Best. Show. Ever.
I've been doing a sketch show on Friday evenings pretty regularly for the last year. The script changes every two months or so and sometimes so does the cast, but all and all I've been blessed to act with a stellar group of people who make Friday nights fun. And then there is always that one person who...well, you know what I'm saying. You've worked with this person before. They are usually talented and they are usually charming but they are not team players.
In mid-November, the producer of our little ensemble scheduled a show on the Friday before Christmas. I'm not gonna lie: I grumbled about it. My 90 year old grandparents had just scheduled Christmas around my schedule because I had told them I'd be home that Friday and I thought long and hard about bailing on my commitment that night. I wasn't getting paid. We didn't have understudies, but it was plenty of time to teach the show to an eager thespian. Further, I wondered who was going to attend an 11 pm show right before the holidays? I imagined an empty audience coupled with the guilt of my empty chair at my grandparent's house. Well, I decided to stay and keep my commitment. I was wrong: we had a full house. But ten minutes before the show one of our main players hadn't arrived (you know, the talented/charming/bad team player one?). 20 minutes after start time, the actor was still absent. We didn't have understudies. Nobody could reach the actor via phone or via brand new boyfriend. All of my scenes were with this actor. Our audience was waiting. We talked about handing a script to someone to do the actor's lines. I threw up my hands and had a poor-pity me-why-didn't-I-just-go-home-to-Iowa-and-skip-this-damn-second-rate-unprofessional-little-show moment. I may have even shed a tear. But when life throws you lemons, you get creative and make lemonade dammit! And we did! We threw ourselves into what was, perhaps, quite possibly, we've been told by super fans...our Best Show Ever.
How exactly, you ask, did we pull off this amazing triumphant feat? Well, our show is based on bad screenplays that are performed skillfully (yet very very badly) on stage. The LA Times profiled us last year and wrote, "This troupe cobbles together the worst scenes from bad screenplays in an evening of humor where English might not even be the native tongue." So, you see, it didn't necessarily have to be good. In fact, the worse the better! At the top of the evening, our announcer joked that given the nature of the show, an actor hadn't shown for the production. The announcer then plucked a semi-suspecting thespian friend from the audience to join our cast for the evening. She was handed a script without directions. Craziness ensued.
I am sure the audience thought that it was a gimmick. However, it became clear in the first scene that this new cast member really didn't know the show. She missed entrances, read the wrong lines, and started scenes in curious places all to uproarious laughter. The more we "messed up," the more people laughed. As a cast, we were on our toes and fancy free from stale blocking and the usual "laugh lines" to which we were accustomed. In one scene, I had the new cast member follow me to our "start position." I went up the platform and she went to the opposite side of the stage. I whispered her name. She didn't hear me. I thought, "Oh well, I'll just go join her and do the scene over there!" And then the lights came up and we realized that we were sitting in the dark and that the platform was the only playing space lit. The audience cracked up. We looked at each other, shrugged, and then ran to the platform. Ohhh, it was a night of surprises.
After the show, a young man came up to me and said that a friend had been talking up this show for weeks and that he finally decided to check it out. He assumed that it wouldn't live up to his expectations. In fact, it was better, he said, than he could've imagined. He had no idea that this wasn't a typical night for us. When somebody tells me that they almost peed their pants several times, I take it to heart.
Maybe this "unsuspecting audience member/cast member" thing will become a regular part of the show. Who knows?
So, thank you. Thank you, bad team player actor who just "forgot" to show up. Please don't feel too guilty. It was our best show ever because you weren't there. Any chance you can conveniently forget again?
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