Wednesday, October 1, 2008

New Day #279

It's just two weeks until rehearsals begin for HOLIDAZED, my first professional play, so I suppose that's why I woke up this morning having had my first-ever Playwright's Nightmare.

Having been a performer, I'm well familiar with having an Actor's Nightmare, that nocturnal disaster in which you find yourself onstage in a play you've never heard of. Back when I was an opera singer, I once woke up to discover I'd stripped off all of the bedding while I was asleep and had thrown it across the room.

But the Playwright's Nightmare was a New Thing for me. In this one, I was at the first reading and I opened up the script only to discover a scene I had never seen before, a monotonous shapeless thing which went on endlessly. WITHOUT ANY LAUGHS. Truly my worst nightmare. What's more, two of the children aged 8 and 10 were being played by actors in their twenties. When I confronted the director about it, he was offended that I questioned his casting choices and banned me from rehearsals.

I woke up drenched in sweat.

3 comments:

Erin C. said...

As an improvisor, I've had similar dreams. (Even now, and I haven't been on stage in over a year.) The only difference is that in the dream, instead of opening up a script I've never seen, I've forgotten how to improvise. It's always at a point in which a scene hinges on my next move. Terrifying.

(I recently started reading your blog, Marc. Love it.)

Rick Bettencourt said...

Oh my God, I just woke up from an actor's nightmare. Too funny you write this.

Alex said...

My opera singer's nightmares always revolve around the auditions rather than performances or rehearsals (except the occasional missing a rehearsal dream). But it's the same plot. You get up there, and you can't remember your aria, or you prepared a musical theatre song, and they want Mozart and you didn't bring the music. I'm always ten times more nervous at an audition than at a performance. I love the rehearsals and performances. That's the fun part. I just wish I knew how to get that energy into the audition process...