Tag: community theatre

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Meeting in the ‘Moonlight’

“Hi, guys!”

It could have been any other virtual meeting, any other day. We all know those, right? Check your cameras, hit the link, grumble at forgetting to turn on the microphone again.

But here in Chez Rochat, Monday evenings aren’t just any virtual meeting. They’re a chance to get some real insanity back again, of the best  kind.

Mondays are when we take the stage.

***

“You went into production without a screenplay?”

“I thought I HAD a screenplay! I’ve been working on it for three years!”

—  Ron Hutchinson, “Moonlight and Magnolias”

 

Some of you may remember that back in February, I went over to the dark side. Dramatically speaking, anyway. This long-time actor became the new assistant director of “Moonlight and Magnolias,” getting a ringside seat to the screwball madness. And madness is exactly what you get when three characters are trying to bang out the script to “Gone With The Wind” in five days, with a faithful secretary guarding the door.

It’s a story with everything. High-speed dialogue. Studio gossip. And WAY too many peanuts and bananas for one’s sanity. It couldn’t miss.

And then, midway through rehearsals, COVID-19 arrived. And our can’t-miss comedy suddenly found itself without a chance to pull the trigger.

***

“I need this, guys. I need it. You have no idea how badly I need it.”

– Ron Hutchinson, “Moonlight and Magnolias”

 

The virus closed the stages. Unsurprising, really. When mass gatherings can spread a disease, crowding into a darkened room with strangers for two hours or so is the last thing any health department would advise. We had reached Shakespearean heights: closed by the plagues.

But like the hero of “The Princess Bride,” we were only mostly dead.

Moon Theatre didn’t cancel “Moonlight.” It put it on hold. The Rialto gave us new performance dates in the fall, hoping that by then, they’d have found a way to safely reopen.

Our show had survived, but our weeks-long rehearsal process had become months-long – with no way to rehearse physically.

That’s where the magic of Mondays began, turning rehearsals into a new “virtual meeting.” Hop online. Work the lines. Work the characters. Keep the story alive, the feeling alive, the company together. Keep the show breathing, waiting for its chance to once again come out in the open.

I wonder what Shakespeare’s bandwidth was like?

***

“So what do we want our specks of light to be? This time? When we’re sitting in a movie palace and the lights go down …and the theatre disappears and the magic starts to happen?”

– Ron Hutchinson, “Moonlight and Magnolias”

 

There’s an irony here. Our show is about three men locked in a room with limited supplies, asked to do the seemingly impossible, with anxiety growing at every turn. The temptation is huge to just quit. But if they do, everything falls apart.

We’re living that. Every single day.

And it’s the same kind of single-minded focus that will get us all through this together.

We all want normal. We all want a world where isolation isn’t a need, where we can visit friends, browse a library, stop by a baseball field that has people on it. Maybe even go to a theatre now and then, heaven forbid.

But to get to “normal,” we have to pass through “safe.” It’s hard. Especially since viruses aren’t kind enough to set deadlines, letting us know how long we have to be careful. It’s like walking blind through a room where the floor’s been covered in thumbtacks and Legos … slow, careful steps trying to feel a path through, with no certainty of how far we have left to go.

If we stay focused, if we help each other, if we find ways to adapt and support and comfort and care, we’ll make it. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But we will see the door unlock, taking as many of us through it as we can.

And when that door opens, even the most ordinary things in the world will seem pretty magical.

Maybe even as magical as a Monday.

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A New Direction

When the director says you gave a fantastic audition, you usually didn’t get the part. And I didn’t.

But this one had a surprise for me.

“I wonder if you might be interested in being the assistant director.”

My response may have set land speed records at Daytona.

“Absolutely!”

After a long time away, I was back on the bridge.

If your life hasn’t included the wonderful vistas of community theatre, you may not be aware of the invisible world that exists away from center stage. (You may also be a lot less sleep-deprived and have a much more normal sense of humor, but I digress.) Behind the performers who spin the stories and create the characters are an entire army of people, all of them dedicated to keeping that secondary reality alive and vibrant.

Most of those folks have pretty specific jobs – the light designer, the props master/mistress, the crew chief for building the sets, and so on. Some are wider-ranging: the producer who oversees the logistics, the stage manager who keeps the show running smoothly when the curtain rises, and of course, the director who brings it all together with their own unique vision.

Assistant directing is a little different. The job has basically two pieces:

  • Whatever the director wants it to be, and
  • Whatever you make it, within the constraints of part one.

A few directors turn this into a “gofer” but most know better. In essence, the AD is a second brain, a second set of hands and eyes, and a filler-in of missing pieces.

A director who’s more creative than organized may have an AD who helps create plans and schedules.

A director who’s not technically savvy may choose one who can translate their ideas to the technical director (or in smaller companies, may also BE the technical director).

And any director who can’t be everywhere – which is all of them until we manage to invent that pesky time machine – benefits from having someone who can see the action from a different angle, think about the scene from a different perspective, go over the notes and say “Have you considered …?”

Speaking as someone who’s been a director long ago and far away (in that otherworldly dimension of Kansas), those gifts can be invaluable. It’s that “click” that creates peanut butter and jelly, John Williams and Star Wars, three-day weekends and a full tank of gas – good by themselves, but even better together.

And the best part is, you don’t have to be a theater person to get it.

Most of us have the chance to be someone else’s missing piece, if we think to look for it. A lot of us don’t. We focus on our own needs, we look for familiar situations. And when we do team up, we often look for someone just like ourselves – no risk of conflict, but limited chances to grow.

It’s when we step outside what we’ve known that the magic can happen. To not just pursue our own needs and visions, but help others with theirs.

The more we do it, the more opportunities we see. And the easier it gets to accept help when we need it ourselves.

And personally, I can’t wait to see what this opportunity brings.  My notebook is ready. My eyes are open. My mind is eager.

The invisible world awaits.

Let’s go set the stage.

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Stage Left

There’s a doorknob on my desk from a troupe that ceased to be.

The Doorknob Award usually garners a few questions when people notice it. The simple answer is that it’s a prize given for overcoming technical difficulties, where the set broke down but the actor didn’t. I got it for navigating a grease-covered stage as the moustache-twirling villain in a melodrama, after the audience got a bit too enthusiastic about throwing popcorn.

It’s one of my favorite things that I ever brought home from the Community Theatre of Emporia. And now it has to be a lasting memory.

This week, I found out the CTE is no more.

I’ve never lost a theatre company before. I never really believed one could. Like most disasters, it’s a possibility you can be intellectually aware of without realizing it can happen to you. It seems even less likely when the company has a long run, 34 years in the case of the CTE.

But sometimes, in spite of everything, the show really doesn’t go on.

There were a lot of reasons. There always are. The company had to move out of its base in the Emporia Arts Council about the time I moved out of Kansas, and never really found another permanent home. Toward the end, there was never quite enough money and never quite enough hands on deck, a familiar refrain to many actors and producers. It’s always been easier to get people to see a show than to perform in one, and in this over-busy day and age, even getting them to be an audience takes a lot of work.

Funny. So many times it never felt like work. Not really.

I think many of us have a space like that. The home away from home, the place you come because you want to, not because you have to. And whether it’s a church, or a pub, or a reading group, or a stage – or even an online community – it comes to feel like an extension of your own family, a place where, as the song goes, everybody knows your name.

Losing a place like that can feel like a death. When the bookstore closes or the website goes away or the mall gets bulldozed, it leaves behind questions, confusion and uncertainty about the future. It’s easy to rehash the deed and wonder if anything could have changed it, to get angry or depressed or numb.

For an actor, the poignancy has a jagged edge. After all, we create dreams. We turn sweat and imagination into worlds that never were. To be reminded that the magic has limits, that all our powers of sub-creation still have to bow to the world outside the stage door – it’s humbling. And more than a little frightening.

Like many a mourner, it would be too easy for me to get lost in grief. So instead, I’ll raise my virtual glass to stir the echoes, strengthen the memories, and wake up the ghosts.

Here’s to the CTE.

Here’s to the crew that performed outdoor Shakespeare in 95 degree heat and 95 percent humidity, bringing the same passion whether the audience held 100 people or three.

Here’s to the company that made sets fall apart on command and who improvised fast when they fell apart without one.

Here’s to my role as an actor literally playing God in “J.B.,” complete with a beard that belonged on a Pearl Street busker.

Here’s to blunted swords and guns with blanks, to robber bridegrooms and roaring Roosevelts, to Christmases on the road with “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.”

And yes, here’s to popcorn-covered stages so slick you could skate on them.

Here’s to you, my friends and family. May our creation rest in peace and live in memory.

And someday, like a stage-door ghost, may it rise and walk again.