Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Brush up your Shakespear, Start quoting him now, Brush up your Shakespear and the women you will wow.-From the play Kiss Me Kate by Cole Porter

Once again Roses reminded me of something. She's got a knack for that.


Many years ago a friend of mine was the stage manager for our local community theater group. Getting a cast is pretty easy, every one wants to be on stage,  but getting a crew was more difficult. So she asked me if I'd be the prop mistress for their production of Kiss Me Kate. It was pretty simple I got all the props out before a performance and made sure they we're usable, put them back away after the performance, and made sure they got in to the hands of whoever was supposed to bring them on stage.


I wasn't expecting it to be the most fun I ever had doing a play. The crew consisted of my friend the stage manager, myself, and a girl who did the lighting. You're supposed to be really quiet backstage but the crew do need to communicate so we had these fancy schmancy wireless headsets with little microphones. I don't remember ever using them for anything regarding the play. The lighting tech spent the whole time trying to make us giggle backstage, which made both of us rather silly too. The rest of the time we spent plotting pranks to play on the cast closing night, which is a long and hallowed tradition among stage crews.


You aren't supposed to do anything that would disrupt the play. The prank are on the cast not the audience after all. I only remember one probably because though the other girls agreed it was a good idea it was entirely mine in inspiration and execution.

There is a scene early on in the play where one of the characters is given a bouquet of flowers which she latter throws at the person who sent them. We had a fake arrangement we used ever night but the last. On the last night I had made a bouquet of real flowers and replace the card in them with one that said, "Good luck on your last night." I wasn't in a position to see her reaction when she got them on stage but I heard her deliver the line which was something like, "Oh thank you they're beautiful."  and we could tell this time she wasn't acting and was talking to us. When she came off stage she gave me a hug and I saw she had tears in her eyes. In the later scene where she had to throw the flowers at the other character she was careful to throw them in such a way that he could catch them. The director wound up taking them home and drying them as a souvenir of the production.

2 comments:

LeeAnn said...

I used to do community theater, on the acting side of the curtain. I kind of miss it, but now I've grown into this shy, retiring type who avoids attention.
I also have a bridge for sale.

Roses said...

Were those flowers.... Roses?