We close this weekend. It's been a long haul. The rehearsal process was brutal. We were scheduled Monday through Friday 6:00 to 11:00, but most nights we got out between 10:30 and 11:00. The last hour was usually just a sleep-deprived shuffle across the stage, the actors just trying not to fall over and remember some semblance of our blocking. Despite the schedule, we took the stage on opening night with about a week and a half of rehearsal. But then the production takes off, and the magic starts to work on the stage.
The Jewish Advocate gave us a good review.
I wish there was more to say. I wish I had some dirt on the backstage goings on of the cast or something like that, but it's pretty much cut and dried. We all meet at the theater, usually I'm the first one there, and then the rest trickle in. The stage manager gives us the remaining time notice...thank you, fifteen...and he's learned to look for me in the darkest recesses of the back hallway where I go over my opening lines and just think and feel the character for a bit until it's places and I watch the lights go down through a crack in a door and creep onto stage for the top of both acts. Then it's an emotional roller coaster ride that depends so much--for me, at least--on the reaction and the energy from the audience. Theater is not a spectator sport. The tacit agreement I always walk onto stage with is this: You give me energy, and I'll take it and do my darndest to move you. And this is especially so in this play. Without tipping too much of my hand, the Narrator comes out at Act I, Scene I and kicks the fourth wall down. Just obliterates it.
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