Ok...so some think we were being a little too bitchy last round...but hell, it don't bother me none! VENT AWAY!!! Bring me you tired, you weary, your heavy laden with pissiness...I welcome it all! Actually, some good posts last time, and some fine food for thought, which after all, IS the point of all this... SOOOOOO....with that in mind, now let's hit the POSITIVES...what do you LOVE about the Theatre? Is it the rehearsal process? The performances? The adulation of an adoring crowd? The opportunity to hone one's table waiting skills? The outpouring of support and solidarity the Conservative right has shown for the Arts???? (Hey, a man can DREAM, can't he?) The opportunity to be lit on fire every night for 14 weeks (Boonies only, of course)? For the love of God, man, WHAT????
Hit me with your rythum sticks people...and as for the latest lyric...it's an oldie, but a goodie!!!! (and OH the Aqua Net THESE guys used!!! I think 90% of the Ozone hole opened up whenever they went on the road!) Got a heckuva battle going on..we'll tally up next week and check scores for the home stretch and the GRAND PRIZE!!!!
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11 comments:
I love the building. I love making a character piece by piece. It's a bit like building a scale model of westminster abbey out of popsicle sticks. by the time the show goes in front of the audience, my favorite bit is done. but then again, it's good to take it front of the people and see if i've gotten right.
I love getting out of my own skin for a bit. And i also love the people who understand this need.
I love it when it works. I love it when it comes right up to the edge of not working and then effortlessly Tour Jete's back into working as if to say, "Dude, relax."
I love it when i can relax onstage and pull out all the stops.
I love a good story. both the one i'm acting in, and the ones I hear backstage.
I love it that i can get up on stage in front of people when other people would rather be eaten by snakes than do so. It's not really bravery at all, but it is a kind of courage that i am happy to possess.
I love doing a play that has it's own beat, and is every bit as compelling as a voodou ritual.
I love having the occasional opportunity to live out lives that are much cooler and more adventurous than mine. Any actor who says he doesn't dig this is lying.
I love getting caught up in it.
SCORE!!!!
WHITESNAKE it is...I kinda FIGURED you for an ole metal-dude!
That gives you three points- you're now officially in the mix, dude!
Things I love about theatre:
The smell of the backstage and the scene shop. My favourite smell in the world.
Seeing and hearing words I wrote fall out in the rhythms and style and pace as I imagined them.
Hearing an actor find a value in a line that I wrote that never occurred to me.
To be able to luxuriate in language...both as a writer and as an actor.
The stylized magic that only a stage production can create.
Seeing a great play or performance. Good theatre is better and more memorable than the best movie any day.
The socialness of theatre.
That everyone in the theatre is usually working from the same lexicon. They have the same touchstones and icons. They've heard of Shakespeare, Shaw, Wilde, Miller, Williams, Barrymore, Lunt and Fontaine, Jo Mielzinger, et al. And whether they have intimate knowledge or experience with them or not...they at least know of them and their relative role in the history of the theatre. This understanding and appreciation of tradition and legacy is not found in the film business. There everything started with Star Wars.
What I love about theatre...
-- I love the people. But maybe that's just because I'm a freak.
-- I love the common goal of a production. We're all there to put on a show.
-- As a stage manager, I love being at that intersection of who's onstage and who's off. It's like having a foot in each world.
-- I love calling cues at ... just ... the right ... time. Aaaahhhh. A perfect series of cues can just about make me weep with joy. Talk to me sometime about Bat Boy.
-- I love auditions. I love 'em! You go in not quite knowing who will show up, and then, as people file through and do their pieces, slowly a picture begins to build of what the cast will look like. I think it's all terribly exciting, although I know most directors and actors are nervous wrecks throughout the process.
-- I love the DAC dock at 30.
-- I love ghost lights.
-- I love seeing the audience react to surprises which ceased to amaze me during week 3 of rehearsals. I love being reminded by their fresh eyes.
When I was 18, and just three months removed from High School my Father passed away. At the time, I was doing Lanford Wilson's ANGELS FALL (playing ZAPPY if you know the show-yes, there was a time in my youth when I was actually in good enough shape to pass for a Tennis pro!) at the Murfreesboro Little Theatre. He had been in the hospital a few weeks, and he finally passed midway through our run. Ironiclly enough, my brother Jerry was the director of this show. That night at call, the whole cast came together and told us that if we didn't want to go on, they certaily understood. My brother graciously left it up to me as I recall. My initial thought was that I was just too damned drained to go on, but I decided to go for it, if for no other reason than to take my mind of the days events. Without a doubt, it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. I felt healed, if only for a very short time, by getting to go out on that stage and step into another man's shoes for just a few hours...I always felt bad that Jerry (and Tony, my other brother) had to watch from the sidelines, and didn't get the chance to be out there with me...Since then, a show doesn't go by that I don't think of him. See, my Old Man never got to live alot of his dreams, and I certainly don't believe he ever got much satisfaction out of his working life...but his sons surely do! And I never (and I'm quite sure neither do they) let a show go by that I don't thank the Good Lord for the opportunity to get to do what my father never did...to live out a few of my dreams.
That's why I love the Theatre...and I always will.
* An audience reacting in a way you did NOT expect (welcome to KSU!)
* Seeing that effect or moment you dreamed up in a hotel over Jack and Coke come to life onstage (timx, that outhouse was a GREAT idea no matter what they said)
* "Thank you 'five'."
* "It's 6:00." ... "THANK YOU '6:00'!"
* Sure, I love laughs. But, feeling the air pressure in the room drop because an entire audience took a gasp at the same time is priceless.
* Watching an actor onstage move himself to tears night after night and knowing damn good and well that it is 100% genuine.
* First dress. Everyone gets to see more elements piling on and respect for those costumers who have been hidden in dungeons gets trotted out. (Ditto for all other technical additions prior to opening night.)
* Watching an audience jump en masse at a surprise moment. For 4 years I got to see this night after night and I swear to you it NEVER got old. I'd RUN from wherever I was to anywhere I could see the house everytime that gunshot went off.
* Pulling it off, no matter what. And the knowledge that we have done just that so many times that we feel unstoppable. There's always a way.
* Standing in an empty theatre when it is all over (first in the house, then onstage) with Jackson Browne's "Loadout/Stay" playing... knowing that 'the next one' is waiting.
* Sitting around a table with a handful of like souls talking about/threatening to start our own. Generally involves alcohol.
In regards to the outhouse...If only BC could've been ON FIRE when he came out of it! Now THAT would've been comedy gold!
I would like to mention that the name of that whitesnake album was simply "whitesnake". What I love is when the curtain goes up, or sideways, whichever, and I have this really huge knot in the pit of my stomach and I am wondering what in the hell I amdoing on the stage, putting myself through all this torture, I deliver my first line, and then I remember why I love it so much. noddy holder
Hey Mikey,
If you;re trolling, you going to Sparky's wedding tomorrow?
I love burly, hairy funny actors who wanted to be rock stars but went with the "secure" career instead.
I love the cameraderie of a good cast and crew.
I love reaching the edge and trying to go over it.
I love that goose pimply feeling i get sitting in the audience and knowing im experiencing something heaven sent.
I love people who are just enough parts crazy and insecure mixed with some ego driven hubris to commit their lives to doing something as foolhardy as theatre for a living.
I love every "silly little play" that i did growing up from The Adventures of Edam Stilton to Cheaper By the Dozen to Fame to all those awful Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals......heck even Ladies of the Tower. They let me pretend and play and hear the applause that every child loves to hear.
I love listening to pre-show music backstage moments before the lights go up.
As an actor, I love being on stage and feeling like I'm in the zone.
I love doing something on stage that was never really meant to get a laugh, but it does.
At a break and with other playful actors, I love taking lines and scenes from characters in past shows and saying them as the new characters we are currently playing.
Backstage, I love seeing someone play a real mean and nasty character, really nailing the part on stage, and when the actor exits they have to tip-toe so as not to make floor noise.
I love all of my friends that do theatre.
I love finding the perfect piece to direct.
I love the rehearsal process. I, also, could do it for two years.
As a director, seeing something happen onstage that matched perfectly with what I had in my head.
Definitely an empty theatre after a show. After it.
I love the Tom Fielder quote:
"Dan, I like you and you're my friend and all, but I'm not castin' ya as Valmont."
I love hearing a student, who is new to theatre, say after acting in a show that has closed: "That was fun."
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