monkeybard | How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Greenstage is done and summer is gone—in quite the deliberate physical sense. It rained.

In the beginning…

When I auditioned for Greenstage I had no idea how kick-ass a summer I was going to have. Now bear in mind that I don't like the summer. The sun just irritates me, and there's never enough rain. However, when doing outdoor theatre rain is not your friend, so for once I had reason to be glad it was dry. The sun still irritated me, and there were a couple of matinees where it was way too hot, but we all survived.

Anyway, auditions. I discovered on arrival that I did in fact know The Director of Henry V a little. She'd been in a show I dialect coached. Yay. Especially yay because when I was called back, I knew no one at the callbacks. That is practically unheard of in this town. There's always someone you went to school with, worked with, whatever. Not this time. It turned out that I knew the King, but he was (rightly) pre-cast and so I didn't meet him until the read-through. But more on that later. Callbacks were fun. There were only four women reading, and I can only assume that The Director only called back women who had studied French because we never read a single French scene. It was probably less painful for her that way. It was a surprise to get to the read-through and discover that the only other woman in the cast wasn't one from the callbacks. She must have had a conflict that day. It happens. I'm glad it was her in the show. I only read with one other woman at the callbacks, and while she was cool (and ended up with the lead role in the other Greenstage show, The Tempest), I really enjoyed working with SHall.

The read-through…
I knew no one but the woman in charge. That's intimidating.
I know my shit when it comes to Shakespeare. That's encouraging.
In the end, all was well. Everyone I met that night was cool, although I didn't meet everyone individually until we were further into rehearsals. In fact everyone turned out to be cool in the end. We had two guys come in after the show was cast, when two actors had to pull out, and they were both great to work with. Blessings on them (particularly JCat2 because we were something like three weeks in before he joined us) for leaping in with both feet and doing what needed to be done.

As one does at read-throughs, we sat around a square of banquet tables, faces in our scripts, and as the name implies read through the show. This was when I met the King. He was familiar, but not enough so that I went up to him and asked if we knew each other. I figured we'd figure it out eventually. We did, but it turns out the previous show we had in common was one that must not be named. So once we figured it out (over a month into the run), we did not name it again.

The rehearsals…
An outside observer would be baffled by the rehearsal process, I expect. From an insider's perspective, it was amazingly well organized from start to show opening. No one was called without need, and nights off were ample. Of course that means one was occasionally called for twenty minutes right in the middle of a three-hour rehearsal, but better that than sit around waiting for that twenty minutes to roll around while you watch other people work. The only down side of this was that most of us, I'm pretty sure, weren't certain of the structure of the entire show until we hit Tech Week.

Tech Week…
There's not a lot to work out in tech week when you have no tech. (Yeah, we had four banks of footlights and two stand lights when there were night shows, but they were simply turned on and left on throughout—barring generator failure or tripped breakers or tripping actors. Not trippin', but literally tripping over cords. Although I believe it was JCat2's friends who found the "lighting effects" cool that particular night. LOL.) This was when we all really learned the show, if you know what I mean. We learned what order the scenes actually fell in. We learned how much time we had for costume changes. We learned exactly which fights went between exactly which scenes. This was also when we had Silly Night. I told you about that. I was at first skeptical and then a quick convert. I loved Silly Night, and it really did teach us how well we did, or didn't, know the show.

The run…
It was a longish run, and yet it felt like it went very quickly. Some performances were better than others. Some parks were better than others. In the end, though, I think we kicked ass and took names. Our one "review", which was more of a quick note but at least it was positive, listed me among the "honorable mentions". I'm not complaining. I'm pleased I rated that much in such a short statement. Everyone whom I talked to after the show, whether it was an actual conversation or simply a comment from someone kindly giving a donation, really enjoyed it and gave me lots of props and kudos. My ego was pleased, but the rest of me was even more pleased. Those who don't know me well or who don't do theatre will find this arrogant, but I'm gonna say it. I'm damned good at Shakespeare. It's what I love to do, and therefore I do it well. There's no point in doing something if you're not going to do it well, and there's no point in doing something you don't enjoy. I'm a damned fine actor, and Shakespeare is where I shine the most. There, I said it. Ego is a necessary part of theatre if you're going to survive. I hope the non-theatre folk here understand.

Closing weekend…
Our final Friday evening is when we had the "lighting effects" I spoke of earlier. We had issues at Lincoln Park, but Magnuson is where we tripped over cords and yanked them from sockets a few times. It was all sorted in time for Agincourt, but only just. The King slowed down the St. Crispin's Day speech when he realized what was going on. Plugs got taped, and no one got injured. Yay.

By the way, this was also the night we were video taped. Unfortunately, the St. Crispin's Day outage was also when the tape needed to be changed, so I’m told we didn't get that speech. That's a shame. I love that speech, and I only ever got to hear and see snippets of it. Ah well. If that's the worst of it, then I'd say we had a very successful run.

Party on…
I hosted a cast party after our closing matinee. It was really nice. We hung out, just kicking back some beers and talking. The King of France took one last opportunity to kick some English ass across the chess board. People traded ghost stories and stories of flaming destruction. It was fun.

After The Tempest closed on Sunday, there was a company barbecue. It was quite blustery, but fun was had and burgers were grilled. The Henry V cast gathered to receive closing prezzies from The Director. She said kind and lovely things about each of us, and then gave out "dixie cup awards". Mine was the "She's a very freaky girl" award. :) They were all in-jokes like that, so I won't go into any of the others.

Nordic Boy and I had to leave early to meet Sanafi and others for her birthday. Less than fifteen minutes after we arrived at the restaurant, the skies opened up. We got a downpour that nearly made up for the long dry summer in one fell swoop. Somehow I don't think they managed to burn the battlements that evening as was planned. ;) I'll have to ask around since I forgot to ask the King when I saw him today. I hope our Fabulous SM isn't still driving around with them in her car.