Back from Bad

imagesNow there is a hole in my play and 5 rehearsals for some hole repair. What to do? Cancel – oh, no – I would never want to raise that possibility with the cast – that would be sure fire academic homocide. I could postpone the play – but, on top of that annoying cliche of “the show must go on”, I wanted this show to go on exactly when it was scheduled to go on. We were working on a momentum that was stepping us toward opening night. Delay was not an option.

Then, the epiphany!

One of the joys of teaching theatre here at this school is that we have students who are using their four years in the theatre department to achieve a variety of goals. Some of our students are rightly using their training here to prepare them to go on to study law, medicine, business, or politics (god forbid!) and they are in the perfect school and perfect discipline to reach those goals. I mean, aren’t all of those careers mentioned simply “play making” of a different nature. Some take from this department a better sense of themself and feel more confident speaking in public or empathizing with a friend. Theatre serves all of these needs beautifully.

BUT BUT sometimes what we do actually train is future actors. And that is exactly where I needed to go. This year we are very fortunate to have of the very elite members of Group 39 at the Juilliard School in New York City. He fought through audition and audition after callback until he won the ultimate prize as a high school theatre major. (I would love to mention him by name – and perhaps will – but you know all of those school rules . . . ) We had never really worked together because he was always working somewhere else on something else and we just past each other on the schedule.

But as soon as it went bad, I called him up and said, “Hey, you Juilliard boy – – I need you to get your Julliard butt into my rehearsal and memorize, learn, research, block, prepare and polish a lead in a show in five days.” Go! I mean now! Go! He did. He is getting it. It’s funny how Juilliard can really spot the good ones.

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