So, after an hour-long drive into Connecticut, passing street names that included Mansfield and Sedgewick (you can tell in which part of Connecticut we were), we finally arrived at our destination school. Where the fun began.
I was charged with driving the cargo van that day, which, for those of you who have not followed Theatreworks-style shows in, is a large, white, windowless, unmarked Sprinter van. We store all of our set pieces in the back, and the cab has seating for two. Many rather PG-13 jokes have been made about that vehicle, and the sad irony of the circumstance is that we regularly drive this vehicle onto school property. Well, today, things got a little too close for comfort. As I followed our contact towards the double-doors that lead to the stage, I discovered the strange folly of this plan: my route took me across the four-square court and straight into the iced-over playground, where I would park and begin unloading. Add to that the scruffy beard I'm
sporting and my generally disheveled, I-only-got-about-five-hours-of-sleep-last-night-and-can't-be-bothered-to-dress-for-success appearance, and we were setting up a recipe for disaster. Nothing happened, of course, but I did get a rather strange look from our contact as I exited the van.
Anyway, inside the school, things only got stranger. For demonstrative purposes, here's a picture of our set as it is usually put together:
See that thing with the "Brown's Farm" sign on it? Well, that is supposed to be 17 feet back from the front of the stage. And our playing space is, ideally, 26 feet wide. So, when the back curtain comes down to cover a brick wall that is 10 feet from the front lip and the width of the whole thing hits 20 feet, you wind up with this:
Yep, our second modified show in as many days. You may notice that we lost the house-like structure on stage left? Well, guess whose house that is? Yep. Farmer Brown is apparently also hurting in this economy. So, after a day of the cows going crazy reblocking around a lost bovine, it was Colleen and I who bore a loss this time. Suddenly, it appeared that Farmer Brown lived behind a tree, which at least one little munchkin caught. Practically-speaking, our entry space was only about a foot wide (and our blocking necessitated that, at one point, three people stream out from back there), so we all became extraordinarily conscious of our spacing. Plus, we lost almost all of our backstage changing space, which meant that the frantic three-people-at-once chicken change involved a ton of clothes throwing, grunting, elbowing and (in my case) costume losing.
But, as with most all Theatreworks adventures, it worked, and the kids were none the wiser. In fact, I think this may have had had some of the best teacher reactions we've had yet. For a rather stone-faced group to begin with, Aaron's breakout section in "Loretta's Anthem" (this part includes lyrics like "I've got a feeling in all four of my stomachs") smashed any remaining resistance, and we had them for the rest of the show. And, peeking around from behind my new "tree" home, I did catch one fairly-attractive teacher pointing at our of our other male actors and mouthing to a fellow teacher, "he's cute." Oh, the magic of live theater...
Call tomorrow: 10:!5am, 108th and Amsterdam. Off to Wallingford!
Kid quote of the day: When the cows decide to recruit those "disgusting chickens" to join the strike and we made our entrance, one little kid shouted: "Boo chickens! Yay Cows!"
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