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