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However, I've had to spend much of the morning dealing with canceling tomorrow night's performance of A Little Piece of the Sun due to a death in a performer's family. If the actor had had to miss more than one show I would have asked another actor to step in and do the part with script in hand for as long as needed, but only one show will be missed, and it's silly to go through teaching an actor to walk though the part for the one show, so we're canceling, which means emails and posts galore to try and reach everyone who might show up (though I will still have to be at the space tomorrow to turn away anyone who still comes to see the show).
This is the second time I've had performances of a show cancelled when an actor's parent has died, and it's been a weird, conflicted thing for me both times. The previous time, I was particularly close with the actor, so my pain for him was great, while still feeling upset about the loss of some shows (not helped on that occasion by some audience members yelling at me for some time about not having understudies, and not at all getting that you just DON'T HAVE understudies at this level of theatre, sorry). Now, I'm not as close to the actor, but my own emotions about loss of family members are a bit more bare and ragged, while still caring for the future of my show, so I'm equally conflicted. In any case, we're losing one show, and moving on.
I was also touched that the actor whose father died in that previous show's run also emailed me to ask me to express his condolences to the actor in the current show, which I will.
I now have to redo some sound effects for tonight's show of George Bataille's Bathrobe, so I don't have much more time to go over how great things went this past weekend.
Except to note that Bathrobe got quite the nice review from Michael Mraz at nytheatre.com, and a reviewer from the New York Times attended good performances of Bathrobe and Blood on the Cat's Neck, so I have my fingers crossed there.
I will also note how pleased I was that the two blogs that did nice "preview" promo posts for our season and shows were George Hunka's Superfluities Redux, HERE and Trav S.D.'s Travalanche, HERE. Berit and I were both pleased by this as both of these men are erudite and fine scholars of theatre, but George is -- to some peoples' annoyance, perhaps, but rarely mine -- the most intellectual and heavy thinker in the theatrical blogosphere, and Trav S.D. is the populist, baggy-pants vaudevillian. And while I can sometimes, yes, be a bit . . . well, I wouldn't say annoyed, exactly, but both George's intellectualism and Trav's populism can be taken to extremes that at least make me sigh deeply and shake my head, even when I agree with them (more often than not) . . . I'm pleased as punch to have both of them have such kind advance words for GCW's work, as it is the blend of these two theatrical modes of thought that is at the heart of what GCW is trying to do -- the chocolate and peanut butter making up our fine fine superfine peanut butter cups of theatrical invention.
Trav also mentions the idea of volume in what we do, which is indeed an important part of these festivals -- we don't just do multiple plays for the sake of doing them; there are reasons a group of shows goes together, even if we don't realize it ourselves until they're all together and running . . .
So, in lieu of anything more, below is the email I sent to the GCW list this morning to remind them where they can get more info on the shows, as I remind you now as well . . .
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