Resilience
There is a particular kind of optimism that you tend to see in theater practitioners. It is a cheerful, steel-willed, almost reckless optimism that is best summed up by the recognizable phrase: “The show must go on!”
The pronouncement has become such a cliché that anyone who has so much as watched a sitcom knows it well. But even given that familiarity, it still sounds grandiose, doesn’t it? It conjures images of tireless vaudevillians with sleeve garters and boater hats, possessed by that 1930’s Mickey Rooney-esque “Hey gang!” type of attitude that Mark is fond of invoking.
Or maybe—and this is more what it is for me—it brings to mind a sort of British Shakespearean-actor kind of mentality. People talking like those dashing Great White Hunter archetype characters in old movies…you know the kind? The mustache, the monocle, the walking stick, spouting things like “Tally-ho, old boy! Into the breach! Damn and blast, I say, buck up and give them what for!”
And, “The show must go on!”
This all renders the whole thing pretty ridiculous, like all clichés, and archaic. Maybe we’ve discarded it in modern days in favor of different kinds of optimism. Whatever the case, here’s why I bring it up.
Working in the theater you find that you pick up bits of wisdom here and there—everything from “Maybe you should say your lines so that the audience can hear you” to “Disregard the obvious and show what’s underneath”. But for me, the one that was most surprising and the most reliably true was, believe it or not, “the show must go on!”
It’s real. Theater happens in spite of the most ridiculous, gut-wrenching odds. In fact, theater artists come to expect that to be the case more often than not, and will embrace and somehow enjoy the fact that their whole enterprise is hanging by a thread.
I’ve seen it myself. I directed an outdoor production of The Winter’s Tale in college and was informed by the producer that we would have to completely scrap the set, a large curtain which was opened and closed throughout the show. We realized this because, go figure, Chicago is windy and the weighted curtain would billow up and hit actors in the face. And we realized this 5 minutes before we were supposed to start the final dress rehearsal on the night before we opened. The actors were warming up for the final dress, a couple of audience members had settled down to watch, and all of a sudden we had to re-stage a couple of the most important moments of the show.
Somehow we did, and the show went up. And I came out of the experience ulcer-free. I don’t know which was more surprising.
The Suicide, our first and most recent production, is a case in point. Not as dire as my college show, certainly, but there were so many reasons throughout the process that the show might not have happened. We couldn’t initially track down the translator to get the rights. We had to recast two of the roles, two times each. Getting the theater itself finished in time for opening night was a race against time, and a few of us were there from the night before until 5 in the morning painting the walls and floor. Not to mention the shaky-at-best financial situation that all incipient theater companies find themselves in.
But it happened.
Now, it would be ungrateful and simply untrue to suggest that it was just those of us directly involved in the production of the show that made it happen. The support of many in the community—monetary contributions, labor, moral support, and just coming to the show—was nothing less than the foundation upon which we built the show and the theater at large. This must be emphasized, first because it’s an important fact, and second because as we navigate our way into our sophomore show, we will need that support possibly more than ever.
I’m not writing this specifically to request continued (and gratefully appreciated) support from you, the community. Mark does that more articulately and concisely than I could, below. I’m just marveling at the sheer resilience of theater in the face of what can sometimes be pretty sickening odds. It gives me reason to keep believing in it.
You know, as I write this, it occurs to me that “the show must go on” doesn’t quite capture the real spirit of it. If anything, it’s “the show will go on.” There isn’t really a choice. And given the sort of bleak and infertile environments that we’ve seen theater is able persist in, it makes me realize that with support from the most important party in this whole game, our audience, there is almost nothing we can’t do.
Tally-ho.
The pronouncement has become such a cliché that anyone who has so much as watched a sitcom knows it well. But even given that familiarity, it still sounds grandiose, doesn’t it? It conjures images of tireless vaudevillians with sleeve garters and boater hats, possessed by that 1930’s Mickey Rooney-esque “Hey gang!” type of attitude that Mark is fond of invoking.
Or maybe—and this is more what it is for me—it brings to mind a sort of British Shakespearean-actor kind of mentality. People talking like those dashing Great White Hunter archetype characters in old movies…you know the kind? The mustache, the monocle, the walking stick, spouting things like “Tally-ho, old boy! Into the breach! Damn and blast, I say, buck up and give them what for!”
And, “The show must go on!”
This all renders the whole thing pretty ridiculous, like all clichés, and archaic. Maybe we’ve discarded it in modern days in favor of different kinds of optimism. Whatever the case, here’s why I bring it up.
Working in the theater you find that you pick up bits of wisdom here and there—everything from “Maybe you should say your lines so that the audience can hear you” to “Disregard the obvious and show what’s underneath”. But for me, the one that was most surprising and the most reliably true was, believe it or not, “the show must go on!”
It’s real. Theater happens in spite of the most ridiculous, gut-wrenching odds. In fact, theater artists come to expect that to be the case more often than not, and will embrace and somehow enjoy the fact that their whole enterprise is hanging by a thread.
I’ve seen it myself. I directed an outdoor production of The Winter’s Tale in college and was informed by the producer that we would have to completely scrap the set, a large curtain which was opened and closed throughout the show. We realized this because, go figure, Chicago is windy and the weighted curtain would billow up and hit actors in the face. And we realized this 5 minutes before we were supposed to start the final dress rehearsal on the night before we opened. The actors were warming up for the final dress, a couple of audience members had settled down to watch, and all of a sudden we had to re-stage a couple of the most important moments of the show.
Somehow we did, and the show went up. And I came out of the experience ulcer-free. I don’t know which was more surprising.
The Suicide, our first and most recent production, is a case in point. Not as dire as my college show, certainly, but there were so many reasons throughout the process that the show might not have happened. We couldn’t initially track down the translator to get the rights. We had to recast two of the roles, two times each. Getting the theater itself finished in time for opening night was a race against time, and a few of us were there from the night before until 5 in the morning painting the walls and floor. Not to mention the shaky-at-best financial situation that all incipient theater companies find themselves in.
But it happened.
Now, it would be ungrateful and simply untrue to suggest that it was just those of us directly involved in the production of the show that made it happen. The support of many in the community—monetary contributions, labor, moral support, and just coming to the show—was nothing less than the foundation upon which we built the show and the theater at large. This must be emphasized, first because it’s an important fact, and second because as we navigate our way into our sophomore show, we will need that support possibly more than ever.
I’m not writing this specifically to request continued (and gratefully appreciated) support from you, the community. Mark does that more articulately and concisely than I could, below. I’m just marveling at the sheer resilience of theater in the face of what can sometimes be pretty sickening odds. It gives me reason to keep believing in it.
You know, as I write this, it occurs to me that “the show must go on” doesn’t quite capture the real spirit of it. If anything, it’s “the show will go on.” There isn’t really a choice. And given the sort of bleak and infertile environments that we’ve seen theater is able persist in, it makes me realize that with support from the most important party in this whole game, our audience, there is almost nothing we can’t do.
Tally-ho.
