The Play's the Thing

Well, it's Saturday morning after opening night.  What a great feeling!  It was a terrific show last night--it felt wonderful to finally have a big crowd out there laughing at all the stuff that we hoped was funny!  It was.  Whew!

Not that they could help it: the show is a set of nine sharply drawn characters that the audience can't help but quickly know and quickly like.  But it's not just the characters, of course, but the production.  All the elements from tech, to music, to set, to costumes, to staging and dance.  This is a true ensemble piece of much more than the nine actors on stage.  The show really...popped!

The only thing that's missing--for me, at least--is the after-show "post mortem."  I can't help feeling a bit...I don't know, empty is too strong a word, and alone is just too dramatic.  But when the show is over and I walk to my car as if my shift just ended it's just too abrupt for me.  I know some people are drained and exhausted after a performance, but I usually still feel energized.  And I'm usually hungry.

I come from a community theater tradition where after every performance, most--or at least some--of the show people gather at a favorite restaurant or other friendly local spot, have a drink or two and a bite to eat, unwind and dissect that night's show--and each other.  Not quite as "formal" as a cast party, in fact a decidedly informal affair.  No big expense necessary--a soda and a slice of pizza, or just one beer perhaps.  The important thing was unwinding together.

That time was always filled with inside jokes and loud laughter at our own missteps and misspeaks.  It was the time where local theater stories were groomed into legends which would forevermore be repeated time and time again whenever we'd chance to be together in some other show.  It was where new people would hear about the veteran performers who aren't around anymore.  It was a chance for young and old to mix and enjoy each other in a social setting where the glue is the common love of community theater.

Laurence Olivier famously said that his favorite part of any performance was the drink after the show.  He might not have meant it the way I mean it, unless he was referring to that special late-night-tired-but-still-excited-and-hungry time I bet most of us feel after the lobby clears and our costumes are hung back on the rack.

To me, any production not capped off with a few heady portions of cast-and-crew time is missing the biggest and strongest personal memory-maker of them all.  And the local theater community as a whole is missing an opportunity to deepen those ties that bind us all offstage as well as onstage that carry us into the next show.

I'll admit that a play without socializing often seems to me more work than play.  It's good that most of us love the work--and don't get me wrong:  I  love the work--or we wouldn't be crazy enough to commit ourselves to the many weeks it takes to do it right.  But for me, the play's the thing. --JPZ