A real post!
Oedipus is over. Or at least this run is. Sad.
But not bad. We had an amazing cast and crew, 8 sold-out performances, and a lot of fun. Tons of important people came, like my grandmother (don't ask how I convinced her to come), some people from high school that I'd lost touch with, and 4 of the six cast members of [title of show] (which you must catch before it ends its Vinyard run on Sunday). All of which made me very happy. But now, the run is done.
However, this is NOT the end. How do I know? Here's how I know.
Last night I personally had a special meeting with Margo Lion, Kevin McCollum, Robyn Goodman, Jeffrey Seller, Marc and Jon B. Platt, David Stone, Gerald Schoenfeld, Barbara Freitag, Barry & Fran Weissler, The (entire) Araca Group, Gerard Alessandrini, Robin Williams, Stephen Sondheim, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and a Zebra in a Fez eating Pez. They all decided together to kick Phantom of the Opera out of the huge Majestic and put Oe4K there, adding a chorus of 50 real blind men for the act 2 number. After they all agreed, we had an awesome beach-slash-sake party at Taven on the Green to celebrate. Except for it looked less like Tavern on the Green and more like a cross between Vienna and a Wet Dog. And when I woke up, MY PILLOW WAS REPLACED BY A BOWL OF GRAPE NUTS!
(The exclamations, once more, are mine. It has occurred to me that the show should maybe be re-titled Oedipus for Kids?!?! instead of the current Oedipus for Kids! Might actually cause less confusion.)
So the one thing I do have to post about. It all begins with our Friday Night 11 PM performance, performance #6 of 8. We knew when the date was added that it would be a slightly different performance; how can it not be at 11 PM? What we didn't realize until the day-of was that Laura Jordan would break her foot that morning.
What's important was that she was fine. And not only was she fine, but she was willing to go on anyway. So we did a little creative thinking and after a little speech before the show, we had Laura go onstage in an office chair which she sat on during the majority of the play. A few set and costume pieces were excised, and we were off.
Now Friday night was a weird night in a few ways. Besides the stupid disco ball being rewired into the wrong port or something (I don't know lighting, but it was going off in random scenes), and besides the entire lightboard dying causing every single light to go off in the middle of the Sphinx scene (Reed's comment: "wow, a whole day just went by!")...
Ah, runon. So Laura comes on and they do their best with Laura sitting the entire show. Sure, not as much choreography, but we figured the audience would understand. And I gotta say, not only did it barely make a difference, it even provided an additional 2 or 3 more laughs than we normally get. There's a moment where Oedipus tells Mommy that his ankles hurt and says "carry me!" On Friday night, when Reed said that line, the entire audience suddenly realized that something wasn't going to work. And in that wonderful moment of tenseness, Laura waits the exact perfect amount of comedic-timing seconds and then tells Reed, "NO."
And then, quite the trouper, she went through the entire show rolling around onstage in an office chair. I couldn't make this stuff up. What was amazing was that after the first ten minutes or so, with her own improvised comedy and even doing all of Husband/Lover/Son, her 9:45 PM number, I stopped noticing she was in a chair. And it seemed to almost make sense that her character would be sitting in a chair with her leg in a cast. That's what you get from a performer with that much talent, dedication, and a staunch belief that the show must go on.
[oh right of course gavin and reed you guys are good too]
Some answers to some frequently asked questions:
Q: Where can I get the cast album?
A: You can't, at least yet. Actors equity states that unless we're filthy rich, we can't record the cast album with the original performers for the next 6 months. Oddly enough, we can ignore our original cast and go get some other actors to create a demo album, but if we want to showcase it with our original actors we can't. That's why the 3 tracks we have uploaded were all sung by other people.
Q: Did you get to meet Barret Foa?
A: Yes I did; he totally came to the show for one of the performances.
Q: Wasn't that awesome?
A: Yes, but I like him for his talent, not in the way that you and half of BroadwayWorld.com faun over him.
OK, I think I had some joke I was going with for this FAQ thing but I've forgotten it.
I'm sure I'll post more. But with our NYMF run done, just remember that one thing made it all possible: mother fucking.
Ah!
But not bad. We had an amazing cast and crew, 8 sold-out performances, and a lot of fun. Tons of important people came, like my grandmother (don't ask how I convinced her to come), some people from high school that I'd lost touch with, and 4 of the six cast members of [title of show] (which you must catch before it ends its Vinyard run on Sunday). All of which made me very happy. But now, the run is done.
However, this is NOT the end. How do I know? Here's how I know.
Last night I personally had a special meeting with Margo Lion, Kevin McCollum, Robyn Goodman, Jeffrey Seller, Marc and Jon B. Platt, David Stone, Gerald Schoenfeld, Barbara Freitag, Barry & Fran Weissler, The (entire) Araca Group, Gerard Alessandrini, Robin Williams, Stephen Sondheim, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and a Zebra in a Fez eating Pez. They all decided together to kick Phantom of the Opera out of the huge Majestic and put Oe4K there, adding a chorus of 50 real blind men for the act 2 number. After they all agreed, we had an awesome beach-slash-sake party at Taven on the Green to celebrate. Except for it looked less like Tavern on the Green and more like a cross between Vienna and a Wet Dog. And when I woke up, MY PILLOW WAS REPLACED BY A BOWL OF GRAPE NUTS!
(The exclamations, once more, are mine. It has occurred to me that the show should maybe be re-titled Oedipus for Kids?!?! instead of the current Oedipus for Kids! Might actually cause less confusion.)
So the one thing I do have to post about. It all begins with our Friday Night 11 PM performance, performance #6 of 8. We knew when the date was added that it would be a slightly different performance; how can it not be at 11 PM? What we didn't realize until the day-of was that Laura Jordan would break her foot that morning.
What's important was that she was fine. And not only was she fine, but she was willing to go on anyway. So we did a little creative thinking and after a little speech before the show, we had Laura go onstage in an office chair which she sat on during the majority of the play. A few set and costume pieces were excised, and we were off.
Now Friday night was a weird night in a few ways. Besides the stupid disco ball being rewired into the wrong port or something (I don't know lighting, but it was going off in random scenes), and besides the entire lightboard dying causing every single light to go off in the middle of the Sphinx scene (Reed's comment: "wow, a whole day just went by!")...
Ah, runon. So Laura comes on and they do their best with Laura sitting the entire show. Sure, not as much choreography, but we figured the audience would understand. And I gotta say, not only did it barely make a difference, it even provided an additional 2 or 3 more laughs than we normally get. There's a moment where Oedipus tells Mommy that his ankles hurt and says "carry me!" On Friday night, when Reed said that line, the entire audience suddenly realized that something wasn't going to work. And in that wonderful moment of tenseness, Laura waits the exact perfect amount of comedic-timing seconds and then tells Reed, "NO."
And then, quite the trouper, she went through the entire show rolling around onstage in an office chair. I couldn't make this stuff up. What was amazing was that after the first ten minutes or so, with her own improvised comedy and even doing all of Husband/Lover/Son, her 9:45 PM number, I stopped noticing she was in a chair. And it seemed to almost make sense that her character would be sitting in a chair with her leg in a cast. That's what you get from a performer with that much talent, dedication, and a staunch belief that the show must go on.
[oh right of course gavin and reed you guys are good too]
Some answers to some frequently asked questions:
Q: Where can I get the cast album?
A: You can't, at least yet. Actors equity states that unless we're filthy rich, we can't record the cast album with the original performers for the next 6 months. Oddly enough, we can ignore our original cast and go get some other actors to create a demo album, but if we want to showcase it with our original actors we can't. That's why the 3 tracks we have uploaded were all sung by other people.
Q: Did you get to meet Barret Foa?
A: Yes I did; he totally came to the show for one of the performances.
Q: Wasn't that awesome?
A: Yes, but I like him for his talent, not in the way that you and half of BroadwayWorld.com faun over him.
OK, I think I had some joke I was going with for this FAQ thing but I've forgotten it.
I'm sure I'll post more. But with our NYMF run done, just remember that one thing made it all possible: mother fucking.
Ah!
Oedipus for Kids! plays as part of the