . ." Let me tell you THAT was hard. Ok, maybe the kid didn't know what those particular words meant, but there were plenty of other things going on on stage that he didn't need to be taking back to his school or daycare or whatever, and you know kids, they will do that. But I got through it.
This time there were no little kids and I didn't have to sing any songs about sex, but I did have to have a conversation about sex, although it really wasn't about sex, it was about memories and what stays in your head after it has all slid away. I had to do a lot of thinking about my character and where she was coming from. After all, this is her husband who has Alzheimers and is rapidly approaching the point where she can't care for him, but she can't give up on him yet. I have to put myself in the place of someone who has slept beside someone else for a good portion of her life and given him two children (one who died in adulthood), someone I care for deeply, and to think of him being put in a home where he doesn't understand what is going on and is around strangers and will be sleeping alone in a strange bed while I am alone in mine and I don't know what is happening with him, are they taking care of him, will he wander around, will they tie him up, all these things I have to put in to my character even though they are not spelled out in the script. And this is what her son doesn't understand and I am trying to make him understand why I can't just put Dad in a home. I'm single, I've never even experienced a fraction of what my character has experienced in terms of relationships and yet this is what I am asked to play. They say I pulled it off well. I certainly hope so.
Well tonight I have to do it all over again. I blew a couple lines last night and will have to pay attention tonight, but at least I didn't blow the important part, the mother-son dialogue and that was what was really worrying me.
