Invading Hordes

The first Pay-What-You-Can Preview of A Bright Room Called Day was a success from everything I heard. A nice little crowd for a preview on a Wednesday, Randy said. 30 or so people on a Wednesday night for a show to me is very good news. We have two more of these previews, tonight and tomorrow and then we open wide to the press on Saturday.

The excitement of an opening is sometimes lost on a company when they are going through it. You have usually been around the cast a crew for a solid week with very little time to yourself. Your laundry is piling up and you haven't eaten a dinner that doesn't come out of a box in two weeks. People at your day job keep asking you how the show is going and for some reason you are reduced to answering in a series of grunts and some form of dolphin clicks. Your family has begun to resent you and every time you talk to your mom she tells you how tired you sound. You have begun to convince yourself that most people function on 3 hours of sleep a night and have constructed a complex conspiracy theory that someone has replaced your pillows with someone else's pillows because you can no longer find that sweet soft spot that used to have you drifting right off to sleep.

It's is a mixed blessing being in a show you believe in. You may in fact care too much. The idea of an audience let alone critics invading the theater that has been your little kingdom for the past 6 weeks seems ludicrous. You want the world to see the work you have done but your soul wants to be protected from the awful things that can happen when it stands exposed in front of friends and strangers alike. We all want just one more chance to get it perfect before someone comes and terrorizes us and the people we have gotten so close to while the show was safe from the world in rehearsal. Yet they come. For good of for bad there has to be an audience as surely as there has to be actors on stage.