Kelli and I wheeled our play out into public for the first time last week. The premier of Sacred Underwear: Nuns and Mormons Revealed! was a smashing success!
The staff at Cafe Ole were all incredibly kind and supportive. They fed us and let us completely rearrange the furniture to suit our purposes. (Leave it to a gay man to start redecorating immediately on arrival.)
Q-Nite usually hosts musicians and occasionally stand-up comedy. So our show was a little something different for the space. Dennis, the Q-Nite producer, started the evening with an incredibly generous and flattering introduction telling the crowd they were in for something "unusual" and "special". What a great way to start!
We had a full house, about 30 people. They were engaged, attentive and respectful. The laughed and they cried. They were every performer's dream audience.
The show felt great. The words just flowed. I did several scenes, the important stuff, completely off notes, which really helped me create and feel the connection to the audience.
I took them to funny places, happy places, sad places, tragic places, back to funny places and finally to a meaningful and thoughtful place at the end. Knowing I can evoke all those desired emotions is incredible.
The time did not just fly by. The pace felt right. I was able to enjoy what I was doing, while I was doing it, and be conscious of the emotions that I not only wanted them to feel, but felt myself. In fact, that's when I thought it worked the best. As each emotion of each story came to me on stage, I transmitted those feelings to the audience.
Like I said, it felt great.
About half way through, I remembered to step back in my mind, to be aware of the space, the people, how I'd arrived there and what it all meant to me. Having a whole hour on stage allowed me to feel relaxed and yet focused.
Kelli and I got a bunch of props and costumes. They were simple but effective. The wig was a great visual running joke, because we used if for every one of the female characters.
Because of all the stuff we bought, we took a big financial loss on the night. But we now own most of what we need to make the show work. So it was a good investment. The only major thing we're missing are nun's habits. I wore my bathrobe instead. I thought it actually worked as a funny, second-grade-school-play sort of visual gag.
Thanks to our technical rehearsal in my apartment three days prior, the show went very smoothly. I didn't quite realize just how important and useful the mundane parts of that rehearsal turned out to be until afterwards. Blocking to a play is just about as vital as electricity. You take it for granted, but absolutely nothing happens without it.
Act One, Kelli's story, ran about 40 minutes. Act Two, my story, ran just over an hour. So with the intermission, the whole thing came in at just over 2 hours. Kelli and I agree that it needs to be cut down a bit.
Now I don't think the length was a big problem. I could see they were getting a tad tired by the end, but not severely. And I think that when we put it in a theater with comfortable seats instead of a coffee house with hard wood seats, length will be less of an issue. I don't think I need to make more than 10 or 15 minutes of cuts, at the most.
Now that I've gotten the words out there once, I find the idea of cutting parts to which I was previously holding tightly, to be much easier. The shift in attitude is so significant that I'm a smidge surprised. Already I'm finding myself thinking, "yeah, those were some nice words, but I can let them go, and those, and those." The staged reading is such an incredibly useful creative tool, I don't know how any writer could ever finish a script without it. I certainly don't think I could.
I'm pleased and relieved the video turned out to be usable. The audio has some glitches, but it's certainly watchable. And I can clean it up a bit in editing. We're not going to publish it. (Sorry.) But it will be a useful creative tool for editing and a useful business tool for showcasing the project.
After some editing, and perhaps another staged reading, the next step will be pitching producers and theater festivals like Fresh Fruit and The Fringe Festival. And who knows ... why not the Edinburgh Festival?
We bought a domain for the show: www.sacredunderwear.com
My empire on the web continues to grow! Muwahahahaha!
The site is nothing special, yet. Mostly it's just a place holder. But even just what's there is so much more than so many small shows have. Both the artistic and business sides of this project are coming into focus nicely.
The whole experience has been incredible. In the days leading up to the show, everything in the world seemed so bright and vivid. Everywhere I went I saw color and beauty and meaning.
After the show, sitting and chatting with people in that Trenton, New Jersey coffee house I had this thought....
"It's an awfully long way from here to Broadway."
But no matter. I've taken my first step on the path.
1 comments:
I so very much wish I could have been there. But I'll have to wait for some later venue in the Big Apple. Or you could showcase it in Los Angeles... (grin)
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