"That's what Hulks do. We smash things. Bruce smashes buildings, I smash fourth walls and bad endings. And sometimes Matt Murdock."

I finished the Encanto blouse this morning while finally watching She-Hulk. Huzzah!

I went to set building right at 10 when it started. Not only was no one else there (other folks showed up between 11:30-12), the kids' show was on the stage rehearsing. Kimmie (props/sets) and I hung out in the lobby for about 45 minutes since this was a surprise to her too. The director of the kids' show apparently said "oh, I asked Steve and we could use the stage," and uh...last I heard it was set building weekend? Kimmie eventually called Steve and he said, "I said they could use the LOBBY." I am acquainted with the director of the kids' show, who was a right pain in my arse during the years I had to deal with her workwise. I'll restrain myself from that particular rant again, but it sounds like from Kimmie that the lady is pulling the same kind of shit here that she did at work of doing whatever the hell she wants, and made Jan cry apparently at one point. Kimmie was all "you're the boss, TELL HER THAT," to this. Jan was all "what if she quits" and Kimmie was all "well, other people have before, what's another one." Yup.

nyway, she wanted to talk to me about doing some scenic wall painting in the future, which I am all for. And I talked to her about how watching the lifts in Christmas Carol make me very nervous, and she said she watched Evita rehearsals and made sure the lifts were safe, so sounds like she could do the same here (said she used to dance/do lifts). Kimmie is also annoyed at the loosey-goosey way they handle set days and she said today she scheduled a light/painting day because she didn't know who'd show up and it would be better if we had assigned build days and assigned painting days so we got people who could do those things. Hear, hear.

Jean came in around 10:40 and joined the chat for a bit, and after that wound up I did try on costumes for an hour. Six for me-caroler, Fezziwig ball, Abundance and Charity, Old Joe, ghost, a random mom in the factory scene (uh...I forgot about that one, I have like one line and haven't done it). Thankfully she had the outfits for the rest of that--picked a blouse for the caroler outfit, we already the ghost and A&C outfits, got a blue dress for the random mom, and Old Joe is just a plain red skirt, awkward blouse, shawl/fingerless gloves/hat. I was hoping for the raggedy-ass version of "coat of many colors," but oh well. Had fun chatting with her, anyway.

After that, people finally came in, and Sage/Felicia/Noel and I did painting, Soji did some painting and some wheel removal, Marin did costume fitting (I think Felicia was doing it again when I left). We painted the bar/fireplace and some benches and a table, Soji did one flat wall. Then we were done by around 1:30 and Kimmie said we could leave, and tomorrow would be a build day so I don't have to go tomorrow. Sounds good to me.

After that, I went to Capezio (tried to talk to Jean about not having to buy more shoes, she was all "You're a girl, those are for Newsies" about it) and got high heeled tap shoes. I had a great experience of buying them again--the first ones I got fit like a dream and I was out in SIX MINUTES--but $94 with a discount. Oy vey. (Told Felicia later and yeah, she can't afford that.). I hope she got somewhere arguing with Jean, but I doubt it. I may message her later. I note that driving back and forth to Sac from 1:30-2:30 was sucktastic traffic--at one point I found out the traffic was slow because a cop car had parked in the middle of the lane. Da fuck?!

I had an hour-ish of free time, so I watched videos/worked on the purse until I had to leave.

I went to dinner with the rest of the gang (Steve/Jan, Felicia/Lucas, Danny, Ed, Don, Shorthaired Sarah, a few others I don't know too well) at Burger Saloon, which happily was delicious, I had a very good chicken sandwich, a "mermaid water" alcoholic beverage that was tasty and very green, and mooched off other people's onion rings and ice cream. A good time was had by all either discussing baseball and/or musicals people have seen, been in, or want to see/be in. Possibly the most memorable thing was Danny saying he came out by doing a 45 minute one man show for acting class. THIS IS A DELIGHT. Also that it was an hour and 15 minutes originally, he had to cut out fellating a cup, and he had to buy porn to "oops" drop out of his giant backpack. There was some conversation about some people coming out--notably a guy in some other show that Steve got to understand how to act on a baseball field by saying, "Imagine you're going into a dance studio...." and how sometimes it's just like "Um, you weren't out before?"

At one point Steve started rattling off the other invitees and he said "Scott and Arielle," but he got that last bit wrong because Scott brought Cameron instead. I think she probably felt kind of weird being the lone non-musical theater person there (and indicated as much), but she recognized Ryan from high school, and she and Scott saw a guy they knew from Inherit the Wind doing stage managing, and Sarah came up to talk to her (Sarah is a sweetie). Steve did position us all by each other with Scott in the middle...as life goes. He talked to her a bit during the show (during the Rosalind reference, anyway).

We did say to her "hey, musical theater people are nice and they do a lot of shows here," and she's all "I can't sing, dance, or act, I'm a triple threat." To which I started singing, "Near...far...wherever you are..." a few times and she threatened to smother me with her shawl. Seriously, she's better than I am and she can't sing? (I make no commentary on dance, since she and Scott are both in the "I don't think I can dance but I can manage it when I need to" category.) She said she doesn't know how to deal with the whole notes thing and Scott and I were all "Boris is good with that stuff" and "hey, if you can imitate a note on a piano, you're fine." She was all, "I adore my friends, but I hate you all." LOL. I did show her how my costume is going, so I've probably covered all I'd say in a letter of late.

Neither of them auditioned for the elf show this week (apparently Robert didn't either, is occupied elsewhere). Cameron is going to Egypt in the winter, Scott (a) forgot during moving, (b) didn't really like the scripts anyway. He also didn't end up auditioning for Treasure Island for pretty much the same reasons, except substitute "music excerpts he found on the Internet" for the script bit. Said he's considering Cabaret but sounded iffy. I did ask Cameron if anything else was likely to come up at Winters since I'm not too thrilled with the rest of the DMTC slate and probably won't get into anything else (she's on the board) and she said they were readying to announce a season, it's just that getting a venue is...iffy. They are trying a church for the elf thing, but it's not the best setup, so who knows there. Did ask how Scott's move went, it went well, they are done and got a loaner fridge.

I did talk to a few other people during the break besides those two--the aforementioned Sarah talked about playing "trouser roles" in shows, and Kimmie came up to me and said, "That problem? I've taken care of it," which later I figured out translated into, "I watched the Fezziwig ball videos online and had a talking to to Jan about all the lifts." Thank gawd. Let's make them non-injurious, please.

As for the play, "The Ghost of the Woodland Opera House," can I just say it's super cool to have written their own play, for their own venue, with its own history? I really enjoyed it--I'd sort of consider seeing it again, even. There were a few plot weaknesses Cameron and I talked about after the show that kinda came out of nowhere (see below), but otherwise I found it very touching and I laughed my head off. Sarah said during intermission she expected it to be a musical and then one character broke out into song in act 2 and I cracked up at that. I will note that two of Jan's friends in the show got covid coming back from vacation and were booted from the show nine days before the production started (Jan thought this was kind of unfair to not let them come back for the last two weeks or so), and the replacements mentioned this in their bio that they'd had 9 days to learn it. Gotta say, you couldn't tell.

Anyway: the plot takes place at the Opera House in 1909, when an acting troupe comes in to perform a melodrama (that cracked me up). The lady who hired them really reminded me of the "pick-a-little" ladies (I note this is a Victorian hair and boots sort of production as well), and then there's the SUPER PRETENTIOUS lead actress lady, Bettina, who's insisting on playing the ingenue. She has a "ward," an orphan girl named Emma, who she adopted and abuses/insults/treats as her general dogsbody/understudy. Emma is allowed to play the little brother in the show. There's also Joe from Camelot, playing the drunken actor/melodrama bad guy (he was an absolute delight and I told him so after the show, I laughed so hard) , a lady playing the saloon owner who cracked me up as the saloon owner (her song was about being easy...on the eyes...I died), a guy playing the sheriff, and the guy running the stage stuff. There's also a hot teenage boy around as the stagehand at the Opera House already.

Oh yeah, and of course there's the ghost, William Porter, the one casualty of the fire of 1892 that burned down the original opera house. He died saving the fire hose, and of course you gotta have a theater ghost. Yes, this is based off the real life theater ghost. In this play, he's hanging around, annoyed at all the actors who come through there, and plays pranks like hiding purses and dropping sandbags and dropping a trunk, what have you. But it turns out Emma can see him, and they make friends, and eventually she reveals to the hot stagehand Alonzo (after he sees her having a conversation with air) what's going on, and William proves his existence by saying he knows what Alonzo carries around in his pocket (a photo of grandma). William finds Bettina extremely annoying, and oops, breaks the trapdoor so Bettina hurts her ankle and can't go on tonight. Emma as the understudy and Alonzo as the new brother well, gotta figure things out fast....while Bettina crankily directs from the wheelchair. William encourages Emma to stand up for herself.

Emma basically has a rather random epiphany while doing the play that night--she's supposed to shoot the bad guy, but realizes she can't do that AND remembers that at age 5 she heard her dad get shot--so suffice it to say she ends up rewriting the end of the play by standing up to the bad guy and telling him to go. I thought, "I like this but she needs to stand up to her aunt, doesn't she?" (Cameron was all, yeah, that needed to be set up a little more re: the gun, agreed) but afterwards, her aunt asks Alonzo to join the show and says Emma can do more parts, so it more or less works out. I also liked how William worked out his own angst about (a) being the fool who rushed in to save the fire hose after being inspired by watching a play of "A Tale Of Two Cities" (he has some commentary about how THAT ends) and (b) watching actors in the first place, and decides to be the "host" of the Opera House instead. It was very sweet.

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