Down To The Wire

It's Sunday at 2 pm and James just handed me a Martini; three days before All That You Can't Leave Behind is to be performed for the first time on stage. Stacy is here too, she's the other lead actor, and without her the play wouldn't be possible. It's a first for many things today. We have our first table reading and decide that it was good, but it'd be better to take it into the gallery where the play will be performed. After a cocktail or two and some experimentation the dialogue loosens and the chemistry is becoming evident. This is going to be good!-- but there's one catch. The acoustics of the gallery are not the best. The actor's voices are being swallowed up. And to make things more complicated, the play requires a good degree of dynamic range in its vocal delivery. So Gary and myself, sitting far back where the audience will be seated, bring this issue to Stacy and James' attention. They agree a mic'd stage is not a very good option, since actors move about and dealing with a sound mix in such a situation can be tricky, if not obnoxious. Eventually the volume issue is dealt with and resolved to a certain degree, but the day is not finished.

It's about 5 pm and my mother has shown up with some air brush make-up and all her accessories to work on Stacy and James. She's going to do a trial to see how her make-ups work with their skin tones and textures. The good thing is that they don't require much for the style of play we're doing and the trial is over before I even knew it began. After spending some time with the parents, they're soon on their way back home and I'm talking with a fellow resident about recording the play on a camcorder. It would be nice to "tape" the play on an HD camera but it's looking like a futile effort, as Donald's camcorder is just that: A camcorder, and an old one at that. Then comes the hammering of nails from the storage room. And that reminds me that the stage isn't complete yet. Because Tom is still building it, the two remaining "quadrants" of the stage still have to be constructed. But there's no need to worry, because Tom works at light speed and by the time it takes me to sum up this blog, he'd be done and moving onto dinner. But there's more than just the construction of the stage to deal with. The tops of the stage sections, all six of them, have to be carpeted, carpeted by the rug that was so generously donated to me by Frank Loria of Loria's 112 Carpet Center in Medford (the wood for the stage was graciously supplied by Sachem Building Supply, so a thank you to them as well). To make a long story short, we carpet one of the sections and realize we might just need more time to do this than we thought, so that will have to be pushed off until tomorrow night. That and the curtains. Ah! The curtains. I knew I forgot something. That we can take care of on Tuesday, one day before the play, and in the meantime, we'll be rehearsing every night. We're going to make this play sizzle and we're going to make it be heard, even if we have to get a sound system. There's still much to do, but for now, there's no telling what kind of curve ball will be thrown our way. I just hope it's not thrown so fast.