Unexpected End

Before I mention Saturday night's performance of "The King is But a Man" I need to mention that my matinee, yesterday, was cancelled due to weather. Ice and snow, to be exact. A snow storm I feel compelled to point out was not even on the radar earlier in the week. Such, it seems, is my luck with such things. (Especially since this show was originally intended for late autumn of last year.)

Regardless of how a show goes, it is difficult to not have some closure. True, I had virtually no set for this show, but I would have gotten a sense of completion of my mission had I been able to perform all three of my long-awaited (by me) performances at that venue. That sense of completion would have been capped off by my putting the precious few items from my set back in their respective places in the venue. Now they will merely be put away by the next play which will rehearse tonight. (And with whom I had to share the stage over the last five weeks, unexpectedly, as both shows rehearsed in the same time frame, hence my late nights.) This pains me somewhat.

As does the fact that in the end, so few people came to see the show. It is difficult enough when one spend six weeks or so practicing someone else's play with other people under the guidance of someone else, only to have few people come watch it. To spend over a year creating your own work, all by yourself, to have so few people express an interest in it is even more of a gut check in some ways. Especially when, like me, you did everything in your power to promote the project.

I am not ashamed to admit that most of my creative projects have audiences in mind. I of course get something out of my writings and performances, and I strive to do well in both endeavors. I can be proud of my work in my own right, and I am for "The King is But a Man" in both writing and the two performances I delivered of it. But unlike some, possibly more enlightened souls, I rarely write or perform in a vacuum. That is to say I write so people will read my words, and be entertained, moved, forced to think by them. The same with  my acting. Better people than I can write novels that nobody will ever read, that nobody is intended to read, and be fine with that. I know actor who can perform for empty houses all the time, and get by on just the fulfillment of a job well done. But that isn't me.

This isn't to say I seek validation for my whole existence through applause. Yet this stuff is not easy to do, folks. And I imagine plenty of people in other service oriented fields, (which is how I think of the arts to some extent) would feel similar as I do now, if nobody partook of their efforts. One who cooks a lavish meal, and has nobody show up to eat it is probably not celebrating the fact that all of it is headed to the dumpster at the end of the evening. Food is to be eaten. Words are to be read. Music, listened and danced to.

So I don't feel guilty for my disappointment.

As for Saturday night itself, it was a better experience than Friday night. There were only seven people in the crowd, but they were a responsive group. They laughed at some of the jokes, and seemed generally interested in the story I was trying to tell, by way of my own words and those of Shakespeare. I received several compliments after the performance. Though I did stumble once or twice in some of the speeches again, I do believe I corrected myself in such a way that nobody was the wiser in the audience. Making mistakes still irks me to no end, but it's more tolerable when the flow of the scene is left in tact, and I believe that it was.

Mistakes aside, I am satisfied with my performance on Saturday. My energy, (which was flagging a bit in the evening before I got to the theatre) picked up once the shoe go under way. Responsive audiences help with that. And I've said before I'd rather have ten people in the audience who are into the show, than thirty who are passive and unmoved. I don't know if the audience on Saturday totally made up for Friday night, but it was certainly a relief to have a few more people.

One member of the audience, a friend of mine, expressed regret that more people had not come to see the show. "They don't know what they're missing," she said. The same person, along with her companion for the evening also told me of their hope that this weekend would not be the final time I performed the piece. I mentioned that I had always intended for this to be just a premiere, but to then take it around to other venues, if they would have me.

To be honest, however, I am no longer sure if I should. Having so little return on  my investment, mixed with other difficulties during this process took a lot out of me. On top of a string of creative failures in this area over the years, it has left me feeling rather flat. True, it is all still raw for now, and my mind may change as I get some distance from the experience. Yet right now, I don't feel I have the energy to go through cold calling venues, convincing them to give me a try, have the majority of them say "no" and have little interest from audiences in any venue that happens to say less. The experience of the original venue has nearly sapped me dry. Do I have it in me to continue this elsewhere? Is it even a marketable product, or has this experience proved that nobody wants to see this?

I don't know. I've been asking myself these questions all weekend, and will probably continue to do so for some time. I have other creative projects of my own in the pipeline for this year, and they will take their own large amounts of energy. (Especially if they don't succeed as planned.) I may not be able to pursue all of it, now that I've taken a hit like this. Again, I'll have to think on it for a while. The iron is certainly not hot coming off of this weekend, so there is no need to strike quickly on this decision...

I have a regular play that I am editing, and I've been asked about the possibility of directing something locally. Those two projects are the next two immediately demanding my attention. (If I take on the directing job that is. I must read the script.) Beyond those, I don't know.

Opening Night

Last night I opened my first ever one-man show. And of course, the first ever play I myself wrote. It was in many ways a unique experience.

There are many ways to talk about opening night, but I'll start with the most honest; almost nobody was in the audience. Five people total, only one of whom did not work for the venue itself.

If you've done any theatre at all, you know that performing for a handful of people can be an indescribably mixture between sick and worried, or depressing and dull. It saps an actor's energy not only faster than a larger audience would, but in a different way. A more palpable way that one can feel during a performance, as opposed to during a break or after the show is over.

Combine this with the fact that a one man show by its nature is more tiring than most other types of shows, and you have the makings of an exhausting evening.

I will say, however, that I made no attempts to conserve energy by holding back on my performance. I still gave it as much as I had, and from a performance angle, I am for the most part satisfied. It felt like it went faster than rehearsals tended to go, but I'm not sure because I didn't time it. Perhaps it only seemed faster because at times I was in a different zone; some moments and scenes seemed to begin and end before I was fully aware of them. That may make it sound like I wasn't paying attention, but I was. I just found that some moments were more automatic (not flat) than others. I will need more distance from the experience before I can judge whether or not this is a positive or negative.

I stumbled in a few places during the performance, but I was able to correct the mistakes quickly. My small audience probably did not notice, but of course I did, and I tend to be hard on myself. Hopefully, there will be fewer such errors tonight.

Despite the lack of audience, and the fact that I am the only one on stage, it did at times feel like an opening night. I wish I could say that the excitement and anticipation level were as high as normal, but without anyone to bounce those feelings off of, or to share them with, it wasn't quite like that. Nevertheless, an opening night is an opening night, and the actor bits of me deep inside my psyche could still tell.

Honesty has always been my policy here on this blog, and I won't pretend it was an exhilarating way to get started on this project of mine. It was in more way than one, a disappointing opening. Plus, as writer, actor and producer of the show, I bare the brunt of most of that disappointment alone. In some ways the let down has been so sudden and potent that last night, and today I've felt more numb than anything else, and therefore cannot elaborate on the evening's impact with as much detail as I might normally report on a performance. Once again, with time and distance, I may be able to offer more on this experience, but for now I'm still in the middle of it.

I can say, without any doubt, that I successfully presented something on which I alone have been working for over a year. From concept to presentation, I did, on my end, about 90% of what I set out to do so far. And I must also remember that this is simply the beginning. I intend to take this show elsewhere over the years...to keep it in my theatre arsenal as an offering when other opportunities arise. "The King is But a Man" is something for the long haul of my creative life, not merely something to fill the time this weekend. With a little luck and some work on my part, it will have different incarnations and many different times. It will be different things to different audiences in different venues as time goes by. Last night was merely the world premiere.

And of course, I have two performances remaining in this initial run, during which things may improve drastically. I have no idea how many people will come tonight, but I do know I will summon the best I have to offer again.

A few more people in the seats who enjoy the show would be nice, however, I will admit.

"Tech" Week

This is it, loyal blog readers. My "tech" week for the one man show!

I put "tech" on quotation marks, however, because it is very much unlike most tech weeks. It is still just me at rehearsal, and I will only in fact be rehearsing twice this week instead of every day. (Once behind last night, once being tomorrow night.) I decided that given the nature of the show, and how many times I have been able to rehearse it twice a week, I wouldn't need to run it every day this week.

And of course, there are virtually no technical aspects to this show to rehearse, anyway. The usual lighting technician at the Black Box was kind enough to program a basic plot into the theatre lights for me the other day, so now I have those. I turned them on myself last night before rehearsal. It took some getting used to, I have to say, as I had only practiced with the work lights up to that point. But that's part of tech week. I don't think it will cause great problems, though. It's different, but not distracting. Plus I have one more night to perform under them. I just need to find someone to turn them off at intermission. Maybe. Intermission will be very clear to the audience when it comes, so if I can't find anyone to switch them off, it's not tragic.

I stumbled over a few lines last night, but once again, I wasn't derailed. If any of my three initial performances go as well as say the last three rehearsals, I'll be doing fine. Things to improve, as always, but I'd have little to be ashamed of if I gave the audience as much as I gave the last few rehearsals. (Though of course I hope to give more.)

I hope I did not "peak" too early as it were. That is doing the show best during rehearsals, and not as well during the performances. But I will have the audience during the performances, which usually boosted my abilities somewhat. I won't beat myself up if this experiment isn't perfect, but I also hope that the performances are of course the best presentation I am to give of the show, out of all of the times I've done it.

On Thursday, my final rehearsal, my goal is to have as much fun as I can with this show. Not that I've had no fun so far. Doing Shakespeare well is invigorating. But I want to finally let go, and worry less about the little things, and give all of myself to presenting the show, so that is the frame of mind I am in going into the weekend. We shall soon find out if I can do that.