My life has been taken over by the festival. When I auditioned for the second show, I thought it would be like the first one. Shorter. Less rehearsals. Less time commitment.But, no. The show is only about an hour long. But it's a musical, with all new original music. And lots of harmony. And some choreography. And I'm onstage pretty much the whole time. Oh, and there's zombies.
It's a full rehearsal schedule. PLUS the other show's rehearsals. And I've been sick. So I'm a little stressed. OK, quite a bit stressed. But I can make it through the 15th. I know I can. I can. I will. I must.
[deep breath]
I attended my first fringe festival in Philadelphia back in... oh, I dunno, 97? 98? Fringe festivals are great fun: you can see a bunch of theatre in one day, and there's samplings of all sorts of things... tragedy and comedy and absurdism and dance and monologues and street theatre and puppetry and ... it's a ball. Some of it's terrible and some of it's great, and a lot of it leaves you thinking. I saw one of the most amazing things ever at a Fringe fest. It was a play called Monster, and it was a one man show put on by a Canadian company. I sat in the theatre, a place I had been in countless times before, a building I had WORKED in, and clung to my best friend for dear life. I'm an actor. I understand plays, stories, fantasies. But never in my life have I been so convinced that someone might kill me at any second. I was cursing my propensity to sit in the front row. In two steps this man could be at my throat. He was telling the story, through several points of view, of a small town where people were disappearing. And it turns out they were being sawed to pieces in a man's basement. There was no set. No props. Just one brilliant actor, a gripping story, and a fabulous lighting scheme. At the end of the show he revealed the horrible "monster," the shadow on the floor behind him slowly disappearing. It was the most brilliant and creepy thing I have ever experienced. The show ended and my friend and I looked at each other. We agreed. The next show needed to be a comedy.
4 comments:
Ooh. Very creepy!
Scary!!! I don't know if I've ever been so taken with a show like that. I don't know if I want to be. ;)
I'm not sure I could have sat through all of that without freaking out!
OK, I know you know what you're doing, and I've commented before about how you NEED theater,but your being sick and also saying, "I can make it to the 15th" worries me. I lived like that until this summer. I hated life, even though I loved almost everyrthing I was doing. (And I was some degree of sick for most of two years due to my crazy life. Too crazy and too tired to get well.) I don't want to lecture. Just take care of yourself.
good luck with the festival--and wow, on the show. I've never seen anything like that. Happy Halloween to you and the May Queen.
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