At this moment I’m at a Starbucks in Springboro Ohio. We opened a production of “Into the Woods’ with a matinee performance at a local theatre here and since it’s too far to head back home before the evening show, I stopped at Skyline for a little dinner ( a 3-way, in case you’re asking) and now I’m hanging til call time. I think lessons in life happen all the time if you pay attention, and I had one this afternoon that I thought I’d share, since that’s what I do here anyway…

So OK, background. I play 2 characters in this show. The narrator of the show, who is what it sounds like he is, and the “mysterious man”, who plays a more active role in the show. The narrator is basically me, tying the story together for the audience while dressed as a nondescript fairy tale villager. The mysterious man needs to be “different”, as described by my director. There is a reveal of me as playing both characters, so whatever I can do to differentiate between the 2 helps. I’m sort of hunched over and speaking with an affected voice, with hair, beard and mustache. I would liken him Aquelung, from the Jethro Tull album. Honestly, with the way I move, walk, etc., it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who I am. I’m not exactly a chameleon.

So the piece I was waiting on was the beard, wig, hat combo. Waiting until the day before yesterday, actually. I guess there was a misunderstanding about who was going to provide that, and 2 days before we open struck me as sorta last minute, considering that I need to get used to having that stuff on while I’m performing, and how to get into and out of it as I go from character to character, which I do a lot. So Tuesday, I brought a couple of my own hats. I know they fit me, and neither was a particular favorite of mine, so I wouldn’t mourn their loss. So, hat dealt with. There was a wig sitting on my dressing room table, which I was told needed to be fitted before I wore it. And when I arrived at the theater, with my hats, I was handed a couple of fake beard / mustache pieces. The clear implication was “Here. Good Luck”.

Am I a wig person? Nope. I can do my own basic makeup. but that’s about it. However, have I done a whole bunch of community theater, storefront theater, alternative theater, etc? Oh yes I have. So I have experience in cobbling stuff together and making it work.

So, hat, wig & facial hair. Ok. I grab a needle and thread from the costumer and sew the wig to the hat and the facial hair to both. I need to be able to just grab the whole schmeggegen and put it on, in one move. So I kinda measure where the wig needs to be in relation to the hat, and the facial hair in relation to both and wow, for a wonder, it actually works. Happy days. Next issue. The facial hair is stone grey and the wig is brown. So I grab the white hair color that I bought for the last time I played Scrooge, to color the hair that wasn’t already gray, and applied that liberally to the parts of the wig that show. Again, not perfect, but close. If someone has an issue we can discuss it. OK, success. So I try it last night during our first, and final, full run through. The piece worked fine. I was, well, crap. I did not exactly cover myself in glory, and was not in a good place after. But after a full night’s sleep, the first one this week, btw, I arrived this morning in a positive frame of mind, looking to prove to myself really, that I was solid with the parts I was playing.

As I am presetting for the show, maybe 15 minutes before curtain, the tech person comes up to me and tells me the director wants her to “distress the hat” , so that it looks more worn. I’m a little hesitant, as I basically cobbled this combination together and by some miracle got it right. But OK, do what you need to. She manhandles the hat, scrunching it, stretching it, and spraying it to create the desired effect. I cringed, but didn’t say anything. Well, almost not anything. But OK, done deal. She goes away. I try it on. It doesn’t fit anymore. The beard hangs funny, doesn’t fit around my mouth. The wig has somehow shifted and doesn’t lay the way it was laying before. I try adjusting it. I try repining parts of it. But that only seems to make it worse. The beard and mustache actually seem to be twisted now and the backing is showing for both. We’re at 5 mins to curtain. I’m already stressed, when my goal is to be calm & think my way through the show. I say “the heck with it”. Actually, I didn’t say the heck with it, but if you know me, you know it was something similar but more, say, emphatic. The beard and mustache are basically just hanging in front of my face. It’s absurd, but the show has absurdity in it. And honestly, what was my other option?

But I’m angry.

I took a situation that I didn’t need to involve myself in, made it work with some of their stuff, some of my stuff and some meatball ingenuity, and now it didn’t work because somebody else futzed with it. But I get through the act. Things in general go better than they did last night, which somewhat mollifies me. At intermission, I start resetting for act 2 . As I’m looking at the piece, I kinda notice that, wait, isn’t that the back of the….????

Yeah.

In distressing the hat, they took the shape out of it. And the band off of it. And most of the things that would tell me “front” & “back”. And it never really occurred to me that the beard could swing either way, though pointed backwards the backing of the beard would be prominent. So I’d been wearing the whole thing backwards. They didn’t mess things up. I was too time strapped and stressed to see what should have been obvious. Nobody’s fault. Nobody is trying to sabotage my show. Or my life. Happy ending. The rest of the show goes reasonably well. I have things to fix, but they are fixable. Life is good. Thanks.

The lesson? An old one. I don’t know who said it, but “If you can keep your head while all about you, folks are losing theirs?”. Yeah, there’s value in that. 1 performance down. 39 to go.

Talk Later,

Bob