Break a Leg

I have mentioned the show I am currently in: "All The Great Books (Abridged)".  Let me give you a slighly more behind-the-scenes account of things...

The show is hard work.  It's literally a 1 hour 45 minute aerobic workout.  In fact, the other actors and I generally start sweating about 5 minutes in, and just get soggier from there.  The show moves.  And we are selling out pretty regularly, which is awesome.  The theater is talking about extending the show, due to its popularity.  We already have several special performances set up in other venues.  If you are in the Bay Area in the next couple weeks, I strenuously invite you to come and see it.  I promise you will laugh for the better part of two hours.  And if you do plan on coming, get your tickets in advance, because, as I said, our shows are selling out. Details at www.the-rep.com.

Many people who have seen the show ask us (the three actors) how we prepare for such a physically demanding show.  And the honest truth is that we arrive about an hour and a half before the show starts.  We get some frozen yoghurt - vanilla with fruity pebbles for preference.  We do a light, unstructured warm up for about 2 minutes.  We run through the fights, the dance, and the finale.  It's about 1 hour to show time at this point, so we sneak out the back door.  We go up to the dressing room.

Now, I feel it's important to point out that the theater used to be a corner drug store back in the late 1800's.  So the building isn't what you'd call "modern".  Above the theater are a series of offices, shared by the theater company and a local holistic massage academy. 

I assure you: there are no happy endings.

In fact, one afternoon, we arrived at the theater and were running lines to get our heads back into the show.  We were doing this at speed and volume, and guffawing along the way.  Suddenly this woman bursts into our tiny, antiquated dressing room and demands "Don't you know you aren't the only business here???"  We apologized profusely, but this didn't seem to sway the woman.  "I am in the middle of giving a massage RIGHT NOW!!!"  Now personally, I find the use of extra exclamation marks appalling, but they really applied to this woman.  Again, we decided on using tact, and apologized and promised to keep the noise down.  What we COLD have done was said "Actually no, we had no idea anybody else was here because there are no signs, only closed doors.  And since those doors are always closed, and we have no way of knowing who else is in the building, why don't you go take a long walk off a short peer?"  Again, this is being tactful.  We had some more explicit words chosen, but for the sake of decency, I leave you to come up with them on your own.

Anyway, the theater is a rather...intimate space.  Patrons have to actually walk backstage to get to the restrooms...which can be awkward when we're getting ready to go on stage.  "Oh, hello...number one or number two?  Won't be long, will you?  Only, we have this show we'd like to do." But it all works out.

So, back to the point: the ritual.  Our ritual, once we have done the warm up and the fight call and have ascended the stairs, is to result to complete ass-hattery.  Three guys, one dressing room, and all the machismo you can muster.  There are also Gatorade and peanuts.  Over in the corner sits a small mini-fridge, which is our goal for the end of the night.  For, within the mini-fridge lies a plentiful stock of what some might call ambrosia, and what some might call hillbilly juice. That's right, folks: Pabst Blue Ribbon.

You see, after an extended mental and physical workout, you need something to take the edge off.  And you definitely don't want something heavy.  But water just won't do, nor will Gatorade.  Pabst Blue Ribbon has become our magical elixir.  It's light, it's cheap, and it really doesn't taste bad at all when it's ice cold and you're thirsty as hell.  So after each show, we race up to the dressing room, stripping off our costume along the way, open the door, break open the fridge, crack open a cold one, down it to the dregs, finish derobing and get dressed in our normal clothes, then go downstairs to see if any of our friends have hung around afterwards so that we can give them sweaty hugs.

One one such post-show occasion, some of one of my fellow actor's friends had stuck around.  They were sitting there jawing about the show, when one of them turned to me and said "Aren't you in that internet show?  Break A Leg, or something."  I thought that was pretty awesome.  We conversed about it briefly, the conversation quickly got swept away into other matters of unimportance.  Still, it was a brief glimpse at fame, and a tip that people ARE still watching us.  And they are waiting for more *hint hint*.

Anyway, after our nightly schmooze session, we (the actors and the stage crew) head back upstairs for yet another cold, frosty, and delicious Pabst Blue Ribbon, and then we head whichever way the wind blows.

All in all, it's a good time.

Happy Jenday!