A Crazy Night at the Theatre

Literally.

Last night was the opening of our regional one-act play festival/competition. As secretary of the committee I didn't have any role to fill for the evening, but of course I wanted to see the plays we've been hearing about for months. The first person I ran into was Mary-Ellen, committee president. In her careful way, she informed me that about 30 people in the audience were "disabled". Meaning, I found out, that they were all residents of a local group home for incurable mental patients. Fine with me. Not so far removed from our usual audiences, really. Mary-Ellen worried they might have problems with the gunshots in Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, but I doubted it. It's a dark comedy in which a nun explains purgatory, limbo, and other Catholic dogma to the audience until some of her former students arrive and put on a Nativity pageant. Realizing that most of these old students have developed into Godless hell-bound heathens, Sister Mary guns them down one by one.

Sister Mary went quite smoothly for a long while. There was some muttering from the mental patients, but I think it was mostly unrelated to the show. Mainly, they giggled and seemed to get the gist of everything.

Then the first gunshot sounded. Nothing loud. Just a squeaky *pop*. A character who has bought a one-way ticket to Hell's 7th Circle by having two abortions flopped to the floor. And a woman in the mental section fell apart. "That's wrong!" she screamed in horror. "They can't kill people like that!" She began to sob so violently a caretaker led her into the lobby. (The actors didn't so much as flinch and continued perfectly in character, to their credit.)

During intermission I saw the woman in the lobby. Her caretaker and her friends had calmed her down beautifully; she was laughing and smiling, now fully aware that it was just a joke and nuns really don't take people out (well, I'm sure some do - that's an entirely different post). The actress who played the first woman to die even approached her to say, "I'm just fine! See!", and they both had a good chuckle over the whole thing.

I was saddened to learn during intermission that one of of our two tech guys, Roy, had received news that afternoon that his mother was in the hospital and likely wouldn't survive the week. He showed up at the theatre to run lights only to receive a call on his cel that his mom had passed. Fortunately, the other techie, Doug, was able to fill in for him at a moment's notice.
I sat with Doug's wife for the second show. I can't say I was looking forward to it, based on the summary: "a darkly dramatic one-person show about an aging woman who reaches a crossroads in her less-than-happy life." Yippee. But, hey, at least it was supposed to be short. I noticed that Ruby, a fabulously funny 60ish lady who starred in a one-act I stage managed a few years ago, was thanked in the acknowledgements, yet the director had selected an actress about my age (29) to play the "aging woman". This actress wore no age makeup, a leopard-print vest, and a thoroughly unconvincing grayish wig to make herself appear "old". Her acting was brittle to say the least - she couldn't come across as someone over 40, much less 60. Ruby would have been perfect for that part!

So I was already annoyed when I noticed that the muttering was no longer coming from the direction of the mental patients, but from someone in my own section. I couldn't tell if this person was a man or a woman, but he/she was reciting the actress's line a few seconds before she said them! And throwing in snide comments about her, too. The folks in the row behind her had already asked him/her twice to be quiet to no avail. Finally the actress lost it. She stopped acting and simply stood center-stage, fuming silently. I thought she'd regain her compusure after a few seconds, but she didn't. She barked, "Doug, bring up the house lights, please!"
She stalked to the edge of the stage and looked directly at the heckler, who was hidden from my view.

"Excuse me, ma'am...do you have a screw loose?" she asked, struggling to contain her anger.

"No, I don't think so," the heckler replied, kind of snottily.

"Then I think you need to leave the theatre and let everyone else watch the show."

"I'm sorry, dear. I didn't mean to interrupt. Would you like a potato chip?" When the woman stood up to actually offer the actress a Lay's potato chip bag, I saw it was Ruby...wearing a leopard-print vest.

Turns out the whole show was one of those breaking-the-fourth-wall things. This was its story: The playwright wrote a play about his mother without even telling her about it and cast a much-too-young actress to portray her, not realizing that his mother would find out about the performance and show up unexpectedly. The actress had a hissy fit. The playwright and now-disgruntled actress chased each other around the theatre, even into the booth where Doug raged at them, while Ruby's character got to tell her own story her way. It was hilarious. Doug acts sometimes, so he dug the opportunity to be in the spotlight without even having to leave the comfort of the booth.

In other news, Butters is doing extraordinarily well. Her shakes have abated for now. When I got home last night she was rarin' to go, so I even let her race around in her plastic ball for a few minutes. Then as soon as I took her home for a rest, she wanted out again! I am amazed by this hamster.