GUYS AND DOLLS

Date of Run: September 14-October 14, 2018

ROLE: Scranton Slim

Photos by Eric Chazankin

After I was cast in Comedy of Errors, I felt that would be the last show I'd do in 2018, for no other reason than I didn't think any other show was going to audition. But I was wrong; the 2018-2019 season opener at 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, Guys and Dolls, auditioned at the end of June. The show was directed by James Newman, with music direction by Ginger Beavers and choreography by Joseph Favalora.

For my song decided to do the song "Smile" from the musical of the same name. I probably should've done a song from the Golden Age of musical theatre because I heard the two people before me do that. My preferred song from that era was "On the Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady, but the problem was that I'd sung it in so many auditions already that I was bored with it.

My audition did not go as expected because the lighting in the theatre limited the area we could use onstage. A show was still running in the space at the time and they opted not to mess with the light board. I was asked to stand further upstage and as a result, I was too focused on not moving out of the light. After I finished, the director double checked with me about being in Errors and then said they would be making decisions very quickly. I was worried about Errors because I thought the conflicts would be a problem and damage my chances of being cast, though I wasn't the only one from that show auditioning.

The dance auditions were the following night. I was doing fine with it, for the most part, until we turned around to face away from the mirrors and wall amnesia hit me. Not good. After the guys were done the director called over three guys and I overheard him saying they would get sides for the next night, which was principal callbacks. I knew then and there I wouldn't get a lead or a main supporting role. I just had to hope I'd be lucky to get in.


I waited two weeks to hear back about anything. At first I assumed I wasn't cast since I'd assumed that when James said they'd make decisions quickly they'd do it within one week at most. But then I received an email offering me a role. I told them I would accept if my boss could give me the time off work. In the past I hadn't had that trouble, but this time was different. This show was immediately after Comedy of Errors and I had always given a month or so before doing another one. Also in the four years I had worked at this location I had never done a show that had two performances on a Saturday and in this case, there were multiple weekends that did that.

The offer came at the worst possible time because my boss was on vacation at the time, and I had to wait three days until she returned before I could give a definite answer. But before that I saw that for the two weekends where there would be two shows on a Saturday, one person had requested both Saturday and Sunday off. Of all the weekends of the run it had to be those two. After seeing that I dreaded having to ask for it too and I heavily contemplated declining the role.

When my boss returned, I talked it over with her, and she was fine with it, as were the other workers. One person from a different department offered to cover me one weekend. I was relieved, but I had been so nervous leading up to that I felt a bit physically ill after it was over.

The rest of the cast included Ezra Hernandez, Ellie Paul, Ella Park, Ariel Zuckerman, Brett Mollard, Laura Davies, Kit Grimm, Randy Nazarian, Evan Held, Ben Donner, Carl Kraines, Levi Sterling, Austin Maisler, Pales Gensler, Jannay Avelar, Allyson Bray, Laura McGinnis, and Sofia Perez Kempton.

When the read through came it was a bit different than what I was used to. The playhouse was having some kind of gathering for the patrons and donors and allowed them to sit in on our read/sing through. James said it was a long tradition for that sort of thing, but in the 20+ productions I had done before I had never seen that. It was a good read through, even if I had no lines whatsoever. I may have been the only man who had no lines at all. I could only hope I might get some of the miscellaneous ones later.

Rehearsals started during tech week for Comedy of Errors. That got me a little worried because the other guys who could be there would get a head start and since I couldn't do weekend rehearsals I was going to be even more behind. When I finally got there, we had to do a quick lesson in what was already done of the Crapshooters dance before finishing it. It wasn't until the second night I was there that I felt more comfortable with it. Luckily, James decided that we should do this dance at least once every time we were together.



The Crapshooter's Dance

A couple weeks after rehearsals started and long after the Crapshooters dance had been done, we lost one guy. Evidently, he had started school and started feeling overwhelmed by everything; that was the story he gave us anyway. When he appeared at a rehearsal to hand in his script you could see the tears in his eyes, poor guy. But luckily, we found a replacement that very night in Evan Held.

The dance numbers were in the rehearsal room of the Playhouse. I had experienced this room shortly before with Comedy of Errors; no air conditioning and very hot. Unlike Errors, I had to dance and move a lot, so I was the one sweating a lot more this time around.

"The Oldest Established" was a song that was easy to stage. It wasn't a long song and it mainly involved walking to different spots. But the song I dreaded was "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat." It was a song that wasn't long, but there was a lot to it on paper.

As always, I had to lowest notes in the songs. The person I was with for most of that was Ariel, who was doing his first musical.  Since he was playing Nathan Detroit, he didn't have to do much singing anyway, but he did rely on me a little for help during the first singing rehearsals, standing next to me. He called me his secret weapon and said that as long as he had me, he was good. I'm not sure if I was really the one who was right for help because I never had enough proper singing training and I was anything but perfect. Also, my ears have a mind of their own; sometimes I sang the part of the person standing next to me, though it wasn't my part. Brett often gave him help as well. 

Unfortunately, I didn't do so well because Ginger recorded our parts with the recording of the original Broadway cast, which was bad for two reasons. First, it was tough at times to hear the piano over the recording and second, at a couple moments, she stumbled on the notes, and it didn't come off as clean as it should have been.

For what it was worth, Ariel was actually not bad for having only recently started singing. I recalled two similar people in past shows who had never done a musical, only one was not very good at all and the other, while showing some improvement, never quite got it right. Ariel on the other hand, in spite of his role not being one of the larger singing roles, seemed to have no trouble learning his music at all.

Ginger was a regular taskmaster in the groups with particular attention to "The Oldest Established." Once we started adding the choreography, we all started singing the same part. I, for one, was the only one in the section of men on the side of the stage singing my part and I couldn't hear myself sing at all. Especially not with Randy (Nicely Nicely) standing next to me singing his tenor part as loudly as he could. We began singing and running through that song before every show. The other song that was the most trouble was "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat." To that end we had to run the last minute or so of it each rehearsal night and then before each performance.

"The Oldest Established"

The rehearsal schedule, for me, was inconvenient. The first two weeks they rehearsed things that I wasn't in on days when I wasn't available and things I was in on days when I wasn't available. I missed a lot of things, but especially the musical numbers, which included two days of "Sit Down," both in music and choreography. Then later on I found out that during one weekend they not only did that, but they staged "Luck Be a Lady" and the dance that takes place in Havana, both of which I'd have to be in. Or so I thought.

Three weeks before we opened, I had a nervous breakdown because so much had been staged and I had missed all of it and I was worried I wouldn't be able to catch up. There was one day where it weighed so heavily on my mind that I was weepy for an entire day and unable to pull myself together, except when I was onstage during Comedy of Errors. But it was literally all I could think about. On that day, I began to seriously consider leaving the show for the reason that I'd never catch up.

But then relief came my way. On the first rehearsal after I watched the videos of these songs, I found I wasn't in Havana at all. Originally, I had been cast as "Havana Man 2," and I wondered whether they'd spot this and omit that from the programs (they did). I could breathe easily again with that weight off my shoulders. As for "Luck be a Lady" and "Sit Down," they were not too tough to learn. For "Luck be a Lady," it just depended on which side of the group I was placed and for "Sit Down" I was behind two rows of people, so I followed what they were doing, and Evan helped me with the rest.

Being absent so much I was overlooked for the small bit roles, like a waiter in Havana or a drunk that says a line "What vulgar jewelry" (That one ended up being cut). None of that surprised me because that's what happens when you aren't there: you don't get anything. Then about two weeks before we opened, I was asked to be a waiter in one scene, and I scored two lines. By that time, I thought that I wouldn't have any and be the only man in the show with no lines. It doesn't matter I suppose, since I got paid the same.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the rehearsals and the run, for everyone, was seeing Allyson's dog, Howie. She always brought him to rehearsals and performances along with his bed. It was impossible to resist petting him at least once each time.

Howie. Isn't he sweet?

I missed the daytime part of tech weekend, which included the sitzprobe, but when I got there on Saturday, I found out that there was a miscommunication with the orchestra and the entire schedule got thrown off by it. As a result, I didn't really miss much. As it was, when I got there, they were all but done and doing the costume parade. Lucky for me I was able to make it to that because by then I still hadn't done any fittings.

These were costumes that gave me a few problems. One of my pairs of suit pants was four inches too big and until they replaced it with another suit, I had to be pinned into the pants. Another pair of pants was very tight and, as I found out very quickly, I couldn't sit with the zipper up or I would've risked ripping them. Two days before opening they found a new suit for me to replace the one that was too big and this one fit perfectly.

It was awesome in the dressing room sitting near Ezra (Sky Masterson). He was as big a fan of musical theatre as I was. In the past I had known several people who were musical theatre actors, but that didn't necessarily mean they knew about the show's history or casts from Broadway. With Ezra I found someone who knew not only the show plots and characters, but also the casts from Broadway productions and song choices for different voices. I finally met my match in musical theatre knowledge. It was so much fun going back and forth on which shows should come to Sonoma County and the venue where they should be done, characters that he and I would fight to play and which shows were better than others. More often than not I found myself disagreeing with him. He thought Passion, Merrily We Roll Along and Road Show were Stephen Sondheim's best shows and I disagreed; he felt some theatre company in Sonoma County could and should do The King and I or Ragtime in the area and I argued that while it would be good if they were staged, it couldn't be done (The Sonoma County theatre community is the same as Sonoma County- predominantly white); he felt certain I could sing certain high notes and I- well, you get where this is going. Whether I agreed or disagreed with him, our discussions were what I most looked forward to in the dressing room.

One of his moments in the show was where he had a fermata during "I'll Know." For those of you who don't read music that means you hold a note longer than the note's written duration. He always held that particular note for longer than seemed necessary and for the first couple of weeks I thought he was hamming it up. But then I remembered at one point in the staging of that song, Ellie (Sarah Brown) sits on the end of a bench and he picks up the other end and turns it. It suddenly occurred to me that that's why he was holding it so long. My bad.



On the whole this was a good cast that was good to work with, with one minor exception: Randy. He was an equity actor that we didn't have for a couple weeks since the Actor's Equity Association held up his contract for whatever reason. No fault of his own of course, but, looking back, we may have been better off without him. To be blunt, he was difficult and did things his own way. I got the feeling from watching in rehearsals that he probably wanted to be in charge, always trying to tell the actors how to do a scene, under the guise of suggestions, even at times making offhanded insults. As the run went on, he got, if anything, worse.

First, one night he missed his cue in the scene before Havana and an entire section got skipped over because we didn't know what to do; Levi had to resort to come in for his entrance to keep the show going. In subsequent performances Randy would go around stealing and/or ruining other people's bits, jokes, and lines whenever he could; for example, Evan held made physical choices as his character, Rusty Charlie, and after a time, Randy started copying him. To make matters more frustrating at times, he changed what he was doing most if not every night, at one point kicking Ben onstage. In the scene where we entered before "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" he entered at bent over into the orchestra pit, completely breaking the fourth wall. Ginger instructed none of the musicians to acknowledge him, which he noticed. To that effect, he'd come stomping onstage toward them and when they didn't look at him, he stomped away. Then at the end of that song he waved his arms as if trying to stop the song himself, not that anyone was paying attention to him.

Not only that, but he disrespected Ginger in a long text message to someone else. I don't know the contents of it, but I know he referred to her as "That woman."  From what I found out after the show closed, there was some surprise that he was hired at all because he had a reputation of being difficult to work with from other companies. His behavior was unprofessional and disgusting; none of us were sad to see the back of him at show closing and I heard that he was blacklisted after the run ended. Thankfully, since he was Equity and had his own dressing area, we didn't have to deal with him in our dressing room or see him anywhere, except during performances.

I had not performed on this particular stage since appearing in Victor/Victoria four years earlier. I had been trying to get back, but with no success. Not only that, but I had not done a musical in nearly two years since Sweeney Todd. That first night when we sang our final notes in the show, the feeling I had when I looked out into the packed, standing audience was glorious. Just imagine the most wonderful feeling you've ever felt. And then multiply it by ten.

On the second night I decided to have a race of sorts. On Youtube there's an animated video of the Titanic sinking in real time, which is to say, two hours and forty minutes. I remembered reading somewhere that the ship sank in the length of a theatre performance so I decided to see which would end first: us or the video. I paused the video at the moment the ship hits the iceberg and as soon as I heard the opening music start playing, I pressed play. Pretty soon, all the guys wanted to see how we were doing in comparison, looking over and checking on the progress as the show went on. In the end we beat the video by six minutes. Not too bad.

This is the link to that video. When the opening music started, I played it starting at 1:03 and left the video running until it was over, two hours and forty minutes later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs9w5bgtJC8&t=8465s



Every show of the first two weekends was sold out or very close to it. It was wonderful to have a packed house every night.

The show was not without it's, for lack of a better word, interesting moments. For example, at one performance, someone farted (silently) onstage at a fairly appropriate moment. In the sewer scene before "Luck be a Lady," Sky Masterson has a line "the air in the mission smells cleaner than the air down here" and at that exact moment I caught a whiff of a disgusting smell. I had to move a little bit upstage just to get away from it.

The third weekend had packed houses for each performance, but this weekend it was more apparent than the previous two weekends that there definitely were empty seats out there. Not many, but if you took a good look, you'd see them.



In the opening scene, as a "blind" man in Runyonland

The fourth weekend was the weekend of hiccups and the weekend when the show appeared to begin running out of steam; the empty seats in the audience were much more noticeable by then. The Thursday show had a fairly small audience with the center section full, but the sides and the upper section had many empty seats. And as a bonus the audience was very unresponsive. On Friday it was a bit fuller, but toward the end of the first act the curtain stopped working. It stopped opening at three feet in and couldn't be fixed until intermission, so the audience could see set pieces being moved on and off. On Saturday, the matinee house was about the same size as Thursday and the evening much fuller and both were very responsive. The Sunday show, of course, was full. At that performance the curtain got stuck again, but earlier this time, though it may have just been a fluke because it was working again much more quickly than the first time.

The Saturday evening show of that weekend was the most interesting of all. Before the show started, I pulled up videos on Youtube of theatre shows that were either terrible or where something went wrong. We all had a good laugh at them. The show then went on to have a few hiccups. At the final scene of the first act when the gamblers all run out of the mission, Evan ran out a bit too fast and crashed into Brett. Then after we all were off and Levi ran on, he slipped and fell down. But the biggest incident to happen was during the Crapshooter's Dance. A couple minutes into it, we all heard a crack-crack-crack-CRASH noise. An end piece of one of the walls just broke off on its own and fell to the stage. I'm not sure if it really threw anyone; for my part I took a quick look over at it and then went on as though nothing had happened while it was quickly and discreetly removed. Thankfully no one was hurt, but a few moments later that spot was where the choreography took me, so had it happened then, it could very well have hit me. A lot of people said it was my doing for tempting the theatre gods with those videos.

Running out of the mission at the end of Act 1

In spite of the show seemingly starting to run out of steam, it sold well enough to extend another weekend, though I wondered whether we really needed to do so. Four shows that weekend brought the grand total to twenty-one. For this weekend there was no Thursday show, which was a relief since it meant an extra night off. On the Friday show we had a fairly decent sized audience. The Saturday matinee was the smallest audience we ever had in the entire run, only about sixty people. I think that we could've done without that performance since it hardly sold at all. The evening show had a larger audience and was, arguably, our most responsive audience. The Sunday audience was the smallest Sunday, but they really enjoyed themselves and we ended the run on a strong note.

One of my favorite moments in the show was during Kit's song "More I Cannot Wish You." It was the scene right before the Crapshooter's Dance and during that time the curtain was closed. Sometime into the run I realized I could lay down on the dark stage alone and in peace for a couple minutes.

The audiences were more often responsive than not; a couple quiet ones to be sure, but they were usually responsive to certain things. Kit could always be counted on to get laughs with his act two line "If you don't pay off on that marker, I'll tell the whole town you're a dirty welcher." Never failed, not once.

Other than cards from various cast members, on closing night Laura McGinnis gave each of us something special. She made all of us, cast and crew, a little wooden doll of our characters. What was amazing about them was the attention to detail that she gave to each one. For instance, mine was my first costume, as the blind man, and she perfectly captured the tie I wore and in the little cup the doll held, there were little coins inside. 

I was a bit sad to end this show because it was a wonderful experience. It was the main thing that got me through a day of work and the highlight of my entire week. I didn't necessarily need to keep doing this particular show, but I wanted an experience just like this one again.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

 



Date of Run: August 10-September 2, 2018

ROLE: Officer

 Photos by Eric Chazankin

 

My first Shakespeare show in seven years. I finally managed to be cast in a work of the Bard, even if it was a small role.

 

In 2018, I auditioned for the general auditions at only one place, and only because I never had done generals at that location. The reason why I went nowhere else was because I had auditioned at several generals in years past and I could still count on my fingers on one hand how many times I had actually been called back. Feeling it would be a waste of my time, I skipped out and waited to see if anyone would do separate auditions for shows. Which came very quickly.

I saw on the Facebook page that 6th Street Playhouse was looking to fill the role of Antipholus of Syracuse, needing someone late twenties to early 30's, around 6 ft tall, somewhat athletic and have good Shakespeare and movement skills. Almost a perfect fit. I emailed requesting an audition and was scheduled for the following afternoon. Fortunately, I had a (short) comic Shakespeare monologue from A Midsummer Night's Dream that I had used years before. With a little prying into my memory, I was on it in no time.  

For the audition all I had to do was that and read a short monologue from Comedy of Errors. The director said he had a couple more people to look at so all I could do was wait. He didn't say when he'd be seeing them though, so I didn't know how long it would be. Before this I had auditioned for many shows, but a number of the directors of those shows never contacted me if they didn't cast me, so I had come to expect that that does happen and then it did again.

OR DID IT?

Though I didn't get that role, I didn't walk away empty handed. Three weeks later, after I figured I didn't get the part, I saw another audition posting on Facebook for more roles in this show. I contemplated telling him that I was still interested in reading for these roles, but he beat me to the punch. Not two hours later he called me and asked if I'd be interested in playing the role of Officer/Jailer. I said yes right away. A week passed and I heard no further information about anything. I began to get worried that maybe he changed his mind. Then exactly one week later I got a second call definitively offering me a role and all I had to do was sign the contract.

An Officer/Jailer

The rest of the cast included Ariel Zuckerman, Arabella Harrison, Sam Coughlin, Jared Wright, Eyan Dean, William Brown, Guy Connor, Sam Coughlin, Heather Gibeson, Jessica Headington Kit Grimm, Allison Paine, Julia Sakren, Caitlin Strom-Martin, Jill Wagoner, Stefan Wenger, Conor Woods, Jared Wright, and Eric Yanez.

William Brown, an equity actor, was the one who nabbed the role I originally went for, and I could see why, even from the first read through. The way he spoke the lines was not how you'd expect to hear Shakespeare's words. Not the pristine serious way people often speak when reading it, with no change in their voice other than speaking louder on the emphasized words. He spoke the lines with a certain lilt, if you will, and his acting choices and vocal tones were stellar. And such excellent delivery.

Sadly, we lost the woman playing Adriana before rehearsals even began. I don't know what happened (I think she opted to do a different show instead), but someone stood in for her a couple rehearsals and then Jessica Headington was hired by the end of the first week to replace her. Which suited me because I never thought the day would come when I'd appear in a show with her.

Rehearsals didn't begin until July, four weeks before opening. They took place in the rehearsal room at 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, a room with ceiling fans, but no air conditioning. It was hot in there, being a well-insulated room, and for actors who moved a lot, the end result would be a lot of sweat, especially from Ariel.

I was called 3-4 times a week for most of the rehearsal process, though I was only in four scenes. Halfway through I finally got to be in a fight choreography rehearsal. I was excited that the choreographer was Marty Pistone, mainly because I loved it when something didn't go right, he'd start talking in another language. On the night we did the scene I was in and it was so much fun. Poor Sam and Jared though; Their characters (the two Dromios) get beaten up a lot and as such, they bore the brunt of the physicality, getting tossed around and ending up on the ground a lot. And yet surprisingly, they sweated less than Ariel did. But then, no one sweated as much as Ariel did.

When Jared told me how old he was (in his forties) I thought there was no way that could be true; he easily fooled me with how much he was knocked around on stage. He certainly could take a punch.

For my part I had to chest bump Sam, knocking him to the floor and then later grab Ariel's feet while he was on top of Sam on the bench. Jill's arms were around my waist, Scott's around hers, then we'd pretend to pull Ariel, while in reality he slid himself down the bench and the three of us did a fall back onto our butts, while Ariel's face ended up at Sam's butt.



Pre-show fight call- After chest bumping Sam

Before Ariel's face went to Sam's butt and we ended on ours

It wasn't until three days before opening when we finally got to go outside to work on the actual stage for tech rehearsals. We couldn't do that before because another show was using the space and closed the weekend before we opened. More time might have been good on the space, but I don't think we did too terribly. The first night, toward the end of a run of the show there was a strange bright green light that flashed one second and then it was gone. I don't think anyone knew nor figured out what it was. There was one minor setback when we started tech.

One of the main reasons we could've used more practice was because of the chase scene that happens in the second act. It was one thing to run it in a small room with a flat surface and in comfortable clothes and shoes, but another thing entirely on a large set with steps, levels and in character shoes and costumes. We had to run that repeatedly for timing purposes. Unlike the rehearsal room where everyone could pause when they got to one area, there were moments where some of us couldn't run right away because other actors took a while to get to where they needed to be.

We lost the actor playing Second Merchant a few days before opening due to health problems. But luckily, Jared found Carl to step in for the role. Even more luckily, he was retired and had lots and lots of time to get the lines. On our last rehearsal night, after we ran the show, we did a couple runs of his main two scenes, the last one of which I was in, so I had to stay later. It seemed to go on forever because the other actors kept messing up and missing lines. My main aggravation was that I hadn't eaten since noon, and it was ten by the time we were released. In short, I was starving.

The last rehearsal night was anything but perfect. There were lots of line flubs and mistakes and a set malfunction with one of the doors. Christmas lights were put around the edge of the door and on occasion at least one light could get caught in the crack and jam the door. And there were some injuries too. Julia's finger got smashed at another door and when it came to my chest bump with Sam he missed and jabbed the underside of my forearm. Both of Julia and I could still feel it the next day.

That same night Jared asked me if I would help bring the concessions to and from the cannery ruins. I agreed and basically it was loading and unloading the car of the person running the booth. I soon came to regret that decision because the woman was very chatty, distracted and unfocused. Not to mention her car was quite cluttered so it was a bit tough fitting everything in.

Opening night was so hot. And worse than that, in the opening scene, the sun was still out uncovered and anyone standing on the stage right side had to face it. Just a little lower and it would have been behind a tree. And since I was wearing a black suit, I could feel sweat dripping down my back. It didn't even get cooler when the sun went down nor when it was dark. I don't think anyone in the audience bundled up that night.

The second night was much better. The weather was cooler and slightly breezier and to top that, the audience was bigger and much more responsive. I almost fell off the stage when the gunshot noise that started the chase scene happened, but other than that nothing out of the ordinary.

The third night was freezing. Kit had the worst of it because he appeared only in the first scene of the show and the last scene of it. He spent a lot of time sitting backstage in the cold, in a heavy jacket. I had a fairly lengthy break after the first scene since I didn't reenter until the second act. To top it all for this performance, the door of the abbey got jammed from the Christmas lights again, so much so that people gave up and went around the door rather than through it.

The start of the second weekend was neither warm nor cold, but the sun was particularly bright in the opening scene. We had problems with the door again. After that night, the lights around the door were moved over a little and taped down.

Our stage manager, Jenna, was sick the second night that week and wasn't there. Neither was the concessions lady, which meant her car wasn't there to load things in. Luckily, my mother was in attendance that night and I borrowed her car, which had a large trunk area and was very clean with nothing else in there. It was chilly that night, but that didn't bother me because I noticed that on cooler nights the sun didn't seem to be so blinding in the opening scene.

Like the first Sunday, the second one was the coldest night of the weekend, as evidenced by the mist that began settling toward the end of the performance.

The third weekend was chilly all weekend, especially the first two nights and it was this weekend when it began to get darker a bit sooner. I definitely noticed the sun was lower during the opening scene. The second night was cold, but the worst was the last five minutes when a breeze started and didn't let up at all. The third night was tough for me because the concessions lady was gone again, but this time I didn't have a big car to save me. Strangely it didn't seem too cold at the end of the show.

The first two shows of the final weekend were hot in the beginning and then they cooled off. Which still meant the sun shining brightly in the opening scene. The last show started cold and breezy and only got colder. And to top it off, Ariel's body microphone stopped working that night. Of course, it couldn't happen to somebody with few lines, like me, but one of the main characters. Luckily, Ariel had an exceptionally good speaking voice that could get out to the audience, especially when he faced the wall of the cannery ruins where the sound could bounce off.

After the show ended most of the cast gathered for a party at Ariel's, wherein we were greeted by three dogs, one of which was a Great Dane. Big doggie. But oh, so cute!

A good Shakespeare show to do after not doing it for seven years. I could only hope that it wouldn't be that long until next time.

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE

Date of Run: February 1-11, 2018

ROLE: Spike

Photos by unknown

"Michael Hunter’s portrayal of Spike was an interesting mix of boyish charm and slyness that created a mysterious quality that was perfect for Spike. We are not sure what, (or if), he is thinking. His impromptu strip teases prior to exercising and posing his physique was hilarious."
Dan Monez, Napa Valley Register, February 7, 2018.

I went through all of 2017 without doing a single show. Part of it was my doing, part of it was my work commitments and part of it was due to forces beyond my control. I was ready to call it quits on acting for some time. I decided that I would stop, go off and do something else, like study at the junior college for an alternate career, and come back later. And then I got something.

This one was a role I never thought I’d play. The only other time that happened was when I played Bob Cratchit four years earlier, but for that role I at least had time to wait until I was the right age for the part. For this one I was at the end of the age range for the character and the role also had to be for someone physically fit and preferably muscular. While I do exercise and work out at the gym about five days a week, I hardly consider myself buff.

I saw a Facebook post for this show, but I did not think much of it, not wanting to do a long commute and the fact that there was only one weekend of performances didn’t help matters. Then a short while later they reposted saying they were looking to fill two of the roles, one of which was for the role of Spike, which was in my age range. While I never thought I'd play this role due to not quite being the right body type, I realized that the chance to play this role would probably never come again for me. So, after a little reflection, I decided to take a chance. I contacted them expressing my interest.

After sending in my resume and headshot, one of the two directors of the show, Carla Spindt, asked to meet me in Napa. Meeting at a coffee shop, we had a brief discussion after which, she offered me the role on the spot. I wonder now whether anyone else applied for the part when I did. Rehearsals began two days later.

I was familiar with the play, having heard of it, and it was one of those plays, out of hundreds in existence, that you could find in the small drama section of a Barnes and Noble store. However, I had never given much thought to this one since there were only two roles for men, one for a middle-aged man and one for a late twenties fit, muscular type. It never entered in my head to have a look at it. If it ever did, then certainly not for a long time anyway until I could plat the older male role.

Does that happen to any of you fellow actors reading this? The roles we think we’ll never play are sometimes the ones we do end up playing after all?

The other five people in the cast were Paul Cotton, June Reif, Randi Storm, Linda Howard and Courtney South.

Cast, left to right: Paul, June, Me, Linda, Randi and Courtney

Rehearsals took place at the Lincoln Theater in Yountville, ten miles north of Napa. I had previously avoided doing shows in Napa mainly due to the cost of commuting from there to where I live, it being a 45-minute drive. The rehearsals alternated between a board room on the second floor or in the theater space itself. When I first walked onto that stage, I was completely in awe of it. The two largest theaters I had worked in before were the Napa Valley College and the Spreckels Theater in Rohnert Park, but neither were as big as this one. Or at least not as high up. However, since this play was not what you could call a big play, so the seating would be confined to the first seven rows of the middle orchestra section; that's what we started with anyway. As we inched closer to the run, the sales did very well, and they added more rows of seats for sale.

The schedule of rehearsals was roughly two or three rehearsals a week for two months for three performances. The long rehearsal schedule was due to the fact that we didn't have a rehearsal space, other than the theater and we had to share it with any event already scheduled to take place. The first month was devoted to staging the general blocking and then the second month was dedicated to fine tuning and polishing. We were given some free rein to do what we felt to be right, with some suggestions by the directors. A few rehearsals took place in a meeting room upstairs, but most of the rehearsals took place on the stage.

After the first week back from vacation, Carla left to do a show in San Francisco and Lu Kenmouth took over the responsibilities of directing.  However, Carla did return for Monday rehearsals.

At first, I was disappointed about the length of the run of the show. Only three performances after about a month and a half of rehearsal doesn't seem like a good deal. Then not long before we opened, we found that, thanks to some of the cast, we were able to do a second weekend of three shows at the Mira Theater in Vallejo. Whoo!

The script calls for my character to take his clothes off to his underwear. I had no problem with actually doing that, but I waited a while to go through with it for two reasons. The first was that it was cold in that theater. Not only was the show going to run in winter, but the heat was not turned on in the main stage area. It was warm everywhere else, like the hallway next to the stage and all the other rooms, the dressing room, the green room, you name it, but not the stage itself. During rehearsals I started planning on whether I should have a robe or a sweater or something waiting for me when I left the stage in my underwear. The other reason was that I was not too thrilled about my body right away. I was worried about how I'd look because my character is supposed to be toned and muscular, but while I have some muscle, there are some things I'll never have, like six pack abs. I did work out a lot prior to shows and did my best to bulk up.

My confidence did grow somewhat over my body after looking up photos of past productions. Some previous Spikes were body building types, but some I saw were thin with hardly any muscle tone at all. I thought if thin people lacking big muscles could do this role, then so could I.

Even onstage I did exercises since Spike is always active and moving, even when not speaking. I often did stretches, crunches, push-ups, a little yoga and some walking lunges (that one always got big laughs). Offstage I had a pair of twenty-pound weights that I used for biceps and triceps exercises before each show. I also had to do some poses to show off my physique. To do that I studied old Arnold Schwarzenegger photos for inspiration. I also had to do a reverse strip tease onstage, meaning a strip tease, but putting my clothes on instead of taking them off. For that I watched the movie Magic Mike for ideas.

The Reverse Strip Tease

I thought this show would be my first onstage kiss, but that didn't turn out to be the case. I was very nervous about any moment of passion I had onstage with Linda, who played Masha. The script calls for Masha and Spike to kiss passionately and in the original Broadway production in those moments, he grabbed her, lifted her up, she wrapped her legs around him, he fondled her boobs, etc. But with numerous sexual harassment allegations rising up in the country with the MeToo movement I was afraid if I made one wrong move then that would happen to me. If she and I had known each other before and if she were an actress who wasn’t afraid to be touchy feely, then it might have been different.

The biggest headache for me on the show (and it literally gave me a headache) was the costuming. I had to supply a few costume pieces myself. Not completely unreasonable because I had an idea of what to look for and how Spike would dress and I also had a couple things that might have worked, but the costume mistress was hopeless. I'm not sure she understood the characters or the script fully nor did I think she had an understanding of how certain kinds of people would dress. We had some shirts decided on, but then one Monday when Carla returned, and I had started wearing my costume pieces she said they were all wrong. Which meant I had to go out and look again. Looking back, I'm not sure either of them had a sense of how young men dress.

I searched every Target, Kohl's, Goodwill, thrift store, designer store (i.e. Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Old Navy and Gap), that I could find, sometimes twice, but it was hard, and I usually found nothing. You name it, I looked there. I was hesitant to spend any money on items, not because the company wouldn't reimburse me, but because I might end up with what they were asking for and it was not something I'd ever want to wear again. Eventually I found a pair of bright red running shorts in Goodwill and in a Tommy Hilfiger store I found the one pair of bright reddish pants my size on the clearance rack, about three days before we opened.

I did agree that bright colorful things that would pop were something that Spike would wear, but the problem was that men just don't wear bright colors. In most stores I went to the men's clothes were all rather muted colors. Anything I saw that was bright was either a pair of shorts (I needed long pants) or not my size. They were also vague on what exactly they wanted for a shirt. I had so many questions about what they wanted: What color(s) did they want for my shirts and pants? Did they want a polo shirt? T-Shirt? Collared, button down shirt? Couldn't I wear shorts in the final scene? (They allowed that one). I felt they were obsessing a lot over having the color red on me. They wanted red pants, red underwear, and red shorts. In the end I got to wear two of my own shirts, though I had to wear a hideous orange shirt for the last scene. I could probably forgive the color, but it was not a form fitting shirt like my character would have worn. I wasn't thrilled with the underwear they gave me. They wanted them to be red; the closest they got was maroon and boxer briefs. I would've preferred to wear my trunks from Calvin Klein since I feel an L.A. actor would wear designer brands, not to mention the trunks would've shown off my thighs much better, among other things (wink, wink).

It wasn't until long after the show ended, of course, that I finally began seeing clothing items that would've worked perfectly, especially pants that weren't bland or dark colors.

There was one thing I had to order online because no store had it. Though most of a fairy tale Prince Charming costume was provided, I also had to look for a pair of sky-blue tights for the prince costume. The first pair I ordered was cheap, but completely see through. None of us could have imagined what use anyone would have for a pair of see-through tights. The next pair I order were compression pants that came from Korea. They were a different shade of blue that how they looked on the internet, but they worked just fine. Thank goodness that was over with. When my coworkers came to the show, they weren't fooled into thinking they were tights and could clearly see they were compression pants.



Prince Charming costume

The other problem was my hair. By the time the show came I was in desperate need of a haircut. I really wanted the sides to be trimmed at the very least. However, as community actors know, you can't change your appearance during a show commitment. No one said anything to me about what they wanted. Two weeks before opening, Carla said she wished they could give me highlights or something. I said I really wanted to fix my hair. When Carla asked if Sandra said anything to me about my hair, I said that she said nothing. I wish she had said something a couple weeks earlier, but it was too late to do anything by then since the person who did my hair couldn't see me until toward the end of February. I tried to fix it by styling my hair, trying five different products so that my hair would have shape, but not become hard like a helmet. It looked fine, but it required a lot of maintenance during the show to keep it looking stylish.

After two months of waiting the run finally began. Everyone but me was all but begging for another week of rehearsals. Every performance the first weekend had a good, sizeable crowd. Saturday was the largest by far, but all three performances had at least one hundred in attendance. On the Friday show I had a large group of people from my work come. They all couldn't wait to see me in my underwear. Unfortunately, with the exception of the writer for the Napa newspaper, none of my friends in the theatre community came to see the show.



The production was not without mishaps like missed lines and sections and costume problems. For example, June's sequin dress in the second scene kept getting tangled in itself. At one performance, while I was taking off my shirt, I felt my earring come off. I heard it hit the floor, but there was nothing I could do about it since I had to leave the stage right then. When I come back on a few minutes later, I was supposed to end up in the proximity of where it came off. I did see the front part, but not the back. I worried it might have fallen off somewhere else. After the show I went onstage looking and, thankfully, I spotted it. The same thing happened again a week later at the same place in the show, though the back of the earring stayed on my ear, and I had to hold it in my fist since the shorts I was wearing had no pockets. June spotted the other part on the floor and grabbed it.

When the second weekend came, we went from the very nice big Lincoln Theater to the Mira Theater in Vallejo. It was much, much smaller (only 140 seats) and, I hate to say, had an air of neglect about it. It was a sad looking space that was freezing, both upstairs and even more so in the green room downstairs. It came complete with a musty smell. When we moved into the theater, we had to make adjustments to the set due to the tighter size and had one rehearsal on that day to figure out how we'd move on the stage.



The Two Theaters. Top: The Lincoln, Bottom: The Mira

The wing space in this theater was tight and the stage was much smaller. For entrances when people arrive at the house in the play, we first decided to have the entrances be from the audience instead, but we realized very quickly that that was not going to work. There was no way we could sneak around the audience unseen since all the doors backstage were boarded shut. We decided that we'd have to make the tight squeeze on stage right to use the front door, which also meant moving the stairs over a few inches and moving a giant ladder offstage right over to the other side. Thankfully no one ever got hurt in the tight space by tripping or bumping into the steps. Courtney, however, had to go up front and hang out in the lobby and try to be inconspicuous before each show since her first entrance was and had always been through the audience.

For each performance we had somewhere between thirty and fifty people and probably more than fifty for the final show. We all thought the final audience was the best because they all seemed to be laughing at the right moments. Previous audiences laughed (especially during the second act after they had something to drink), but they didn't laugh at all the funny parts.

In all, I felt this was a successful run. It was the first good theatre experience I had had in some time after a string of disappointments. I will say that Spike will be forever one of the best roles that I ever played. Now all I had to do was wait about two or three decades before I could play Vanya.

Seven months after the run ended, I found out I was nominated for an Arty Award, a theatre award for Napa and Solano counties. Mine was one of eight nominations for our show. The others were for June for Set Design, Courtney for Supporting Actress, June and Linda for Best Actress, Paul for Best Actor, Carla and Lu for Best Director and Best Comedy Production. I could not attend the ceremony since I was appearing in a show in Santa Rosa that day and the ceremony was over in Fairfield. It wasn't until the next day when I found that I won, as well as Paul for his category, Carla and Lu for directing and to top it off we got Best Production. I had never been nominated for any acting award prior to this, but this was definitely icing on the cake.