Hirsch's Log
While waiting for the meeting, a poker game has broken out in the living room,
using safety pins, bobby pins, and “hair franes”. Trying to get some work done while
waiting. Called Michael this morning around 9, and he’s coming to the meeting so
we have everyone for the line-through. We may blow off the workshops today, as
it’s the day of our first performance for the festival, and we’re all feeling a
bit of pre-show stress.
(Later) The first show was “Chickendog” a
variety show with dogs, juggling, a parrot, unicycles. Not quite sure what it
has to do with Commedia (other than being street-performance stuff). The show
needed some polish, but oh well. We went on after that, so only a few members of our
cast watched Chickendog.
For our performance ... well, the stress didn’t completely
abate before the show, and the first performance for us was a bit rough. I
think folk perhaps were a bit caught up in a “competition” mentality, which is
throwing things off, although I could be wrong. The audience liked it,
but the performance wasn’t up to our own standards, some lines got dropped, timing
was off, etc. We’ll do better next show.
I Sebastiani borrowed our set, which was fun. (It
was even more fun watching Juan and Seamus each time the doors were gone through
by pulling on them rather than pushing ... the doors only open one way, and pulling
from on-stage is bad as too much of that could knock the set over -- Juan and
Seamus kept almost leaping up to "save" the sets ...).
After the show, and after I Sebastiani’s performance,
we sort of split up a bit, and a couple members of I Sebastiani (Anton and Christian)
came over to the condos, and some of our folk and the rest of I Sebastiani, as well
as other troupe members from the Austin Commedia Society, Chickendog, and others
went out for a bit of drinking at a local pub. We were up pretty late ...
Talking with Anton and Christian, there was a lot of the usual "Inter-Kingdom
Anthropology" going on -- basically discussions of how things are done in Your
Kingdom, versus how they're done in My Kingdom ... it's usually pretty fascinating
stuff.
Anton spent the night at Rose and Juan’s condo,
and Michael and Jana took Christian back to his hotel as it was only a short
distance from where they’re staying in town.
Juan's Log
Todays plan:
10:30 meeting.
Morning Line through.
Tim Shane workshops at 12:00 and 2:00. - I’m not
interested in this myself so I’m staying in for now. Others are going though,
so I’m not concerned with losing any knowledge among the troupe.
Hideout at 5:30 - Tech Rehearsal for us. Mostly
we just need to do things like sound checks and acrobatics checks for those who
need them.
Hideout (rest of the evening) Performances including us.
I know that there are other performances going on and that I can watch them, but
my personal preparations when doing a show usually don’t let me. I always tend
to get very wound up before a performance, so I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to
the troupe going on before me. After, I’m going to want to simply detox for a bit.
I’m anticipating that the heat and humidity are going
to be sufficient to knock me on my ass anyway. I will make a point of seeing other
shows on later nights, but this is our first performance night here, so I want
to stay focused.
Everyone is getting really strained.
A couple of personalities are starting to really flair
up. It’s probably best to simply stay out of the way. My patience is already
worn completely thin and it really will not do any good to argue with anyone.
Screaming accomplishes nothing.
Later -
DAMN, DAMN, DAMN, DAMN! I forgot a line and froze.
It’s the one place I’ve had trouble with in this show the entire time ... <sigh>