Musings on Hell Weeks Past and Present
07 April 2003-1:11 a.m.
It's late. I'm obsessing about creating a faux electric fence. My ripped up jeans now have new rips, and have lots of new greenish paint on them. I have grey paint under my fingernails. I am the proud owner of yet another old t-shirt with paint on it. Hell week has begun! Not that it's been hellish yet. Not really. I'm sure it will only get better.
Actually things went fairly well today. We didn't get as much done as our dear esteemed director (she reads this) hoped. Although she might not know it, she really was awfully ambitious in her plans for Sunday night. Not that I blame her. The more we get done now, the less we have to do after rehearsals all week long. That's what makes a hell week hellish.
You've been there. Painting the floor at three in the morning the day before you open. Hanging roll-drops and blacks until the wee hours every night. Retexturing the walls because the director wants them "um, darker" Working so hard that you fall asleep on the stage with a paintbrush next to you. Coming in on your lunch hour, and staying late after rehearsal gluing Styrofoam to cardboard walls. Running your show for the first time on Tuesday only to discover that it's four hours long, and you have to cut the script in half and open on Friday. (hey it's happened) Running your show and discovering "damn we have a lot of props." All things that you would never, ever wish on yourself again, yet you keep coming back. Why?
I know for me it's that in spite of the crap and the hard work, I have a good time. Those really late nights have been a pain, the next day sucks, you tend to drink more and smoke more. But I've had some of the best conversations at three in the morning, on hands and knees texturing a floor. I've gotten to know people that way. I've made friends. People that I hadn't talked to much during rehearsal told me intimate secrets while climbing around on ladders in the middle of the night. I think some of it is the people who stay, who put in for the long haul, are few and far between. It's never been a big group that ends up in the theatre for most of the night. It's always just two or three, and with that size, you talk. The later it gets, the more you talk, until finally you don't need to talk anymore. You just quietly do your job.
I'm certainly not saying that I like shows where hellish stuff happens. I'll take the shows where the set's done, the blacks hung, and the floor painted all by monday night. I love that. The less stress the better I say. But how many of you remember those shows? Do you remember the ones where you got enough sleep, and everything went fine? Those are very nice, but the other way tends to create more memories.