Show's Over, Folks! Nothing to See Here.

Closing... for Bracknell... and Earnest-y! (Sung to the tune of Springtime for Hitler).

After nearly four months of rehearsing and performing together, the cast of Earnest has scattered to the winds after closing the show Saturday night. As always, my feelings about this are mixed. I'm ready to move on to the next project, but sad to lose the company of a very pleasant group of people. If there is one thing I can say for the Chula Vista theatre, its that I've truly enjoyed the people I worked with and had much fun in both productions I've done there. That hasn't been true everywhere.

At the cast party, we were treated to a DVD slide show of photos our light tech Gary had taken during rehearsals and preview. Much care and effort went into producing the disc and we each walked away from the evening with a copy of our own, which was very nice.

We also walked away with somewhat expensive DVD copies of the show. I must admit, these were a bit of a thorn in my side as our producer decided to have some local Scorsese with a digital camera take over the filming duties from a very nice fellow who has traditionally done it (analog) at a much cheaper price. I was not particularly interested in paying more than I would for a Hollywood Blockbuster to have a copy of my 15 minutes of stage time, and after devoting a quarter of a year to the thing, I certainly didn't want to pay more for my video viewing than our audiences had paid for tickets to see the show live, but it could not be avoided. Not without forgoing the video completely, which I couldn't talk myself into doing. So, I paid my $17 and took the disc home, only to find that one of my favorite altered lines to deliver was completely missing from the video! Whether Scorsese had forgotten to charge his battery and lost the moment to a power change or he's a Democrat who objected to the line "Untruthful? My nephew Algernon? Impossible! He's a Republican," I'll never know. But one of my biggest laugh lines ain't there.

But life goes on....

This week, I will probably be getting in touch with light-tech Gary's wife, who runs an improv theatre company. In an exciting and terrifying turn of events, I agreed to perform at a local theatre's fundraiser, a performance in the completely improvisational nature of Whose Line is it, Anyway? I'm proud to have inspired the confidence of the producers, but having never done improv of any kind I'm more than a little nervous about it, too. So, I'm enlisting help and guidance -- and I expect to have a whale of a good time.

Fortunately, the show will take place on April Fools Day, so should I look like a fool in the effort, it will not be completely inappropriate!

And I take a certain comfort in knowing that I can't POSSIBLY improv anything less watchable than a certain Nashvillian playwright has produced in the last year. Right, Anne-G? ;)