Fun Fun Fun!

Today was a really great day! Yay, I haven't had one of those in a really long time!

First of all, we had our preview (for real this time) of A Faery Hunt!, and that went really well, in spite of stage jitters. We had a small audience of six children with corresponding parents, about 15 people in all. But that was okay, it gave us the opportunity to draw the children in close and speak more intimately with them to get them involved.

Oh my gosh, stage jitters! I walked out when it was my turn, and nearly forgot my lines!! And I know I wasn't entirely in character at first because of that. I stammered something about being overwhelmed by all the fairy treasures the children had brought for me, while I tried to remember what I was supposed to say next. And then the funny thing, the exact same thing happened to our queen when she came out, and she also stammered about being overwhelmed by fairy treasures.

And we found a lot of new places to ad lib and add even more fun and humor into the show, it was great!

And it was a little bit scary, because in rehearsal we have been acting as the children for each other, and being totally involved with the characters and vocally responsive. The real children were much more reserved, at least at the beginning of the show, and it was difficult to tell by their faces if they were enjoying it. (Too much TV perhaps?? Maybe they're not used to having to respond to what they're watching?) But by the end of the show, they were totally in to it, and interacting with us, and afterwards we signed autographs for them.

It was so cute, because this one adorable little girl maybe four years old, all dressed up in a Tinkerbell outfit, came over to me to get her picture taken with me, so I knelt down and next thing I know she's hugging me, and she hugged me and hugged me for a good 30 seconds, it was so sweet! *sigh!*

Then this evening, I ran lights for Evil Monkey Empire's 24 Hour Theatre Blitz, and that was a lot of fun too. The lights were very simple for most of the plays, manual fade up at the beginning, manual fade out at the end. But I was very impressed with the quality of the writing and the acting, everyone involved did a great job! And I really enjoyed watching all of the plays because of that!

IMHO, the last play was the most interesting and turned out to be the most fun. The lights were complicated for this as well, a lot of fade ups and quick fade downs. During the tech run through, the scene was very tense and dramatic. A soldier stumbles on stage, his hands tied behind his back. A native woman arrives on stage, he asks her to untie him, but she doesn't speak English, she is speaking gibberish. He finally gets her to untie him, and she takes him to her house. She mixes something in a bowl and starts spitting it at him. He tries to fight her off, she hits him over the head with a rock. Lights out. Lights up, he is tied to a chair, she forces mush into his mouth, then stabs him in the groin with a knife. Lights out. Lights up, he drags himself across the floor to where she is sleeping, manages to get the knife from her and untie himself, then approaches her. Lights out. Lights up, and we're back at the beginning, only this time the native woman is speaking English, and the soldier is speaking gibberish. She mixes a healing paste in the bowl and spits it on his face to cure his wounds. Turns out her husband was killed, and so she was banished from her tribe because it is unlawful to outlive your husband. She has been raped many times as she has struggled to survive on her own, which is why she stabs him. And the second time through, after he gets the knife from her while she's sleeping, he stabs her in the stomach. Lights out, the end.

Now, the thing is, once the lights are out, you cannot see a thing on stage. So after she hits him over the head with a rock, and the stage is dark, the actor is supposed to tie his own hands up while she ties his feet, but we couldn't see anything to know when he was done. So, after a few seconds I started to fade up just a bit, and he was still untangling the rope, so I faded out again. The audience was rolling with laughter at that, and the director (who was in the booth with me) loved it, thought it worked perfectly to help loosen the audience up. So as the play continued on, the actor (who is part of the improv group) just started going for small moments of comedy. The second time through, the director purposely had me fade the lights up again revealing the not tied up actor and fade out again, and the actor took the comic moments even further, such as taking his hands out of their bonds to reach for the knife while the woman slept, and then just pushing the rope off his feet easily. What a great way to end the night, laughing so much!