Circle Gets the Square

How could I forget to include this yesterday???

All summer long I stressed about dropping those damn champagne glasses. It was like an obsession. Will I drop the glass? Will I have to (ok, get to) crawl out on stage to wipe up a spill???

Now, the one thing about an HD broadcast is, you're right up on stage with the action. And in Act II the action included supers with trays of champagne glasses. At one point the mean brother uncorks a bottle, pours two glasses and hands one to Arturo, the groom he has chosen for Lucia. The glasses were pretty much the same ones we used over the summer - your standard plastic champagne flute. Only up close I noticed something different. Yes, the bottoms were round, but... what was I seeing there? Some sort of... edge? Oh yes. Someone is very smart.

No wonder their glasses didn't even wobble. Each flute had a clear plastic square on the bottom. Like, glued to the bottom. From the audience you can't see it. For the supers it means a much smaller chance of spillage. Why oh why didn't anyone (and I include myself in this bunch) think of this????

I'm sure none of the movie audience noticed the square-bottomed glasses. In fact, there's a good possibility that of all the people all over the world who saw Lucia in HD yesterday, I'm one of maybe 100 who noticed, and I'm being generous with that number. I figure, any other super, prop person and possibly actor familiar with drink-serving on stage or screen might possibly have noticed. If they were looking.

So THAT'S Where I Left My Saw

Show # 3 of 5 tonight. And... fabulous news!! NO SPILLS! Someone pointed out that if all the glasses were grouped together in a clump they'd support each other. So we did that, and lo and behold, the glasses survived all of our trips across the stage. If only we had known sooner! Physics strikes again, this time to our advantage.

The theater in which this performance takes place is piggy-backed onto another, larger theater. They have separate entrances but are attached via partially underground hallways. Partially, you say? How can that be? Well the older, larger theater is uphill from the newer, smaller one. So to enter the backstage area for the smaller one from outside you have to go down a short flight of stairs. Then as you wend your way through the halls and passageways you go up a few steps. From there you wiggle about a little, go through a room full of I don't know what, pipes and wires and planks and things, through a door, around a wrought-iron spiral staircase and into a hall where you can find doors leading directly to the sidewalk. The theater (the older one) is still a flight above. In those hallways you will also find a green room, some private dressing rooms and the chorus/super dressing room. The spiral staircase leads to the backstage area of the larger theater. I'm very glad I don't have to climb that staircase in my dress! It's hard enough going up the standard staircase to the theater we're in. I have to gather the thing up and I hold it in front of me in a ball. And forget about going to the bathroom. Actually I can't forget about that - I always need to go, usually the moment I get my costume on. But so far, so good. Meaning, I haven't dipped my dress in the toilet, always a good thing. So where was I? Oh yeah... today I noticed that in this vague room in between the hallways that connect the theaters, not only are there pipes and wires and planks and things, there is also a circular saw with a piece of wood on it and a pile of sawdust below it. Like, right next to where we have to walk. How odd, I thought, to be going back and forth from the green room to the stage past a large scary saw.

As I watch the chorus members get more and more tired from constant rehearsals, master classes, coachings and other performance-related projects, I realize that there is no way I could do what they're doing. I think I would drop from exhaustion. The fact that they don't drop, that they keep pressing on, to me shows that they're all very serious and dedicated about what they do.

Opening Night Report

Hoo boy so much to tell, so little time. I'll just tell it in order as I remember things. Photos to follow in a future post.

Before the show, the costume woman came to the dressing room and said, "Liz walked out in the middle of the Cenerentola dress rehearsal." Shocked silence. We all thought, "But... I just saw her..." The she went on, "That's the third assistant to quit on me." Later we found out that we all thought that she meant our Violetta!

I had gotten Liz (the singer, not the costume person!) a gift to celebrate opening night - a very sparkly purple and pink stuffed animal octopus. I should have taken a picture of it. I also got her a cute sparkly sequin-covered pen that perfectly matched the octopus. She wasn't in her dressing room when I got there so I sort of jammed it in by the doorknob. She seemed to like it. Who wouldn't love a purple and pink shiny octopus?

Moving right along... places please for the top of the show! Here's where I must ask - What is the purpose of a final orchestra dress rehearsal if things are different on opening night? It was no big deal that instead of a vase, the bouquet of flowers was now in what appeared to be a crystal ice bucket. It had a handle. There was 1 real flower and the rest were fake. The director wanted fresh flowers but it probably wasn't in the budget. So as the show began they totally blacked out the backstage area. While we were standing there waiting everyone was very quietly goofing around and being silly. Then Michael did his opening thing onstage, came backstage and was immediately blinded. Then, there in the dark, he said, "Oh man, I don't have water." I had just put a new bottle of water down against the wall so I gave it to him. It had one of the rubber chickens attached... (I picked up a few more after I gave one to Cody) So then the clog guy from the previous post said, "That was nice of you." and I said, "Not really." I wouldn't want our lead tenor to crack on his high C because his throat was dry... besides, I had another full bottle down in the dressing room. But even if I didn't I would have given it to him, or anyone who needed it. Well, maybe.

Ok opening scene was fine. A little crowded as Rachel was trying to put glasses on the table in one direction and I was going the other way to put the plates from the chairs to the place settings, but we worked it out. Then we went off to prepare to serve the drinks. That's when I encountered another difference from the final dress - there were heavy blackout curtains along the wings. It was impossible to see where the openings were. So I got my tray of champagne flutes. New flutes - I'd never seen these before. Nice and... light... So I was holding the tray, trying to negotiate around this heavy curtain without sizzling my costume or skin on the thing of lights back there and without tripping on my skirt... and the curtain swung back and hit the tray. It was like slow motion. One, two glasses went over. I put the tray down on the stair prop where they rolled and knocked the other three over. Rachel was waiting to go after me and I said, "I'm not going!" Couldn't go out with a wet tray of nothing... then when they came back Kelly said that two of her glasses spilled, so Casey, the asst stage manager, got some paper towels, then they were standing there all staring at each other like, "What do we do?" So I said, "Here, give them to me!" And I went on stage from the most upstage wing, found the spill, got down on my hands and knees and crawled along drying the floor, all while "Libiamo" was going on around me. I was behind the table, and there's a long table cloth, so the audience probably didn't know I was there. I was trying not to laugh, and wanted to get off stage as quickly as possible, so when I got up I went straight back, which meant I had to split up a couple who had their arms around each other. I don't even know who it was - I was just intent on getting the heck outta there. Later a lot of people were like, "Wow, that was great the way you came out to clean that up! You're a great actor." I think they thought I came up with that idea on my own.

We run back onstage for the money-throwing scene. I lapsed into believing that it was real - I was truly concerned about this fight and horrified when he threw the money. I felt it happening to me and I just relaxed into it. Then there's a little scuffle/fight and they stumbled upstage near us, and then I was actually concerned so that was easy to portray.

Then we were done. No chorus or supers in Act 3.

In the dressing room I learned that most of the chorus was leaving, either to go back to the dorms to drink, or out for a drink. Seemed like very few were hanging around for the reception, although some indicated that they were going out for a drink and coming back. I was a bit surprised that no one wanted to stay to watch and support the principals for the rest of the production. Kelly and I went upstairs and sat on the floor near the balcony railing. One of my coworkers is a volunteer usher and he was there. He came over and said, "Were you up there?" Uh, yeah? He didn't recognize me when I was on stage, how funny is that? "Were you singing?" Uh, nope. So I leaned on the balcony and lost myself in the story. My heart was breaking for Violetta when she read the letter and lost it and cried, "Where are you? I've waited and waited and now it's too late!" and the tears started to well in my eyes. I got more and more weepy as Violetta became more desperate, then Alfredo comes, joyful reunion, more tears, then the "I'm better, I'm worse, I'm cured, I'm dead," is so beautiful and moving. I'm just like my mother, beautiful opera makes me cry.

There were no other mishaps, at least not from my perspective. Everyone sounded great. Liz was amazing. Micheal was too, but she stole the show, by far. Andy, who plays Alfredo's father, was great too. Everyone was.

So after making sure my mascara hadn't turned me into a raccoon face, I went downstairs to wait for the reception to begin. There I met Jen Aylmer, who you might recognize here. My first impression was that she's short! And... that was her first impression of me too. "You're short!" she exclaimed. "I guess I appear tall in emails," I replied, "It's the long hair!" she said. It was funny. She wants to meet Alex, her youngest fan. When I told him he said he didn't want to meet her. We'll see...

The reception was your typical post-opera reception, sans alcohol. There was hummus, veggies, fruit and cookies, and a fountain of cranberry juice-ish punch. And of course the same set of older patrons I had to shove through to meet John O. The performers descended upon the food like vultures. I'm including myself in that group. All we had backstage for the past 3 hours was chocolate. Sounds nice in theory but real food was suddenly very attractive.

Our next performance is Sunday at 2. Hopefully someone will hold that snarky curtain aside so I can get on stage before I spill it all. I mean, someone WILL hold it. After all, now that my secret fantasy to crawl around on my hands and knees in front of a paying audience has finally been fulfilled, I want more, heh heh heh.

A Small Correction

I recently learned that during the piano dress, Liz, our Violetta, did NOT spill the ginger ale on herself in her eagerness to down it. Rather, an unnamed, random chorus person did it. Not the random chorus member I've mentioned before, because she surely would have owned up to it.

Hey, at least it wasn't me.