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So, now that I have more than half an hour at once at the computer, I will mention all the funny things that have happened at or after various rehearsals (and that my f key sticks).
Musical-wise, rehearsals have been uniformly hilarious, but that's the nature of La Cage aux Folles. Not only is the script inherently funny, the two leads are actually comedically competent. Plus, we've added a few sight gags. The senior who plays Albin, the drag queen mother of Jean-Michel, is an experienced actor and, though straight, very good at over-the-top drag. He's about as wide as he is tall, which is a third again taller than the freshman twig of a viola major who plays his husband Georges.
Last Friday I had to skip a La Cage rehearsal for an opera dress. The music director had said that the cast-bonding experience they scheduled for after rehearsal might still be going on by the time I got out, so I headed wearily to Hanszen after a perfunctory attempt at scrubbing black greasepaint out of my eyes. They were on the last ten minutes of To Wong Foo (who knew Patrick Swayze did good drag?), which didn't mean I missed much of the plot. It's a very good movie for members of a drag cast to watch together. Anyway, when it was over, people were evenly divided as to whether we should all go get ice cream or alcohol. I didn't care either way (well, I'd be getting ice cream if they got alcohol anyway, so hey)... but it all fizzled and five of us went to Ray (the director)'s room to play poker. With a lot of alcohol.
Tony, the aforementioned twig of a freshman violist, is a self-confessed lightweight. We changed the drinking rules so that winning necessitated a drink, in order to even out the playing field for those of us who had to relearn (or never knew) the rules of poker. I won several times, and I believe I left with the highest number of chips, but I was drinking milk. What astonished me was that Tony kept winning! And knocking back huge shots, some of which he didn't deserve, because I was slow figuring out that my straight beat his two pair.
So, he was hardly able to stand up by the end of the night (or at least the end I stayed for). However, he was still completely articulate and able to navigate the complexities of flirting with Birte, the foreign exchange student, in bad German. I was impressed. I also felt at about 2 in the morning that I'd had enough of this beating with the stick of weariness, so I declared myself kicked out and walked home. Ray offered an escort, and then the loan of a sword when I reminded him that every one of them would fall on their faces if they tried to walk me home and I am accustomed to late night wanderings because of my Thresher shift. I told him I had my own knife, and that I would make it. I did, but I couldn't stop grinning at memories of the drunken twig.
In opera news, the second-to-last dress rehearsal was funniest. I always finish my grotesque dead-doll makeup early so I can go backstage and watch the witch's aria from the wings. He is absolutely fantastic, and I want to be him when I grow up. But this time his superbness was almost unbearably hilarious.
Jimmy, in his witch costume, is completely Halloweenically decked out from head to toe. His wig is at least two feet wide, in calico colors plus gray, 80's-style huge and swept back from his face, which takes him an hour to put on. He has a four-inch nose and a three-inch chin and several warts, as well as the usual magical turn-the-college-student-middle-aged complement of wrinkle lines. He's really a lovely boy, but they do a spectacular job making him a gross witch. His blouse (with elbow-level saggy birdseed-pantyhose breasts) is confined by a bodice that probably doesn't even come up as far as his navel, accentuating the sagginess of his chest (especially when he shimmies). He has the same material covering his upper arms as is used to make the demons' leg warmers, and it is a disgustingly tattered spiderwebby gray film. His nauseous purple gloves have two-inch black nails. His four-foot-wide hoopskirt, also a vomitous purple, is covered with the child of a net and a hemp weed, with rodent skulls, human hand bones, his wand, and various other arcane and witchy things hanging from it. His surprisingly clean bloomers come below his knees but do not conceal his black-and-neon-lime-striped stockings. His shoes are the typical moderate-heeled black witchy buckle shoes.
And this is all just standard for dress rehearsal. What happened on Friday will never be surpassed, unless by a miracle it happens in performance. People are bringing their children, so I hope it doesn't.
On Friday, his shirt wasn't tucked in tightly enough to his bodice. He beckoned the demons out from behind the oven, stepped over his broomstick and initiated his very suggestive dance-- and lo! his shirt came completely untucked. Dangling freely (and let me tell you, they dangle below his waist) was the end of one nipple-less witchy breast, an utterly convincing foot of birdseed-filled pantyhose. And it got better. As he twirled gleefully about on his broomstick, demons onstage and angels backstage alike cackling fit to deafen the orchestra, the other breast came loose from its lip of blouse, and they both swung wildly in their respective saggy arcs.
He finished the cabaret number/aria, took his five diva bows, looked down with a tiny exclamation, demurely turned his back to the audience and smiled sweetly and smugly over his shoulder as he stuffed them back into his shirt.
Like I said, I want to be him when I grow up. The sheer cheek... could be harnessed as energy and light the world.
Musical-wise, rehearsals have been uniformly hilarious, but that's the nature of La Cage aux Folles. Not only is the script inherently funny, the two leads are actually comedically competent. Plus, we've added a few sight gags. The senior who plays Albin, the drag queen mother of Jean-Michel, is an experienced actor and, though straight, very good at over-the-top drag. He's about as wide as he is tall, which is a third again taller than the freshman twig of a viola major who plays his husband Georges.
Last Friday I had to skip a La Cage rehearsal for an opera dress. The music director had said that the cast-bonding experience they scheduled for after rehearsal might still be going on by the time I got out, so I headed wearily to Hanszen after a perfunctory attempt at scrubbing black greasepaint out of my eyes. They were on the last ten minutes of To Wong Foo (who knew Patrick Swayze did good drag?), which didn't mean I missed much of the plot. It's a very good movie for members of a drag cast to watch together. Anyway, when it was over, people were evenly divided as to whether we should all go get ice cream or alcohol. I didn't care either way (well, I'd be getting ice cream if they got alcohol anyway, so hey)... but it all fizzled and five of us went to Ray (the director)'s room to play poker. With a lot of alcohol.
Tony, the aforementioned twig of a freshman violist, is a self-confessed lightweight. We changed the drinking rules so that winning necessitated a drink, in order to even out the playing field for those of us who had to relearn (or never knew) the rules of poker. I won several times, and I believe I left with the highest number of chips, but I was drinking milk. What astonished me was that Tony kept winning! And knocking back huge shots, some of which he didn't deserve, because I was slow figuring out that my straight beat his two pair.
So, he was hardly able to stand up by the end of the night (or at least the end I stayed for). However, he was still completely articulate and able to navigate the complexities of flirting with Birte, the foreign exchange student, in bad German. I was impressed. I also felt at about 2 in the morning that I'd had enough of this beating with the stick of weariness, so I declared myself kicked out and walked home. Ray offered an escort, and then the loan of a sword when I reminded him that every one of them would fall on their faces if they tried to walk me home and I am accustomed to late night wanderings because of my Thresher shift. I told him I had my own knife, and that I would make it. I did, but I couldn't stop grinning at memories of the drunken twig.
In opera news, the second-to-last dress rehearsal was funniest. I always finish my grotesque dead-doll makeup early so I can go backstage and watch the witch's aria from the wings. He is absolutely fantastic, and I want to be him when I grow up. But this time his superbness was almost unbearably hilarious.
Jimmy, in his witch costume, is completely Halloweenically decked out from head to toe. His wig is at least two feet wide, in calico colors plus gray, 80's-style huge and swept back from his face, which takes him an hour to put on. He has a four-inch nose and a three-inch chin and several warts, as well as the usual magical turn-the-college-student-middle-aged complement of wrinkle lines. He's really a lovely boy, but they do a spectacular job making him a gross witch. His blouse (with elbow-level saggy birdseed-pantyhose breasts) is confined by a bodice that probably doesn't even come up as far as his navel, accentuating the sagginess of his chest (especially when he shimmies). He has the same material covering his upper arms as is used to make the demons' leg warmers, and it is a disgustingly tattered spiderwebby gray film. His nauseous purple gloves have two-inch black nails. His four-foot-wide hoopskirt, also a vomitous purple, is covered with the child of a net and a hemp weed, with rodent skulls, human hand bones, his wand, and various other arcane and witchy things hanging from it. His surprisingly clean bloomers come below his knees but do not conceal his black-and-neon-lime-striped stockings. His shoes are the typical moderate-heeled black witchy buckle shoes.
And this is all just standard for dress rehearsal. What happened on Friday will never be surpassed, unless by a miracle it happens in performance. People are bringing their children, so I hope it doesn't.
On Friday, his shirt wasn't tucked in tightly enough to his bodice. He beckoned the demons out from behind the oven, stepped over his broomstick and initiated his very suggestive dance-- and lo! his shirt came completely untucked. Dangling freely (and let me tell you, they dangle below his waist) was the end of one nipple-less witchy breast, an utterly convincing foot of birdseed-filled pantyhose. And it got better. As he twirled gleefully about on his broomstick, demons onstage and angels backstage alike cackling fit to deafen the orchestra, the other breast came loose from its lip of blouse, and they both swung wildly in their respective saggy arcs.
He finished the cabaret number/aria, took his five diva bows, looked down with a tiny exclamation, demurely turned his back to the audience and smiled sweetly and smugly over his shoulder as he stuffed them back into his shirt.
Like I said, I want to be him when I grow up. The sheer cheek... could be harnessed as energy and light the world.
