Now I Ain't Seen No Saucers 'Cept The Ones Upon The Shelf
Have spent the last few evenings rehearsing a little radio play with a couple of theatre friends of mine down in - Lakewood, of all places. I had contacted my friend James (who has done these on-and-off for the past decade) a couple of months ago to see if he had any plans to revive the piece, and it just so happens this year coincides with the 70th Anniversary of both the broadcast AND the theatre company for which he now works, so he had pitched it to them some time back as a fund-raiser, and was already planning to ask me if I was interested in working on it (this will be my fourth go-round).
It's a fun piece; we do almost all of the sound-effects live (music is recorded), as well as in period costumes, plus we've got an actor who looks remarkably like a young Orson Welles, who does a passable vocal impersonation as well.
Unfortunately, the event tonight is sold-out, so even if you had a burning desire to trek to the wilds of South Tacoma, you'd miss out. However, rumor has it we may audio record tonight's performance, so I might possibly be able to post a link to that down the road.
If There's Something Strange In Your Neighborhood, Who You Gonna Call?
Saturday night's interactive haunted house event went quite smoothly, so far as I could tell. While perhaps not quite as well-attended as we would have liked, still the turnout seemed pretty good, considering we didn't spend a dime on the little bit of advertising we put out, and that we were probably competing against high-profile events elsewhere.
That said, four hours is a long time to maintain the pretense of being a ghost doing ghostly things. We got occasional breaks, and I at least had enough pre-recorded old-timey radio shows playing in the background to provide a bit of aural variety to my evening, but hunching over old radio receivers and electronics repair manuals was definitely not good for my back.
Next year, I'll have to see if I can come up with a character that either sits in a comfy recliner chair, or, lies flat on his back for a good portion of the evening.
THURSDAY 11/01: Tech/Dress for SPF; possible birthday imbibement, if time allows.
FRIDAY 11/02: SPF performance
SATURDAY 11/03: SPF performance
SUNDAY 11/04: SPF performance/strike.
In the meantime, I need to finish the sound design for my Ghosty character, scrounge up a couple more props and costume pieces, do a bit of clean up in the theatre prior to our Thursday show, scrounge up a couple of props for the SPF piece I'm directing, and try to get in a couple of nights of theatre attendance in-between everything else.
And then I get a week of respite, before the theatre fundraiser I'm co-chairing, which goes up on the 12th, followed by our annual Annex retreat on the 16th - 18th.
This past week has been (and will continue to be) chock-full of little odds-and-ends of things being started and/or completed.
The Columbus Day Holiday came in tres handy, as that was the day I actually managed to get a few things done: the boat got washed, the inflatable deflated and stowed, new dock lines and new shore power cable attached. After that, I had a meeting with our local theatre union federation, then did some work on prop pieces I'm going to be using for The Theatre's annual Halloween Event. That was followed by another meeting for The Theatre Staff, after which I spent a couple hours helping to finish painting the set for The Show, and finally rounded out the day by attending a 50th Birthday Celebration for my friend James, wherein much good-natured ribbing ensued, to be sure. I've got one coming up myself in just a few weeks, although - thankfully - not that "big milestone" one yet. Still, only three more to go until I get there - yikes!
Dang - when I look at it all in order - that was a lot to get done in one day!
This week includes finishing up some last-minute PR for the show; starting rehearsals for a 10 minute play I'm directing that will be done as part of an evening of short pieces early next month. Then of course, The Show opens on Friday, on which day I'll also be a guest commentator for the blog site belonging to our local alterna-weekly newspaper, which should be - interesting.
