Big weekend

Closing

Well, this has been a rather extraordinary weekend.

I went and saw "Papa", the show playing before our show, on Thursday night. It's been virtually impossible to see their show on nights when we perform, since they don't finish until 5-10 minutes before when we're theoretically supposed to start our show. This was not part of the original plan, but we're flexible in the theatre world when we have to be. So, I wanted to be a good neighbor and check out the show when I could. It was quite good, actually. I'm not a big fan of one persons shows, generally speaking, but for what it was it was very well done. I found myself wanting to explore various assertions about Hemingway's life in more depth than the show allowed, but that's a good thing. Always leave them wanting more, you know. Afterwards, I was planning on meeting up with coworkers for a birthday celebration, but had no idea where to meet them. All I knew was that they were heading to the Marina. Chris Hayes works at the Eureka and was the person who got me in the space in the first place. He's friends with some of the guys in Los Angeles' Second City troupe, and they were in town for Shaun Landry's San Francisco Improv Festival. So, I joined him and we caught cab down to the bar they were at. Apparently, they had a fantastic show that night. I got the impression that three acts had played that night, and all of them had rocked the house like a Scorpion's set. I had a couple of beers and talked about Vagina Dentata and RadioStar. I hadn't had time to eat that night, so I got very tipsy very fast. This is never a wise choice, and I ended up slightly drunkenly inviting David Razowski to come and play with Pharmarsupial when he visited San Francisco on his next vacation.

Very smooth, I can be, when drunk and happy. There was a small voice in the back of my brain yelling at me to shut the hell up and let the man alone, but we were all in a friendly mode and my common sense wasn't paying much attention at the time.

I got the call from Rebeca Diaz, letting me know where to meet up for Marycruz Diaz's birthday gathering. So off I was in another cab up to the Matrix bar for more late night revelry. Now, the Marina is a whole different scene from most of the places I hang out, but I was feeling pretty limber. I chatted up a cute girl at the bar while I was getting a drink for the birthday girl, but wasn't able to follow up as I needed to deliver my birthday present.

Now, remember, I hadn't eaten all night, and had a Guinness, and white German beer of unknown appelation, and two screwdrivers by this point. I met another woman who came in and talked for a few seconds with her before she found her friends and vanished from my besotted and fond gaze. Throughout the evening, I would look over and check her out, hoping for another chance to talk to her. I was tipsy as hell, but quite lucid. Rebeca noticed my attention and I commented that guy she'd been talking to had been keeping his distance. In my mind, that meant that I might have a chance to swoop in shortly... and then looked back over to find her making out passionately with him.

Fuck.

It's a bad sign when you find yourself getting jealous about total strangers in a bar. It was well after hours by that point, though, and I needed to wait it out and get a ride home with the Diaz sisters. I finally got home around 2 or 2:30... I'm honestly not sure which.

It made going to work the next morning and interesting experience.

Throughout the day at work I got various calls on my cell, and checked voicemail at home, and watched the reservation list for Vagina Dentata grow and grow. By the time I got to the theatre, we have over fifty people on the reservation list. For a small theatre production, that's wonderful. For a late night (10pm) show, that's damn near mythical. I was very excited, and realized that we had run out of programs. One of my actors, Stefanie Goldstein, offered to take me to her office, which isn't that far from the theatre, and we made up about 75 programs on the copier. We got back with lots of room to spare and I fiddled about getting things ready for our show while "Papa" played on in the theatre. Time ticked further and further on, and I became more and more aware that we were missing something crucial: a box office manager. As people began to arrive at the box office, I put out a sign indicating when we'd actually be opening it and called my volunteer.

He had forgotten what day it was.

Cassidy Brown was in the crowd waiting for the box office to open, so I made him earn his comp ticket for the night and put him on duty. I gave him the quick orientation and then waited for the final notes of "Papa's" performance. Warren Jensen was there, so he could learn the light cues for our closing night as we were going to be losing our light operator. Kurt DiSessa was there as well, and I had offered him a comp if he'd help with the rapid set change. As the ovation subsided for "Papa" we swept in and began making the changeover. While I dropped the wire from the ceiling and starting hanging the wall panels, they brought the desk down the aisle and up on the stage. Then they went and got the conference table from the wings, and it broke as they tried to maneuver it onstage. Drills were grabbed and brackets refastened as I thanked whatever gods watch over the theatre that this happened on a night when we had extra hands.

Finally, the table was repaired enough to survive the show and we opened the house. We had over seventy people that night. The theatre claims to hold two hundred, but looking out at the house, I think that this number is inflated. Seventy filled the primary middle section very nicely. We started the show about 10:15pm and had a rocking old time. It was the largest single audience in Cassandra's Call's history.

Sunday was a whole different deal, as I borrowed Eden Tosh's car to go to Fairfield for my Great Uncle Mac's 90th birthday gathering. I saw people I hadn't seen since I was a wee shaver, and was amazed at how sharp, spry, fit, and feisty my uncle was. I can only hope and pray for that kind of longevity. May we all ready 90 and be cracking wise about beer and women while still moving around easily under our own power.

I picked Eden up afterwards in Pleasant Hill. She had been tooling around with Angela Mazur, so we sat for a bit, cooling our toes in the pool before jumping out for some thai food. Time got away from us, sadly and I had to whisk Eden away in order to get to the theatre by 9pm for our closing night. Eden was our box office manager for the evening, and while we only had 24 people on the reservation list, I wanted things to go smoothly. We made our final switch over, and when all was ready to go, there were over fifty people in the house. We had doubled our reservation list.

The show snapped like fresh elastic. Every one of the ladies had a good night, and everything sang. At the end, Gigi gave me roses and I gave them to the cast and thanked the audience and they roared like a village of vikings who had just been given free beer.

It was a good feeling... a VERY good feeling.

Andy and Lorelei, and Cindy Yee and Warren stayed afterwards to help us strike the set. It seemed pointless to put stuff away just to strike it the next day, so we got everything out of there that night. While making the final leg of the journey back to my rehearsal room, the desk that had sat in my apartment for years and barely survived the trip to the theatre in the first place, finally gave out. Particle board and wooden dowlings, secured by soft metal angle brackets, splintered and snapped and fell apart. It had seen it's last day. I broke it into pieces and tossed it in the room for later management. It was almost 1:30am and I was in mood to try and salvage it.

Sunday came, and I returned to the theatre to help "Papa" strike their set for a few hours before catching a bus across town to see Mindy Lym in "Seussical". The show was charming and sweet, and I marvelled at the size of the cast and the choreography and wondered how they got all that together while rehearsing in my room. After the show, lacking the change for bus fare, I walked the two miles back to the room, which took me through the tenderloin. After watching musical versions of Horton Hears a Who, with one lone elephant hearing an invisible community's cry for help... taking in the Tenderloin takes on a new poignancy.

I got to the room, though, and set things up for RadioStar. We had a smashing session, although were were few in number. David Austin-Groen is off in Eastern Europe, and Diana Brown is off doing "Dead Certain" in New York. Still, we got some damn good shows in the can and then retired to our usual watering hole to decompress. While there, Christopher DeJong proposed a RadioStar holiday show that dovetailed with some ideas I had been having about a scripted show.

To make an already way too long story a little less long, it looks like I now have a project in between "Get it? Got it. Good!" and the March revival of "Vagina Dentata." We don't have a name for it yet though.

And no, this is not what I would consider to be a slow weekend.