The home stretch
Tonight is the final performance of “Spinning Into Butter,” and, as always, there are mixed feelings. It is similar to the experience of owning a boat. As the saying goes, “The two best days of my life were the day I bought the boat and the day I sold the boat.”
Theatre, like the survival of the human race, depends on our mercifully short memory for pain. If pain remained vivid in our memories, women would only have one child and actors would perform in only one play. As in childbirth, there are certain rewards to acting that diminish the pain.
I find myself in an advanced state of exhaustion and furiously craving a respite from theatrical activities. Once I have a summer of camping, hiking, canoeing and picnicking under my belt, I will be ready to charge once more into the breach.
We have had full houses all week and they have been remarkably responsive. I would go so far as to call the crowds the last two nights downright rowdy. They have been connecting with a vengeance.
The space in which we are performing is very intimate. That is to say, we are surrounded by the audience on three sides and are within touching distance of the front row. For instance, during one of my more obnoxious scenes, I distinctly heard one woman in the front row say, “Jesus, what an asshole!” It is quite a challenge to not to break character and gloat over having provoked such a response.
Along with many other bloggers, I will be participating in the May Day Project. Unlike most bloggers, I will be devoting my photos and commentary exclusively to the show. That is appropriate since the show is my life at the moment. My entire family, Dad, both kids and their partners, both grandkids, and my lovely Reiko will be in attendance tonight. That’s four generations, including the one onstage. You can rest assured that I will give them something to remember. Performing for those you love always motivates you to ramp it up a notch.
We’ll all be going out to dinner before the show and my May Day documentation will begin there. I’ll do my best to give you some insights into the backstage goings on before, during and after the performance. As in most small theatres, the cast will be involved with “strike,” taking apart the set that has been our second home for several weeks.
This is a necessary evil that actors endure with barely concealed impatience. Most of us don’t know which end of a screwdriver the bullet comes out of and are reduced to carrying pieces of the set into storage along with retrieving miscellaneous bits of ordnance from the stage.
As much as we resent the delay in getting to the cast party, we also appreciate, grudgingly, the opportunity it presents for easing us into the transition to post-partum depression. We have time to come down a bit from the adrenaline jag of the final bow and prepare for the Bacchanalian revels of the cast party. It is quite possible that I will have to engage in some severe self-censorship when editing the photos of that event.
Actors, by nature, have few inhibitions. What few they have are generally discarded at the cast party. Add to that the fact that the entire cast, with one exception, is composed of college students and you have the makings of a brouhaha reminiscent of a change of government in a Central American country. Given my age and general state of debilitation, I will probably make a graceful retreat before I can document any of the more extreme excesses.
Then, I will self-medicate to whatever degree necessary, sleep late on Sunday and probably not post the incriminating evidence until sometime in the afternoon. That may be stretching the rules of the May Day Project. I plead nolo contendere.
One of my own theatrical traditions is to create individual cards for each of the cast and crew members, thanking them for being part of my temporary family. That task remains before I can shuffle off this mortal coil. I’d best get to it.
12:59:12 AM 
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