Zilker and the Music Man

Boy oh boy, has it been an experience working on this show!  I really enjoy it, but it's very foreign to me.

1) I'm a costumer.  I avoid the costume shop like a plague at school.  It is the least interesting, most frustrating part of a production for me.  The great thing about this show is that I'm working under a guy that graduated from my school two years ago, so he's someone I know and since we share the same background it's easy to ask him questions about how costumers and stage managers should interact.  This will be very useful to me in the future; however, Carl did have to teach me how to sit still and not try to fix everything backstage.

2) It's a long run.  Once a year we'll have a show (the musical) that runs for two weekends, but all our other shows are Tues-Sun then it's over.  This is every weekend (Thurs-Sun) for six weeks.  It's great because it gives me something to do every weekend until I go back to school and it's closer to what it will be like in the real world (hooray!).

3) It's outdoor theatre.  It's summer in Texas and we're putting on a show without a roof and therefore without air conditioning (except in the dressing rooms).  I've adapted very well to the heat and absolutely love being in the open air.  They even built a porch swing that is only used in the first scene of the show which Carl and I have claimed as our own.  Nothing better than sitting on a porch swing under the stars listening to a barbershop quartet sing 'Lider Rose.'   

The cast is great - fun, friendly, helpful, and good natured - and several others in the production staff are fantastic to be around.  There are the few bad apples that we do our best not to let under our skin, but it's a nearly flawless company so far as personalities go.

Whew!  I've written a lot, but here's what I was really planning to talk about: We had a GREAT show tonight.  Last weekend was extremely rough and the beginning of this week was slow to kick off (there was also a lot of sickness involved).  Tonight, everyone seemed to relax and enjoy themselves again.

Right before intermission, during the song 'Well's Fargo', they bring on a Well's Fargo wagon "pulled" by a wooden horse (a flat one, not like the Trojan one).  One of the actors, Leslie, is the driver of the wagon who unloads the instruments and he always interacts with the horse on his way to and from the wagon.  Problem is, he's short and the horse is very tall.  So tonight, Leslie misjudged and walked under the horse's head and his hat got knocked off.  At the same time, he managed to slip and fall in a dancerly way.  Those of us backstage were highly amused, but Leslie being a fabulous actor and perpetually in good spirits, blamed it on the very unmoving horse.

I thanked him for making my day, but then I was met with a strong challenger to that position.  After Marion and Harold meet at the footbridge and she tells him that she's known all along that he's a con man and doesn't care, Harold stays on the footbridge and she enters downstage and they trade off singing lines of a couple songs and are both very much in love.  Marion was leaning against the wall of the stage and got her hair (wig) caught on the bracket for a flagpole.  She played it off as well as she could, spending a lot of time with her hand on her neck and tugging at it while Harold was singing and the audience was supposed to be watching him.  However, it was stuck very firmly, so the ASM on my side ran to her side of the stage and stuck her arm around to help untangle the hairpiece.  Marion didn't move away from the wall, so those of us watching were convinced that it hadn't worked and were waiting for her to walk away with a couple of curls hanging on the bracket.  The song ended and she left the stage, the wig intact.

So it was a fabulous night and none of this would be possible without the joyous uncertainty of live theatre :)