Good morning, JC,
A remarkable thing about children's productions is that no matter how hard you work on them, nothing ever goes as rehearsed. Thankfully, the audience is even more forgiving than Jesus himself, so a standing ovation is guaranteed regardless of the inevitable disasters-- of which we had
plenty. If this report is incoherent, it is with good reason.
All of us adults received lovely flowers and much praise and gratitude, no doubt for taking the kids off the parents' hands for a week in the middle of a long hot Dallas summer.
Actually, it went pretty well, given the short time we had and the amount of high tech, special effects we attempted. I was running the spot from the back and probably the worst moment was when the cast somehow jumped over three pages of dialogue, skipping the entire section of Jonah being swallowed and spit back out by the whale during a large production number. They went from "SPLASH" - cue for Jonah to swim frantically through a sea of waving blue material, (amazing effect, too! He was lying on a black-draped cart from the cafeteria which was pushed from behind by a squatting Ammo) pursued by a huge ( 10 feet long at least)styrofoam whale (propelled by two moms from behind) to the rather incomprehensible line, "I'd like to have seen that whale throw up old Jonah!"
Seen what?
WAIT!
He hasn't eaten him yet!
STOP!
I could see the giant translucent inflatable whale billowing behind the wall, slowly losing air as it waited for its cue. Inside was JOnah, now off his cart and taped into the giant whale, and probably suffocating.. what if the whale came out and Jonah was dead inside? That would be a problem for the narrative.
Shit, I said, before I remembered that I was on a clearcom head set with the light and sound booth, not to mention that we were IN CHURCH. There is stunned silence on the headset from my co-workers, and then giggles-- teenagers were running the booth and I;m sure they couldn;t wait to tell everyone how the woman running the spot and working with these little kids swore like a sailor. The musical director, who has never uttered a bad word in her life, has her hands raised for the big resurrection number that was skipped over. My actors know something has gone wrong but they are ten years old and have no clue how to get out of the page they're on which is only two lines away from the NEXT big number. The audience, made up of parents and relatives and hyper, bored small siblings, is passively unquestioning. They are there under duress anyway. Finally the music director hisses to the choir to say the whale's cue line REALLY LOUD and they yell it, which stuns the actors into silence, and allows the somewhat deflated whale to be pushed on. By now it looks like an anemic fallen soufflé with a bug inside, having collapsed to the point that it's mouth and eye have sunk into the floor.
Jonah emerges but now my actors are standing speechless, having said all the lines already. "Say them again" hisses Patti to them. MOst of them try, but you can tell they are really confused. However they finally limp to the next song, which gives them time to regroup. Meanwhile as JOnah kneels to pray, I run into a problem of my own. I had planned this dramatic red spot to indicate the tormented spiritual state he is in, with a lovely fade to blue as he understands that without God;s love he is nothing. Yes,yes, I know you;re snickering at the thought that subtle symbolic lighting is not exactly compatible with this show but don't worry, it was neither symbolic or subtle, as it turns out, because it had never occurred to me during rehearsal that there would be people's heads between the spot and Jonah and instead of JOnah I lit this enormous bald head. The teens in the booth are now incoherent with mirth. It is such a SHINY head too. A big shiny bald red head that dramatically, slowly, turns purple, and then a gentle, contemplative shade of blue. My choices were to shut the light off, move it to light up another head, but who knows what that head might be doing, or gut it out. Luckily Ammo was on a headset backstage and hissed at Jonah to move higher on the steps, so Jonah, apparently moved by God, rises, goes up a step, and falls to his knees again, now lit by the the pretty blue spot.
The big fight number, Nineveh, choreographed by Ammo, went pretty well, except that for some inexplicable reason, as one of the Ninevites chased a little female Ninevite around the stage, this nasty little choir boy stuck his foot out and tripped him and he fell flat on his face. Ammo says it was Satan at work trying to ruin the play. He heard a lot of that kind of reasoning this week and being not religious, was fascinated at how everything bad was Satan interfering, and everything good was the Holy Spirit working through us.
"Nothing is my fault," he said, pleased with the concept.
Anyway, it was over, and they called up all the adults, including the foul-mouthed spotlight woman, and gave them their flowers, except for Ammo, who got a gift certificate but tried to take my flowers. When they called him up, screams erupted from the audience. It seems that Ammo has a fan club among the underclass girls at the high school-- I actually had heard about this earlier this year and thought it was a joke, but apparently it is true- and they had heard he was doing this and showed up en masse just to see his name in the program, I guess. At least they didn't throw their underwear at the stage or whatever teenage groupies do.
My fan club was there too: Dan and CW, who said they had never seen such well-directed actors or such impressive spotlighting, and that it just made the show- especially the red light on that guy's head.
Patti the music director hugged me and said they were doing a Christmas production...
and out of my mouth I heard these words emerge- unbidden,certainly not mine-- "I'd love to"
It must have been Satan. |
