house of i'll give you something to cry about

going into this weekend's shows fresh off various nightmares of ingeniously disastrous failure, i realise i never mentioned last weekend.
we giggled when a finial of the 4-poster-bed in the "guestroom" broke off mid-scene as "anthony" was about to divulge his (lie about a) suspected brain tumor, but the following night i learned what happens when you leave 1-too-many drawers open in a dresser on a rake while frantically packing your shit (lingerie en l'air) to escape the horrible nightmare- the dresser fell over as i was packing the suitcase, luckily, considering the size of said "guestroom", not onto either myself or "anthony". we picked it and its drawers up the way anybody would, keeping the dialogue going, and it was mostly fine except for the brief break of "omygod that dresser's falling...oh, ok..." but i still feel like i fucked up on the candle- they switch on/off and look really good, flicker and everything- but i feel like when it fell (off the falling dresser) i shoulda turned it off like it "went out"- grims points out that then the lights woulda made no sense because the room should go black without it (power outage)- but i don't know...
i shoulda known shit would be weird when on thursday night we had an audience member dressed (in drag, "melissa") as jackie-o (unbloodied).
i thought it'd bother me least since my character hasn't built an entire reality around that pink chanel suit, and was feeling bad for "jackie" and "marty" until shortly after curtain when i was shown to the "guestroom" (where i spend most of my time) to find the pink chanel suit staring directly @ me in a "room" too small to escape it. i spent half the play thinking "i don't know anything i don't know anything" and trying not to see it before i was told the secret. it was awful.
i walking prepared for anything, the rest of this run...
walk good.

the house of no

during our 1st preview (thus 1st audience) an actor was recorking the glass decanter and the bottle's neck+body separated- she was holding the neck and the stopper, and the bottom just fell out, spilling the "liquor" all over the "living room". she had to invent lines and others had to grab towels and clean up during the scene- i spend a chunk of the show barefoot and there was broken glass cleverly disguised by shiny slippery puddles onstage.
then there was the no-warning last-minute addition of dried macaroni to a costume piece that's been shedding onstage every night since. i found out (literally) the hard way when i walked barefoot (painfully) on hard-as-rocks macaroni elbows onstage during the show, then and almost every night since.
but the house of yes opening last week went pretty well, up until the final scene. we got mostly through our no-intermission 90minute play, major emotional breakdowns peppered with (hopefully) comic timing and shitload of actor business, i entered for the confrontation+climax, started the fight which my "fiance" tried to diffuse with nursery rhyme as scripted, he said his "hey diddle diddle" and asked about the involvement of silverware in said rhyme, and then nobody entered to bring the conversation back to the issues @ hand or get the other character still onstage off so me+"fiance" could have it out.
i'm told the whole thing, from unexpected pause to "fiance" covering with more nursery rhyming to overhearing another actor in the wings debate entering unscripted so things'd get rolling to trying to determine what lines i could deliver with an unexpected character onstage while not ruining the climax, took 20-25seconds. not that long in the larger scheme of things, but onstage with shit fucked up, it was the longest half-minute of my life, not counting the last of waiting for medical test results.
it was opening night; we knew we had press in the house. we hemmed+hawed and repeated ourselves, saying a lot of nothing so we wouldn't give shit away too early (while i tried to maintain my character's upset rather than my own) until the anticipated entrance happened and things could proceed as planned. terrifying in the moment, but after, all i could think was that reviews would say i went up on lines, not realising it wasn't me since "fiance" spoke and i didn't answer immediately- vanity, i know. but i knew the show'd been good and was devastated that it might look like i fucked it up for everybody. i mean, i was the one who suggested this show to the company a year ago in the 1st place, if that gives any idea of my personal investment in this production...i almost went to the lobby for the reception in tears.
anyway, i've only seen 2reviews- 1 very positive, 1 that clearly didn't get it (dislikes the premise of the script to start with so production+performances are irrelevant)- neither mentioned the hiccup, so i'm over it, except as a theatre-horror-story. and keeping with that theme, here i share 2 best theatre-horrors witnessed by theatre professionals i trust enough to repeat:
westside story- a friend was in the audience when the gun accidentally went off in the final scene while pointed @ maria (who doesn't get shot in the show)- he said he watched the actor realise (horrified) what happened and consciously make the choice to 'keep it real' and drop dead, script+finale be damned!
and wizard of oz stupidly decided to use a live dog where possible although they hadn't in rehearsal, and blocked dorothy to enter with toto via the audience centre-aisle; dorothy and her new live toto were having some trouble and she had to yank+drag him by the leash for the 1st part of her entrance. she got to the edge of the stage wondering why the audience was reacting strangely then realised she'd yanked the leash too vigourously and broken toto's neck, and had just dragged a dead dog behind her the last few feet up the aisle...top of the show...and if i'm not getting old stories mixed up, later in the run with the fake dog the flying monkeys accidentally dropped(+killed?) toto...plus, this production gets extra horror points for fucking up a creature feature- the mental scarring of those students...
makes me feel better about the house of yes- even with good review, that half-minute-memory still scares the shit outta me. as if i needed any more to be scared about (see previously-linked-post) @ curtain each night...
walk good.

so good i missed hitchcock's denoument

catching up on defective yeti (sidebar); his top model spoof is too good to not share.
last night was the house of yes opening night. when i can think i'll type.
walk good.

publication and other noteworthies...

i know it's been forever, but we all know how life is. i'll keep the catching up as brief as i can and stick to the important points:
1. the upcoming (august2008) akashic collection trinidad noir will contain one of my stories. i'm not important enough that my name's on the cover, but i'm "and others" and so fucking excited! i can't wait to read the rest of it, too...
2. grims had surgery to deal with a herniated/fragmented/extruded disc. it was a long, tough summer, followed by a scary, but seemingly simple, fix. knock wood/bone/whatever. but as good as dr.levine was to him, i take issue with sitting for hours in the waiting room for a loved one having spinal surgery and being forced to deal with er on the damn tv- that shit is ridiculous- 2hours back to back of people dying horrible bloody deaths? so wrong.
3. chronologically #2, a respite for grims; just pre-surgery we went to a family wedding in bim, which was excellent, and i would love to say more about but i'm waiting for grims to post some damn pictures already. but it was a good time- me+grims, my parents, the gremlin, her girl ariam all stayed @ this guesthouse with some very cool friends of the bride-our-cousin. we limed, went to the beach, cruised on a catamaran, wined+dined+danced @ the wedding, went to bars and out dancing, partied with old friends+family all together again...wonderful. grims had a great time swimming with turtles and bobbing in the ocean (good for him, too) just chilling out so i was happy for him.
4. we also had a thanksgiving gremlin- when she heard dionne was coming by us, she got jealous and started looking @ ticket prices, which were crazy low. next thing we knew she was on a plane to us. grims was well enough to cook (provided i got the turkey into the cart, into the car, into the house, into the fridge, onto the counter, into the oven, back out+in+out again, and into and out of the fridge a couple more times before it was light enough for him to manage on his own) and he outdid himself. and the 2rounds of turkey tetrazini after were also most excellent. the only shitty thing about thanksgiving was waking up thursday morning (and every one after for a week) with a terrible and worsening pain in the jaw. it's good now, but it made thanksgiving and rehearsals awful- i always forget there's nothing like pain in the teeth.
5. again with the poor chronology- rehearsals for the house of yes commenced for me as soon as we got back from bim. they actually started the day we left the country and i was to return to d.c. off-book, so the other thing i did in b'dos was learn lines. on the beach and the catamaran and shit. i did good, though. i came back off-book. i don't think i've really talked about this show yet and tonight's our last preview, opening night tomorrow. i love this play, and it's amazing to have a chance to be in it before i leave d.c. it's one of my 2 long-time-favourite american plays; i actually saw the company i'm working with (also the children's hour, equus, edward3) do my other favourite (tiny alice) years ago. the house of yes is the kind of show i'll never do in trini because part of its plot hinges on a certain fascination with the kennedy assassination, which just isn't that important @ home. not that i care about it either; i think it's a very well-written script (she calls it a "suburban jacobean play"). i assistant directed and stage managed a university production of it, and being in it now as my last d.c. gig is cool. we have a brilliant director+cast and it's such good work. the only shitty part of the gig is that my character gets treated like crap by everybody else for most of the play, enters dripping wet from a hurricane with smudged mascara (line comments on it) that gets cleaned up during the make-up phase of the quick-change for 'thanksgiving dinner' which entails not only getting made up in the dark backstage, but putting on evening dress+heels and letting dreadlocks down to hang dripping wet down my back for the entire scene. like equus i have to be waxed and otherwise prepared to be seen in bra+panties, and bawl, and i have a scene that involves frantically packing+unpacking a suitcase in the (relative)dark on my knees while maintaining dialogue with specific lines that revolve around what's happening with the suitcase, thus requiring the suitcase prepacking and onstage unpacking into the drawers then frantic repacking then frantic re-repacking then latching for exit on a specific line to be perfect every time. i'm tired just thinking about the scene now, so i'm guessing this one won't get easier. but i love the piece.
6. dj-friend-of-bajan-cousin-bride who was lovely company all wedding-week spun a righteous set on brap.fm while i was getting ready for rehearsal/photocall last wednesday and is on again this wednesday 10pm-midnight/gmt (5-7pm/d.c.)- big up evilkeg+giraffedog.net (who doesn't love "technological innovation without aggravation"?)!
i'm all typed out, and pretty much caught up with promise of photo-linkage to come and more regular blogging as things settle into performing, selling the house, packing+preparing to move...talk soon.
walk good.