Doggone Scrooge.
Well I did it, I accepted the role, helped with publicity (see picture below) and things are coming out exactly like I predicted a month ago. I can't remember the cotton pickin' lines. I will run lines with the wife in the afternoon, go in for evening reheasal, and not remember half the lines and those I do remember I say at the wrong time. The play opens Friday, not next Friday, not a week from Friday, but this Friday four days from today. I am beginning to look for places to put cheat sheets around the stage. (One guy I used to work with occasionally when I was acting for a living, had lines fastened everywhere, and God help anyone who left a prop out of place.) I really am frustrated, because I think I have a pretty good characterization, but------
Oh well, by next week it will be all over. (That is the blessing of community theatre.)
posted by Three Score and Ten or more @ 1:32 PM
12 Comments:
11 29 05
Hey Three Score: Just relax. Often performance anxiety is a reason why people forget on stage! The props do seem like a good idea just in case, but I suspect that after the first performance you will be into it. Best Wishes and all of us are rooting for you:)
Goodluck with the Play! That is awesome that you are going through with it. Mahndisa is right, after the first performance you will be FINE!
Thanks for stopping by it has been awhile. My grandfather absolutely loves the Gaither's. He is also an addict. Me, I like Mark Lowrey...and the Gaithers are pretty dang talented too.
Also, thanks so much for the prayers. It is not in his marrow. He will have 10 chemo treatments and should be fine.
Thanks Mahndisa. I confess that performance anxiety has never really been a problem for me. I am one of those people who can stand with one or two others all day and not think of anything to say, but give me an audience of three or four hundred folks and whether I'm right or wrong, I can usually have them in the palm of my hand. It's just that it is so much easier on the other actors if I do what I'm doing, speaking lines that they have heard before, and providing the odd cue for their work.
Oh, and Sarah, I am glad things for grandfather are looking good. He has good taste in music. One of my Christmas favorites is Mark Lowrey singing his own song MARY DID YOU KNOW? I actually have sung it enough around this part of Georgia that some folks (who don't listen to Gaither) think I wrote it. I wish I had.
Having acted on stage myself a couple times, I can say that sometimes the best plays are the ones where mistakes were made but the show went on to the merryment of the audience. Case in point.
I was supposed to poison a persons drink through a hidden trapdoor behind picture on the set wall. Due to the location of the actor too far away from the wall, I had to really stretch to dump the bottle of baby powder over his glass and in doing so, obstructed my view. So I unknowingly dumped the baby powder all over his head and he had to pretend the rest of the scene that it wasn't there. At one point, he was supposed to clap his hands on the side of his head (in mock horror) and a giant mushroom cloud of baby powder erupted from his hair. We must have paused for five minutes to allow the audience to pick themselves up from the floor and stop laughing so we could resume and be heard.
Break a leg! You'll do great. And get that video for us!!!
Improvisational theatre is often the funnest.
12 02 05
Hey Three Score: You are probably performing your play now. I wish you well and good luck. Well, If you have no anxiety, then you will do well! Have a good weekend! :)
I hope all went well!!! I am sure the lines came to you...(smiling)
Merry Christmas!!
Well, it is over, and I didn't even humiliate myself (although, for the Saturday matinee I cut out the bit about the turkey four times as big as Tiny Tim, I donn't think the audience noticed, but the boy who was out there waiting for me to send him to the poulterer was a little shaken). I actually had a Saturday night and Sunday performance that I was pretty proud of. I will never accept another role blind without counting the number of three page speeches.
12 06 05
Hey Three Score: Thx for giving us an update. I figured you would play it like an old pro. Happy that you did well and enjoyed it. And the missing line thing, well it happens to the best of us!!! Have a great day:)
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