We closed Picasso at the Lapin Agile last Saturday night to an appreciative audience. A fluttering of laughter throughout, a couple of belly driven guffaws and even a heart felt "oh" when the muse surprised a few. Round it all out with a few folks standing in ovation at the curtain call...and you have a very rewarding community theater experience.
Then the wild children partied until the crack of dawn.
I had thought that I might chronicle (blog) the entire 'event' from casting, through rehearsals, to opening night and then beyond. Each time I sat at this keyboard and started I was struck with the intimacy of each moment. Each vignette a prized morsel to be savored and cherished. Each hour spent upon the stage more valuable than the last. I found myself caught up in the drama that is theater. I was in the moment.
Weeks and weeks before I had 'written' the movie that would play in my head. I had mentally created the storyboard that would unfold as the players strode upon the stage. So then the time came to paint with the human brushes the series of still lifes. A long row of canvases, lined up, ready to be dominoed with just a quick muse whisper. There to become the living movie that I had imagined. That is the moment that holds an actor's heart tight, making it difficult to breath.
So delicate are these created visages that I want to protect them. Lest the slightest disturbance would spill them like a tipped glass of wine. Actors living outside of their persons, nearly outside of their bodies. Stripped of their social exoskeletons. Each protective callus softened and pealed away. Until only the newly formed character remains, a new born. Each actor then must endure the bright lights and magnified review of self criticism, naked on the world stage.
Yet when we are in the moment all time stops. Only the play remains. "The play's the thing..."
Then when the last echo of applause drifts away. When the last congratulatory hand shake is a fleeting memory. When the muse, satisfied for the moment, releases the reins ... then the relaxation begins. Actors begin to release their pent up energies and angsts ... they begin to re-inhabit their own persons. They shed their carefully crafted characters and slip back into their mundane lives. Now they are the most vulnerable. Like the butterfly newly emerged from a chrysalis - pliable, waking limp from the long sleep of transformation.
Yet there is one more act to this drama. The last Sunday afternoon performance. It is not open to the public. Seldom if ever do the actors even put in an appearance. Under the harsh glare of florescent work lights technicians do a well choreographed dance, set deconstruction. First the stripping of the props and set dressings, leaving only the underpinnings. Then with surgeon's care the flats and platforms are excised and relieved. One by one stacked against the back wall until the entire show is just a deck of giant wood-framed playing cards. Waiting in the wings to be reshuffled and dealt into a new hand.
Slowly, lonely, the last act is the sweeping of the stage. A sort of cathartic soul cleansing. The push broom shuffle. The last dance number.
That is the moment that an audience longs for, cool water across parched lips.
