Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Mmm.... Brains....

The blog police are after me. I can heard their boot'd tread on the stairway now; their fists will crash on the door, push it open, manhandle me to sit in front of my laptop and type, TYPE!, to put something new out into the interwebs. So before they have the chance to knock down the door and ruffle my t-shirt, I'll write.

Last Friday night marked the second performance of the Mmmm....Brains.... new play festival downtown. All zombie themed plays. What's not to like? My last entry was about the fun I had with the cast, and that spirit of playfulness lasted for the process. We had a performance two Fridays ago, which went very well. After that first showing, the playwrights were given the chance to make changes and re-writes to their work. Alex decided not to do another draft, so we worked on making the second performance more of a fully realized event. The first one didn't have costumes, and we only mimed the food props called for in the script. For the second show, we wanted to give a fuller look to the play by using costumes, makeup, and, yes, real food.

The script says that my character puts out a tray with two different kinds of crackers and a bowl of dip. Though the course of the show, I feed it to the other characters with my bare hands, and then the other couple roll around on the ground, covering themselves affectionately in dip and crackers. It took us a few tries to find the right prop to use as the edible dip - hummus was rejected when one of our company didn't like it at all. French onion dip made half of us sick - it tastes great combined with potato chips and veggies, but not on its own. At the show, our director brought a container of tapioca pudding, which worked perfectly. And it got everywhere. Nice.

The entire project was a blast from beginning to end. I always love working on new plays and new scripts, especially short plays about zombies. I also felt really lucky to meet all the folk who were in the company with me. Very cool people all, and people that I want to work with again in the future if I get the opportunity. One of them is involved in film festivals (the subject of a-still-upcoming blog entry), and so they are good people to know for my career.

But above all, it was a blast. Working in theatre is supposed to be fun, and this whole process was a very fun one. I hope to do something like it again soon.

1 comment:

JParis said...

mmmm....frummus onion pudding...