dancing_crow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancing_crow) wrote2016-08-10 09:48 pm
dancing_crow) wrote2016-08-10 09:48 pm
still plotzed
The children's summer theater wrapped up Sunday. I think Aerin is correct, that I have found the perfect theater format for myself; it is short, funny, egalitarian, anti-sexist and working on some other good attributes. The first two shows each ran across two weekends, the first in Easthampton and then in Turners Fall the following weekend. That meant, for the second weekend, loading stuff into a truck in Easthampton, loading into the theater, putting on a Friday night show, coming back for Saturday 10:30am and 1:00pm shows and then loading out of the theater and back down to Easthampton and back into temporary storage there. It made for some very very tiring days, plus it seems to be hotter than ever, and any movement causes sweating and misery, so there was that on top of tired... It was still fun though, and I would do it again next summer.
For the last show, Peter Pan, we couldn't find a Capt. Hook - they kept breaking or getting better jobs or leaving the country. I was angling hard for the part, without any actual hope of getting it, until the director finally said he'd take it. And I could be Smee. I haven't been on a stage since I was sixteen which was, no lie, 40 years ago. So I was both delighted and horrified at the offer but I did take him up on it.
It was fun, and harder than I expected, and hilarious. once I completely ditched any dignity I might have had, and just kept the part of me that most wanted to be a pirate, it got easier. I was onstage with Hook mostly, as a mixture of stooge and nursemaid, and it was really really fun. I have photos somewhere, mostly on FB but I'll see if I can fetch them here.
I was assigned to choose the tiny child who was to play Tinkerbell from the audience for each show. I tried to find someone who wanted to do it, and found a bunh of great kids. One show I chose a pair of sisters who took the first and second act rather than being onstage at the same time, there was a tiny child who kept her fingers in her ears even under her headphones because everything was too loud, but still did a great job, and one tiny child who was too tiny and when Peter shouted at her she melted down. But her mother carried her onstage for the second act when she needed to drink Peter's poisoned medicine and be ill and be fixed again, and she came up for her bows as well.
For the last show, Peter Pan, we couldn't find a Capt. Hook - they kept breaking or getting better jobs or leaving the country. I was angling hard for the part, without any actual hope of getting it, until the director finally said he'd take it. And I could be Smee. I haven't been on a stage since I was sixteen which was, no lie, 40 years ago. So I was both delighted and horrified at the offer but I did take him up on it.
It was fun, and harder than I expected, and hilarious. once I completely ditched any dignity I might have had, and just kept the part of me that most wanted to be a pirate, it got easier. I was onstage with Hook mostly, as a mixture of stooge and nursemaid, and it was really really fun. I have photos somewhere, mostly on FB but I'll see if I can fetch them here.
I was assigned to choose the tiny child who was to play Tinkerbell from the audience for each show. I tried to find someone who wanted to do it, and found a bunh of great kids. One show I chose a pair of sisters who took the first and second act rather than being onstage at the same time, there was a tiny child who kept her fingers in her ears even under her headphones because everything was too loud, but still did a great job, and one tiny child who was too tiny and when Peter shouted at her she melted down. But her mother carried her onstage for the second act when she needed to drink Peter's poisoned medicine and be ill and be fixed again, and she came up for her bows as well.