I No Longer Need a Tenor

[Sunday, July 8, 2007. 6:17pm]

Well, this afternoon we closed our run of Lend Me a Tenor with a fantastic performance that continued our only slightly-damaged streak of standing ovations. The show was solid, we found that we were continuing to find new jokes and better ways to make old ones, and we all agreed that we could stand to run the show for another few weeks. But such a thing is not to be, as we pack up the costumes and props, return them to the shop, and then make way for the theatre to start teching and running Man of La Mancha.

But the reason that I cannot post this right away is a freak thunderstorm here in Naples, which lasted all of ten minutes, but was responsible for cutting the power to most of the town. I sit in the lobby of the theatre, composing this, waiting for the power company to restore the power to the town. How rustic, indeed. It puts a crimp in the schedule for the tech crew, as they only have a certain amount of time in which to prepare the set for our rehearsal tomorrow night.

Listening to screw guns and hammers in the space makes me miss the quote-unquote glory days of Hedgerow Theatre, where Drew and I would spend all day building, rebuilding, and then changing-over that stage so we could mount three different shows. Even the Enchantment tour, with our continual set builds was a great deal of fun, even if it involved assembly instead of construction (and no power tools.)

We were all very sad to see Tenor go. But we don’t have the chance to miss it too much, as we are about to be knee-deep in La Mancha. We get a light day tomorrow while they finish building it, and we have a small rehearsal at night for spacing and staging purposes, but we don’t have our hardcore schedule back until Tuesday, when we start our ten out of twelve’s. And on another note all together, I’m moving into my second host house tomorrow – the infamous lake house with Skippy Raines. I can’t wait…