We’re a special kind of people
Known as show people
Our days are tied to curtains
They rise and they fall
We’re born every night
At half-hour call
It’s been years since I did dinner theatre. I had forgotten two things: how much fun it was, and how much work it was.
Slight backtrack: Years ago, I worked a season with Play with your Food Dinner Theatre in my home town. It was both the most difficult and the most amazing summer of my acting experience. We were a musical dinner theatre company, and the show took place before during and after the show. We had a basic script, but about half the night was ad-lib, including everything that took place around the head table (yes we even ate in front of the audience) – you were in character from the moment you stepped in the restaurant door to the moment the last patron departed. Half the time you’d even forget to eat and end up begging the wait staff for bread and butter in the dressing room.
I was split cast for one role and understudying the lead. Each of the three parts I had required totally different accents and costumes, and I never knew which role I was going to have from week to week. One week I was a newspaper boy and a British school-girl, the next I was a southern belle vixen. Nothing in improv is ever predictable.
I adored it. And I was damn good at it.
I never thought I’d be doing that kind of thing again. Especially after having been denied the chance last year…
Allow me to explain:
There are four murder mystery dinners that are run on the flagship world cruise each year. They sell out almost a year in advance.The CD writes them himself, and casts only those he knows can handle them. Because one other thing full improv dinner theatre is not – is easy. Last year, he wasn’t completely sure of me, barely knew me, and therefore I wasn’t cast. I would sit in the library on show nights nearly weeping into my computer from the sheer desperation that there was a show, no matter how small a show, going on right down the hall from me, and I wasn’t part of it.
This year, when the Murder Mystery evenings were announced at the beginning of the cruise I worked up my nerve and went to the CD and begged. This is what I do I said, please, give me a chance. You know I can do it.
And just like that, I was cast.
Remember guys, the hardest part of this is not breaking character, whatever you do, you are your character, and people will try…
As the CD gave this reminder, I leaned up against the wall, and part of me, the small proud part of me, grinned. I don’t break character. Not ever. You’re talking to someone who learned once how to give directions downtown while remaining in character.
It doesn’t matter how much pain I’m in, how much my heart may be aching, you give me a show – I am emotionally healed. And I haven’t had a show, of any kind, until tonight, for nearly two years.
It was like walking back in time. Like looking in a mirror and rejoining with the best parts of the woman I used to be.
From sitting cross-legged in front of my cabin mirror with bobby-pins clutched in my teeth and make-up scattered around me, with the soundtrack to Little Shop of Horrors blaring out of my computer speakers, to walking out of the office already bearing my British accent. And despite multiple attempts by multiple people to break that character (and one succeeded in that they made me laugh so hard I had to break for a minute to start to breathe again)…I held it. For four hours. Four exhausting challenging hours. Including the accent, the table I was seated with (because yes we were seated with the guests) said I had them totally convinced I really was from the UK, if they’d asked me which town? I had an answer ready for that too…
Flitting from table to table, defending my character’s innocence while slinging the guilt onto everyone else. And still, somehow, trying to remember to eat.
You feel exhausted, you feel frustrated and your mind goes frantic,
And you feel totally utterly alive.
And the guilty party was chosen by vote, the same way my old company did it, and when the vote came out against me I was prepared when they came to haul me away
I did it for love! I swear!
The dining room manager just looked at me and grinned.
At the very end of the evening when I finally did drop character, my table mates looked at me and said :
how? How do you do that? You almost had us convinced you actually were from the UK! You never ever broke character! You were amazing, you just…how?
And I looked at them and took a sip of my ice water (I don’t drink when I work)
Simple…it’s what I do.
And you’re damn good at it. ^_^ Bravo!