Thursday, February 12, 2009

Snow, SAD, and Our Neville-lll

Rehearsals roll on.

The director seems happy I'm there, she's no longer the one hated; I am.

"May I have quiet please?? Quiet on stage! PEOPLE!!! CACOPHONY!!!"

Dead silence, and the terribly polite stares of irritation over my stopping their nattering are turned my way.

The director looks at them with a sympathetic glance, turns to me and says, "Well done". Right. I'm hated, they love her now...but, it's quiet.

I can't seem to drop the Stage Manager hat at all... when we went to see "Wrecks" (review tomorrow), I noticed the actor's pronunciation of 'mimeograph' was done phonetically... MIME-o-graph.

As soon as the show was over, I dashed over to the Stage Manager, and gave the proper American pronunciation. I also mentioned the lights were turned the wrong way on a few bits of blocking, leaving the actor in the dark. Loo and I had both been annoyed by this, so, I brought that up, too. We then stood about and talked theater for a bit... it's a great little place (86 seats) above a pub in Shepard's Bush. It reminded me why I love theater... you can go anywhere, and talk shop.

SAD is sad right now, still at sixes and sevens, the show is two weeks away, and I worry about it... but, being a panto, we'll get away with lots of stuff. I had Nigel, who was holding a script, still unable to do his dialogue even with me prompting him on where he was.

Now, if John would only stop improvising, and learn his lines, I'd be thrilled.



Our Neville Fact:

Flick, Neville and Margaret's daughter, has decided to have a face lift. She walks about with bits of scotch tape on her face, pulling the loose skin back and her eyelids up, to show how she'll appear to her husband and children. Keeping the tape on, in order to drive over and show her friend, Lucy Sommerfield, the projected appearance, she forgot about the tape and stopped off at Tesco's to pick up some bacon and bread. It was a prime example of British politeness that, although she had tape on her face, no one stared or said a word.

6 comments:

austere said...

You've told us, but I've forgotten- what is SAD?

You actually went onstage and coughed politely and said, "Excuse me, but..." ?

Aghast. No, impressed. Give me a while to decide which.

quin browne said...

sad=silverstone amateur dramatics.

well, i waited until after the show, but, yes... i said, "excuse me, but..."


:)

Cormac Brown said...

I can actually visualize Flick making it all the way through the checkstand and into the parking lot like that.

Break a leg.

Bill From Gainesville said...

If I saw someone out in public and they had tape all over their face stretching their skin in different directions-- I would just ASSUME that They wanted someone to ask them about that and then I would oblige.

Deborah said...

Miss Quin you are in your element, not referring to the snow.
Ah, West End theatre. Ah, local theatre.
How old is Flick? Cant read too much yet on the computer, so, with apologies, I have been "skimming".
A man room? I want one. With concrete floors, and a drain in the middle.
Love Miss Sof.

austere said...

Oh, Anything. Would he? Oh.


ty.