End of Night

Theatre is all about making the audience believe in what you are saying. At least for the 2 hours you hold them captive. That is unless your audience is full of pretentious hipsters (Autocorrect totally made this monsters, which also works) too cool to take part in your awesome interactive experience.

 There is always one night that everything seems to go wrong. Tonight is that night. List time!

1. Lights.
I am not a light person. Never have been, never will be. Tonight I was the first person in the space, and as assistant stage manager, it is my job to turn lights on. So I opened the step by step instructions and tried to follow them to a t. Only problem was that someone did not properly shut them down last night. So i spent 30 minutes turning on the stupid lights. Gerr....lights....

2. Sound
While I was turning on lights, the sound designer came in looking for his laptop. He hid it in the lobby because the theatre was locked, but couldn't find it. Found the bag, but no laptop. Someone jacked it. He was very calm about, which was good, I guess. So all the music for our end of the world party is live drumming.

3. Ezra
Ezra is an actor. He is a problem all in himself. To my NYC friends, think Tiemen problem. Tonight was so full of Ezra problems, he gets his own sub-list.

A. Lost necklace. He starts the night as a homeless man on the street, ends it as mystic shamen. In between the two, he has a beaded necklace. He couldn't find it. Wasn't in the giant plastic bag, wasn't in the small fabric bag. I didn't believe him, or at least wanted to make sure. So i start digging. Wasn't in the fabric bag. Wasn't in the plastic bag. Finally found it in the smaller plastic bag filled with other plastic bags inside the bigger plastic bag. His response: "what would I do without you?"

B. Lost underwear. He has specific red boxer briefs he has to wear. Couldn't find them, asked me where they were. I told him that was one prop I wasn't going to keep track of for him. He finally found them stuffed behind a bike helmet in the top of a locker.

C. Lost pants. After he found his underwear, he couldn't find his pants. I took one look in the locker and found them in a ball on the bottom of it. His response: "what would i do without you?"

D. Body paint. Every cast member gets some paint, but he gets a whole lot. After the other Kristen was fired from the task, I got to step in as Ezra painter. Half way through the show he decided it wasn't right, so he was going to wipe it off and make me do it again.
"No, Ezra, you don't have time."
"Kristin, Kanome hasn't even started her poem."
"Every night you keep painting and it is never dry when you have to go on, so you're upset because you get paint on your pants. You don't have time."
"But my friends are here."
"Your friends won't know the difference."
"Yes they will, they've been staring at the stupid symbol all night."
"I don't care, Ezra, give me he baby wipe, you aren't taking it off!"
"But it's wrong!"
"Ezra, you're an actor, you know about status. Give me the status and shut up. You're on in a second." "Mean."

 I have a feeling that by the end of the run next week I could have a whole alphabet of Ezra problems. The guy is on his own planet most of the time, but I have such a soft spot for actors like him. They make me feel needed, because honestly, I don't know what he would do without me there picking up after him or finding his stuff.

4. No red paint or q tips.
Because of the large amount of painting going on, there is a run on red paint and q tips. The actors think It's the end if the world. They may have to use pink! Gasp!

5. Broken mirror. It fell off the wall. Good fun.

6. Dark. Kristen fell over a bench. Great fun.

Ok, so really, the show went well considering. Theatre has had a lot worse luck, that's for sure.

My tablet is about to die and McDonalds is about to close. This is enough for tonight.

 Until next time.