A Peek Into the World of Backstage Theatre

I was into backstage theatre for about 5 years in high school and college.  My last show was called The Art of Dining by Tina Howe.  In it, a couple opens up a new restaurant, and we look at the weird things the diners do on the first night.  At the end, there’s some kind of half-naked orgy.  I’m a little fuzzy on the plot details, but I can remember the director clearly.

The director was a theatre professor named Betty.  She taught mostly dancing classes and choreography classes, and her shows always looked beautiful onstage.

I was assigned to do props for the show.  It was a show in a restaurant, so most of the props centered around glasses, plates, forks and food.  This was supposed to be my big break; I was a second-year college student working my way up the backstage theatre hierarchy.  This show would prove to the higher-ups whether or not I had the chops to make it.

Betty in particular was reserving judgement about me.  She didn’t know me the way she knew the upperclassmen, and so she came off kind of cold.  That wasn’t a problem.  What was a problem was her unwillingness to compromise on props matters that she clearly knew better about.  Betty wanted to make the theatre smell good.  She wanted to have the audience feel like they were walking into a restaurant when they came in to be seated, and insisted on having actual food cooking on set.  Now is a good time to mention that the show did not take place in a black box theatre like this:

but rather, a proscenium theatre like this:

Do you see the difference?  One is small and the acting takes place on the floor directly in front of the audience, with seating on three sides of the stage.  One is big, and the acting takes place on a raised stage that the audience only has one view of.

I’m sure you can guess why the idea of scenting the auditorium would be a problem — namely, having food cooking on the stage means that the stage will smell good, but the scent of the food won’t travel past the proscenium arch (the big curtains and front of the stage).  As an experienced director and theatre professional, Betty knew this.  I don’t know why she stuck with the idea, even after several rehearsals proved that the smell wouldn’t carry.

Doggedly, she insisted that we should have hot plates strategically placed around the auditorium with pots of onions and garlics simmering on top.  This would enhance the ambiance of the show.  It would also act as safety hazards in the aisles of the auditorium, and the fire inspector wouldn’t let it pass.  So we gave up the idea of hot plates, but humored Betty by having a pot of onions and garlic simmering on the stove onstage for an hour before the audience came in.  It was a pain in the ass, really, because we had to wire the stove for electricity and couldn’t use the junk stove we had in the props closet.  Details!  What was an extra $400 from the budget if it appeased Betty?

Betty eventually dropped the crusade for a good-smelling auditorium and moved on to the table settings.  “They had to look elegant and graceful,” she proclaimed.  Okay, we could do elegant and graceful.  We’d have to do elegant and graceful on small cafe tables, but we could manage it.  I was thinking something with a little color, like a fake floral arrangement.  It would show up nicely from the auditorium and add something to the tables, where the tablecloths, china, and glasses were all plain white or glass.

“I found these great glass swans,” Betty said one day before rehearsal, and plunked down a box of glass swan bud vases.  Each swan was about 8 inches tall.  They looked similar to this:

“Oh!  Um…okay….Did you want to fill them with colored water so they stand out?” I asked, thinking that maybe we could put a big, bright flower in the hole on each swan’s back — something, ANYTHING to make them visible from the audience’s perspective.

“No, I think they’ll look great just as is,” said Betty said, “They bring the perfect touch to the tables.”

I set a swan down on each cafe table, amid the two wine glasses and two water glasses already placed on the tables.  As I expected, they added to the glass clutter, and when I stepped back just ten feet, I couldn’t distinguish between the swans and wineglasses.  How would the audience know what they were looking at?

“Perfect!” Betty exclaimed, and the matter was decided.  She wouldn’t hear any arguments against the glass swans, and didn’t want to change a thing about the tables.  Never mind that the restaurant was called “The Carousel,” and swans didn’t fit into the theme.  THE SWANS WERE PERFECT.

After the show finished its final performance, Betty presented me with a glass swan as a keepsake (as though I would want to cherish it forever).  The next day, I changed majors from Theatre to English.  A week later, the swan fell off the back of my dresser and shattered.  Aww.

You know that quote from the movie Center Stage, where the teacher Juliette Simone is telling Eva Rodriguez that Jonathon (the ballet school director) is an arrogant asshole?  But you’d be hard-pressed to find a director who isn’t?  That’s not just good script-writing; it’s the truth.  And that, my friends, is why I no longer work in theatre.

Image sources: black-box theatre, proscenium theatre, glass swan.

The Great Venue Reveal

Here it is, here’s our venue.  It’s called Camp Kiwanee, and it’s located in Hanson, Massachusetts.  This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s been chatting with us in person, but we finally sent in the deposit and locked in our caterer, so I can say that it’s official.  To my family and friends: please stop reading after this next picture if you don’t want to know about pricing or pros and cons (the way I’ve been talking about on my MA Wedding page), or if you don’t want to know any of the pleasant surprises that we’ll be having at the venue.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Here’s an old postcard of the camp:

Pros: It’s freaking beautiful.  It’s on a long, wooded drive by a big lake, and there are plants everywhere, and you get married on the back deck overlooking the lake.  They set up long wooden benches for your guests, and extend the deck into the library via some walls that drop down into the floor on a pulley system that you find in theatres.  I can’t believe this place isn’t more popular.  The caretaker is helpful — more helpful than I would’ve thought, and easy to talk to, and seems to sincerely love this place (unlike other caretakers that we’ve met).  There are cabins on the property for you to camp in, and a little cottage for you to rent out if you want to stay after your wedding, which is what we’re doing.  The pricing is excellent.  We’re renting out the function hall, cabins and cottage for $1600 total, and that includes tables, chairs, benches, and possibly even linens (I can’t remember, I’ll have to check the contract).  Overall, they’re quite flexible and seem happy to have people interested.  And I almost forgot to mention the beautiful function hall with a small stage inside, so you could get married on the stage in inclement weather.  And the outdoor activities and walking trails they have everywhere.

Cons: It’s in Hanson, MA; there’s nothing to do in Hanson, MA.  It’s the middle of nowhere.  The closest hotel is 20 minutes away.  Also, Camp Kiwanee is owned by the town, so there are restrictions on how you can serve alcohol.  And since it’s owned by the town, there aren’t that many employees, so this is a DIY kind of hall.  The inside of the function hall is covered with pine, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view (I like it).  There’s no designated parking by the hall, but your guests will probably park on the basketball court just outside.  If not, they’ll have to park down the hill and hoof it the rest of the way.

Thoughts: We fell in love when we walked in, even though they hadn’t yet cleaned up for a party the night before. Both the caretaker and the office manager were helpful and friendly, and bent over backwards to get nice things for us in the contract.  The one disappointing little thought is that when we got the contract, they asked for caterer information at the same time as you send in the deposit, so then we spent 2 months finding a caterer only to find out that it wasn’t necessary.  They had taken us off the calendar because we spent so much time looking for a caterer, which gave me a minor heart attack, but we got the date just fine.  It didn’t turn out to be a problem in the end.

And there you have it!  Our big venue reveal.

Let the Great Gluten Experiment Begin!

Here we go, friends and family.  I will be going off gluten for the next 3-6 weeks, starting tomorrow.  This, of course, means no more eating at anyone else’s house, because how could I possibly expect other people to keep up with what I can and can not eat?  I would be the most demanding dinner guest ever!

That sounds like a superpower no one would want.  Behold!  For Overly Demanding Dinner Guest is here.  I would fly in and announce, “I’m hungry.  Don’t you have any snacks besides crackers and cheese?  No, veggies and dip won’t do either.  Hummus is out.  No chips, except if they’re processed in a facility that doesn’t process gluten, but none of the brands here will work for me.  Well?  Why don’t you run out and buy me something, hmmm?  And what do you have for dessert, while you’re at it?  I could go for baked apples.”

Perhaps Overly Demanding Dinner Guest could also be called Really Great at Killing your Party Woman — or Friendship Breaker Upper, but only if you invite me over too often.

This is what I would look like, now in line drawing for your coloring ease.  Check out my hot boots:

Nancy Drew, Where are you?

Is this not the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen?  Last night, Seth and I braved the (admittedly, very little) snow and went to the used book store to look for a book to give away on my other blog.  We didn’t find a book to give away, but we did find the old book section.

The old books shared a cold back room with a wall of textbooks — most of which hadn’t seen the light of day since the 1970s.  A young father with two young boys searched for Java programming to no avail.  They ignored me as I knelt on the concrete floor and pulled out book after book, admiring the gold leaf covers, broken spines and soft pages that are so characteristic of well-worn books.

Amid the dog-eared corners and faded titles of Kipling’s poems and The Pilgrim’s Progress, I came across this Nancy Drew.  Oh Nancy, I love you.  You see, I collect first, second and third edition Nancy Drew books.  Haven’t I mentioned this before?  This Case of the Whispering Statue is a second edition, characterized by the orange silhouette and hard blue covers — and now it’s mine.

I love old books.  I love getting lost in prose that hasn’t been used for 80 years.  Nancy Drew provides a window into the 1930s, when young girls were starting to break out the mold that the Victorian Era provided them.  And now, especially, it’s interesting to see what an middle-class affluent family looked like at a time when the economy was faltering.  River Heights never seemed to be struck  by any hardship — except for a surprising abundance of petty criminals, that is.

If you’re interested, but can’t get into a Nancy Drew, I recommend renting the movie.  It captures the overall spirit of the books and Nancy, but updates it a bit for a modern audience.  That part in the beginning, where Nancy singlehandedly catches two criminals and the police officers praise her?  That’s just how it was in the books.

Unfair Things I Never Got Over

Today in Unfair Things….

Image Source

In seventh grade, I had the uncool science teacher.  Other people got the cool science teacher.  I don’t even remember what was so cool about the other science teacher, but mine was definitely uncool.  (That’s not what’s unfair in this situation.)

We did a unit on petri dishes and the proper way to cultivate bacteria.  Our final grade depended on one experiment: write the first letter of your last name with the wand dipped in bacteria, and after a week, if the bacteria grew and there were no spaces or dots, and the letter was well-formed, you’d get a good grade.

We couldn’t practice for the test.  You’d think it was an easy test, except that the letter couldn’t be too small, but it couldn’t be too big either.  And you couldn’t press down too hard on the petri dish or else the wand would gouge out the gel, and the bacteria wouldn’t take.  But if you pressed too lightly, your letter looked like you drew them with a dotted line.  And the science teacher stood watching us, breathing heavily and tsking when she perceived anxiety or fear in our shaking hands.

My letter was not well-formed.  I pressed down hard enough that the bacteria took, but not so hard that I gouged out petri dish gel.  Unfortunately, I overlapped two lines while writing,and had to wait a week to find out that after 10 years of writing my last name, I couldn’t form letters properly.  That was a blow to my self-esteem.  Especially considering that other people in my class had last names that started with S.  How unfair; my parents should have known better.

Join us next time for another tongue-in-cheek episode of Unfair Things.