Basically, most of my day was a blur.
Today I did a live television interview with CHAT TV News, our local TV station, for their noon news segment. And I HAD A BLAST. Those guys are so much fun, and are HUGE Evil Dead fans to boot. It was fantastic. Of course, that whole 'paying job' thing was also in the mix today, thankfully, I had many jobs that kept me busy for most of the day. Thank you to my patients that picked the perfect time for me to be stuck in the lab swamped in custom jobs all day, so that my brain was focused elsewhere!
Okay. I have been on stage MANY times. I have been a lead actress MANY times.
I have never felt the nerves and the panic as I did today, on any opening night EVER. I was a wreck. Mostly, because my OCD needed to take a back seat, because as of today, the show was no longer 'mine'. It was in the hands of the cast and crew that I had so maticulously selected. And although I have complete faith in each and every one of them.... I was still a paranoid freak. I was mostly okay until I peeked through the bar curtain and saw strangers in line. The gravity of the fact that I had a real, live audience hit me like a tonne of bricks. Whoa. We're DOING THIS.
BUT....
WHAT A NIGHT! Aside from a few panicky technical glitches, we have ONE HELL OF A SHOW! I have to remind myself that the audience probably wasn't the wiser, and that whatever I deemed as a catastrophe, was actually solved efficiently and quickly. A character's mic wasn't working for the first 2 scenes.
The bulb in my spotlight burned out, and during intermission we had to scramble to set up our old backup shitty spotlight. etc. etc. etc. These are all minor problems in the long run, that really had no lasting effect on the quality and pure awesomeness of the show. (And yes, I just used the word awesomeness. In fact, I found out that it's officially the International Day of Awesome. And this certainly held true in the CTAC tonight.)
The audience loved it. They joined in on the familiar lines. They cheered, they 'awwwed', they applauded.....
Ladies and Gentlemen.... we have done it. It's one hell of a show. And already, the rave reviews are flooding in on the Facebook event site.
This is the best theatrical experience of my life.
Hey..... I've got an idea!!! LET'S DO IT AGAIN!!!!!! TOMORROW!!!
Your enthusiasm is infectious, and to date, this has been the most challenging, fun, hair-raising, stressful and satisfying show I've been involved in my 20 years in amateur theatre.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I hate when things go wrong, I love seeing everyone pull together to solve a problem, and I always rate the severity of an issue to how it might be perceived by the audience (not how it's perceived in the total panicky bedlam of the 'booth') And last nights technical issues (while severe) were almost transparent to the audience. It's an amazingly satisfying experience to see people snap to the ready, especially when the two sound guys are too busy working the show to go fix the sound problem (THANKS CHRISSY AND GEORGE! You're life savers!)
You should be proud.