Sunday, December 09, 2007

show opens!


last night was opening night for our Christmas production entitled Eight Tiny... it's an evening of eight short plays written by local playwrights and produced by New Voices Playwrights Workshop in orange county. i've been lucky enough to have my producer buddy, John, ask me to direct for him. i've gotta tell you, on one level, it went really great! on another level, it sucked eggs.

remember how i was concerned about my actors getting completely off book and ready for performance? well, they pulled through with flying colors, creating funny, full, comedic characters with depth and levels that made the show full, not fluff. i was very proud of them. the thing that sucked eggs? technical issues. every single friggin light cue was wrong and the music was late. grrrr. the tech probs were apparently due to a broken dvd player, which housed the sound cues. the stage manager was so focused on the sound problem, the light cues were out of synch. i gotta feel for her, having problems with hardware in a live situation must have been horrible for her to experience. i'm sure they're working out those bugs this afternoon for tonight's gig.

even though the light cues were messed up, the show still got lots of laughs and i was very proud of my boys. sitting in the dark audience, watching my actors give birth to a brand new show, i was sweating buckets - much more than i ever have as an actress. i even had to go and wash my pits in the bathroom afterward!

i'll try to video tape the show tonight and upload it for you to see. fingers crossed on my own technical ineptitude, which i can't blame of hardware issues, only ignorance. if i do this successfully, it will be a part of Citizen of the Month's Christmahanukwanzaakah Holiday Concert. Many thanks and blessing to blogger Neil Kramer, for creating such a wonderful community forum. his blog is a treat to read. Go there on monday to experience his online holiday extravaganza and return often for more fun and great writing.

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update. it's 11:59 p.m. and i can't find the software or driver to upload my video. can you believe i've never uploaded a video before and don't know where the software is? oy.

in lieu of the video, here's a picture of my actors, the playwright (in red sweater) and yours truly:


a home made ornament:


and our traditional home made poptart cottages:


Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Hug the ones you love.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can see it in my mind and it's beautiful.

Good luck with all the technical issues.

Jamie Dawn said...

Thanks for sharing a pic of you and your cast and the writer. Your smile is marvelous!!
Too bad about the tech troubles in the first performance, but I hope all those got worked out.
Cheers to YOU and your actors!!!

Pop Tart cottages... what a great idea!!

Hugs right back to you!
I hope you are having a good week.
:-)

Catnapping said...

the ornament is perfect, and those houses look good enough to eat...oh to be godzilla!

magickat said...

Thank you for sharing your photographs and for talking about your show. The concept sounds SO much like the Eight by Eight and Ten by Ten productions that they do at Proctor's up in Schenectady. They use only original screenplays.

I didn't realize you were right in Orange County! If I was not on vacation I definitely would've come to see your production.