How Fine is a Frog’s Hair?
So opening night is under the company’s collective belt and things went finer than a frog’s hair, to quote Ida Red. I sat in the audience and observed and listened (a little obsessively) to their reactions. After a while, I just relaxed and enjoyed the show. I can say with authority that The Weavers is a fun watch!
Adam and Julianna wonder what the heck was I thinking.
Tonight (Friday, February 25) we’re having a talkback session after the show. Theatre making may seem a rare bird to many, and company members will be onstage to answer any and all audience questions. And yeah, let’s hear it for company members!
A draft of a play is like a blueprint. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the actors, director, dramaturg, sound and light designer, costume and set designer, and/or the stage manager may have trouble understanding my blueprint. To me, questions of this sort are golden. Unfortunately, to no one’s satisfaction, I may have trouble explaining what I meant or why something happens the way it does.
Sometimes company members take matters in their own hands and solve a problem themselves. For example, here’s a line from an earlier draft of the play: “I wished everything could stay like this forever.” The director suggested we add on to that line. Here’s the result: “I wished everything could stay like this forever. But it doesn’t.”
How many different ways can you say, “But it doesn’t”? You can read it very dark and bitter-sounding. You can read it with varying degrees of sadness. You can read it in a matter-of-fact way. The final choice was to go with matter of fact. So accept and embrace change would be the message there. Without going into spoiler territory, this line reading says a lot about a certain character’s journey through the play. Three words can make all the difference!
