The show is over! And it went pretty damn well, if I do so say myself. I lost lines left and right, but I was always able to keep on track (or, in one damn scary moment, get back on track).
And there were HUGE cheers for my curtain call. Well, all right, I knew everybody in the damn audience, but it's nice to hear anyway.
There was one deeply scary moment in the very beginning of the play. I'm supposed to take our my cigarettes and lighter, among other things, when I get onstage and sit down. So I sit down, start taking things out of my purse, and discover that there's no lighter. I about died, because of course I was using a show purse, not my regular one, meaning that there were no matches or anything but what I needed onstage in it. Luckily, Maggie, playing Ann, the waitress, came on, so I asked her for some matches - thereby throwing her slightly, since the line isn't in the script. But she had matches in her pocket from lighting the little table candles, so everything turned out fine.
Really, though, the whole thing felt like a dress rehearsal. We didn't finish the set or get all the lights focused until 7 pm, for an 8 pm curtain, which meant that the line run I was so desperately counting on didn't happen, which made me totally panicky. Luckily, I had prepared for this little problem...I had a little notebook/journal thing with me on stage as a prop, and before the show I went through the script writing down a cheat sheet for all the places I felt shaky about. As it turned out, I needed it! But, as I discovered later, I managed to keep that little fact a secret from the audience. The character keeps describing herself as a writer, so every time I was desperate for a line, I picked up the little book and scribbled something in it while grabbing a look at the cheat sheet on the opposite page. Worked fine, and nobody noticed. I'm so clever.
Now I really can't wait for us to get a full production of this. Doing it for one night just seems sort of unfinished, somehow...and I'd like to perform it with ALL the lines...wouldn't that be nice?
Now I'm really sort of at loose ends. Boardwalk Empire is on hiatus until January, I've got no rehearsals, so I'm sort of flapping around. With any luck, the house will sell soon - we seem to be tending that way - and then I can run around looking for a new apartment, furnishing it, decorating, etc. Not forgetting my bird cage, of course. I do have another transcription job tomorrow, but the tape is 8 minutes long, so it doesn't seem likely it'll occupy a whole lot of my day. This actually suits me very well, since I've got to go get my lovely senior citizen discount Metrocard, which is only a few blocks from the temp agency. Then I think I'll treat myself to a nice lunch, since the last Boardwalk check turned up on Monday.
I did that today. I got up, read the papers, gloried in the fact that for the first time in ages, I didn't have to get my head into that damn script, and decided to take a nap. However, since I couldn't sleep, I went out to lunch instead at one of my favorite places. It's called Markt, and has wonderful steak tartare, which I adore with a passion. I can't tell you what a thrill it was to realize that I didn't have to A. study lines, B. hike back and forth across the Boardwalk in those damn tight boots, or C. clean up cat shit for prospective buyers...it was WONDERFUL!
Ah, well. This is just the post-show letdown...and of course, when you're only doing one performance, it tends to seem like it never really happened at all. I must say, after a two or three year absence from the stage, it's lovely to know I can still get out there and act my little socks off!
Now I'm going to bed...well, why not?
Love, Wendy
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