The nervous insanity of our opening weekend has passed and I have finally allowed my poor addled brain to settle to a point that allows me to now write about our experiences. Picasso at the Lapin Agile: a three part mini-drama...
Friday, June 3: After spending most of Thursday adding the finishing touches to the set with Ed (our Dutch God of Set Design) and ensuring that Derek (our Einstein) had shaved his face down to nothing but a mustache against his will, I found myself unable to sleep. This was shortly after advising all my actors to get a good night's sleep before we open. I guess that's kinda like asking a lobster, just before you toss him in that boiling pot, to just relax. I managed six hours of sleep around very vivid theatre-related dreams. I hate those.
Most of the day was spent collecting things: unsold tickets from our distribution points, last vestiges of props and costumes, hundreds of copies of our programme from the printers, and a bag of apricots for the cast and crew.
I told the actors that the person who sells the most tickets will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. I think a couple suckers may have believed me. Tony, the one Spanish actor in our cast, took a huge lead right away by having all his family and friends come to opening night. This sounds fantastic, but none of them actually speak English. When the lights went up, we had 72% of the house sold. And a lovely house they were.
It was obvious that there were many non-native English speakers in the audience. There was either a long pause before most of the laughs or there were no laughs at all. They didn't have to laugh, though. Any actor on stage that night will tell you that they played to a house full of toothy grins. The audience was transfixed. The cast were consummate professionals and played on. They were wonderful, though a little fast. I think the opening-night nerves got the better of a few of them and our running time was actually shortened by about 10 minutes. Or maybe that was because Stephan accidentally skipped a page and a half out of the final scene. It's OK - nobody noticed.
Nobody ate the apricots.
Saturday, June 4: Opening night jitters had disappeared just in time to play to our largest audience of the weekend: a 98% house! Only two tickets were left unsold. From the sheer volume and frequency of the laughter, I'd have to say that it was a mostly North American crowd. The audience's reaction infused the actors with a newfound sense of confidence and enjoyment. Cues were snappy and lines were sharp. The pacing was still a little fast for my liking, but hey, you can't have everything!
I was surprised that so many people enjoyed the show. When I read the play, I knew I wanted to produce it. I thought it was very funny. But I also recognized it as a play that not everyone would "get". There are jokes based on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the German physicist Max Planck, for Christ's sake. My friend Sophie (the director) read the play and didn't like it. My Aunt Amy (the stage manager) saw a production of the play in California and "didn't get it". I was doing this for myself. So Saturday night's audience demanding a third curtain call caught me a bit by surprise.
Sunday, June 5: We like to go out and have a drink after each night's performance. That means I didn't get home on Saturday night until 3am. That wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have to then wake up at 9am to play in the regional semifinals with my volleyball team Sunday morning. We convincingly won a trip to the finals next week (which I won't be able to play in because of this show) and I went home and crashed. I got a 20 minute cat-nap in before we had to be at the theatre for our Sunday matinee.
We had our smallest house of the weekend on Sunday with 56% of the tickets sold, but they were a friendly crowd - not as uproarious as Saturday's audience, but every bit as involved. I think the actors were a bit discouraged after having all of their jokes laughed at the night before. Some of them noticeably lost their buzz, but others stepped it up to a new level that I had not seen them reach before. I was very proud of them.
If I may be allowed to make a swooping generalization, I would have to say that the show got better with each night. The audience peaked on Saturday, but we've still got three more performances this coming weekend - more than one of which will surely sell out. I hope the actors don't forget their lines before then. Or their costumes.
A couple days later, Ed and I met up with Picasso and Elvis to take the set apart and store all the pieces in the upstairs storeroom. The set that took us four full days to put together only took three hours to take apart. Considering this consisted of an entire wall that hinged open and rolled forward towards the audience to reveal a giant painting, I think three hours is something to be proud of.
It's time to kick my little birdies out of the nest and see if they can fly. I've done all that I can for them.