Opening Night of One-Ders

Last night we opened the show for a small crowd of about ten people.

There were some issues with a few technical aspects, which isn't shocking, as we didn't get to rehearse those things very much this week. But from an acting standpoint, it went well.

There is room for improvement, no doubt. But as hectic as this tech week was, and given how bad schedules were at the start of the process (where a lot of rehearsals were missed) the show was quite solid.

It is an exhausting show for me in ways that most other shows are not. On the whole, the three plays did run about one hour last night, so that seems to be where we are with pacing. But during that hour I have almost no breaks. I am "on" almost the entire time. Because we have no tech crew, I have to be ready backstage almost from the very beginning to help with a set change in the dark. Then I perform the second show, immediately perform a second set change in the dark, and proceed to act in the final show, in which I am arguably the main character.

In all of that I am off stage after my first line in the first play for maybe two minutes. If you ad the brief Q&A with the audience that we had last night after we were done, that's even more time on stage. (Even though not in character. And I was asked no questions.)

In a lot of ways this was a "get it over with" opening night. By that I mean that though we performed well, it was just as much if not more about "proving" we were ready for an audience. We did, and in some ways tonight, with a bit of that pressure removed, will feel like a true opening night for me.

I'm sure it will be tighter. If it isn't, but is no worse than opening night, we still have nothing to lament about.

That's about all to report about opening night. But now that I think about it, a mundane, run of the mill report about opening night for this show indicates that everything went smoothly, so I'll take it. Tonight may be a larger crowd, with more energy. (The cast energy was low as well, last night.) I'm ready for that.