April 23, 2004
Din Don (or is it Don Din?)
Pagliacci has been going extremely well! We got a great review in the paper and everyone seems to love it.
Karl, Elizabeth, Michael and David came to the show on Sunday and had a wonderful time, which kind of makes it all worth it. And they send me a gigantic bouquet of flowers...made me feel quite the star!
The "wedding party" each night is great. Everyone is happy and laughing and excited, and even though it's just a show, that kind of energy sort of builds on itself. It's just fun. And I think happy scenes are WAY easier than tragic ones...they're much less draining, and at the end of the night you're ready to go out and party. I remember during Manon, nobody EVER went out...we were so exhausted from crying and screaming and getting beaten up. This doesn't seem like as much work!
I had a chance to see the snake up close and personal...brrrrr. I must say, as far as nine-foot albino pythons go, it has a pretty little face. And darned if it didn't have a personality. But still...brrrrr.
One of the funnier things that's happened so far is Boris (the groom) missing our entrance! I had to walk out by myself...the chorus girls were leaning over whispering, "Oh, poor thing! Where's your husband?" I felt quite left at the altar. Still, Boris rushed in halfway through the scene and felt terrible about it. And we've been teasing him mercilessly ever since, so he won't be able to live it down for a while.
It's been great having a big dressing room all to ourselves this time. Just us, the dancers, and the little girls, which is a nice change from a bazillion chorus girls (not that there's anything wrong with them...). Our room is quiet and cool and smells like expensive perfume.
Beppe throws a bottle in the second act, and we have a pool going every night on where it's going to land! We know that the stage management fully expects us to stop it from going into the orchestra pit, no matter how ungraceful it may be! Last night it went straight up in the air; the 4 of us in the front watched, horrified, as it hovered in the lights, then crashed back down to the stage. It didn't hit any of us this time...this time. Sitting as close as I do, I get spit on by the principals every night (especially since it's been so dry on stage), but getting beaned in the head by a prop bottle and then making a frantic dash to body-block it from the pit seems a little humiliating in front of 3,000 people.
I've been watching John's "Vesti" aria every night from the wings. It's the best staging I've ever seen in a production of Pagliacci, and John is such a great actor. It's mesmerizing. And it reminds me that no matter how much fun I have hanging out downstairs with the cast, this is where the real magic is for me. This is what brings me back year after year. Squeezed into a space in the wings, peering out into the lights and the stage, spellbound by a singer not 20 feet away, hearing the audience and feeling disconnected from them because I don't have to buy a ticket and sit in the third tier, knowing that I'm a part of this and feeling that, for a few minutes, everything in life makes sense and is perfect. And thinking, my god, I must be the luckiest person in the world to have this.