On the Thursday that the play opened, I expected that I would be full of nervous energy, unable to concentrate on anything and equally unable to relax. Instead, I was surprisingly calm. I had taken the day off from work, so I wouldn't have to worry about rushing from the office to the theater, and I had a very pleasant afternoon hiking in the woods with my dog. When I got home, I washed and ironed the clothes that I was using for costumes, I ate a leisurely (although light) dinner, and still had plenty of time to get to the theater. Parking as usual was an annoyance, but I found a space without too much trouble -- by now I had figured out which streets were most likely to have spaces left on weekday evenings.

I was one of the first actors to arrive, so I was able to stake out a good spot by the makeup mirror in the women's dressing room. After hanging up my clothes on an available hook, I unpacked my backpack of theatrical accessories: stage makeup kit, character shoes to go with my 19th Century dress, extra safety pins (a valued commodity worth their weight in gold backstage, in case of a costume emergency -- known to have been traded for nearly everything except a leading role), water bottle, and curling iron. I still wasn't sure why I had decided to go to the trouble of curling my hair -- especially since I was in the process of growing out a short haircut, so it wasn't long enough yet for hot rollers, and getting all the remaining layers with a curling iron took forever. I didn't even think Hannah Jarvis was the type of person to care what her hair looked like, especially when she was mucking around the gardens of Sidley Park. However, if I beat my hair into submission with a curling iron, it would look better and be less likely to bother me by falling into my face during the performances.

I was about halfway through doing my hair when Gabriele and Ann arrived; Gabriele took the spot next to me at the mirror, and Ann went into the adjoining dressing room to claim her own chair and to check on her wig. When Bethany arrived a little later, she put her things into the adjoining room with Ann. The men took the remaining four dressing rooms -- only fair, since there were twice of many of them as there were of us.

The other important task to complete, before the house was opened (i.e. before the audience was allowed into the theater and the actors were no longer allowed on stage), was for me to check my props. I had to make sure that all the books I used were in their proper places on the table, and that things I brought on stage later, such as the letters, my mug of tea, and the tabloid paper with its blaring headline ("Byron Bangs Wife, Shoots Hubby") were in my spot on the prop table. Actors generally look after their own props as much as possible, especially in community theater shows where there isn't a huge backstage crew; besides, Arcadia is such a prop-heavy show that the prop mistress had plenty to worry about without being bothered to find something for us. If we came across someone else's prop that was out of place, though, it was considered courteous to put it in the right place for them. However, if you don't know where the prop is supposed to go, you're better off not to touch it and simply to inform the actor who uses it that it's not in the right spot.

It was only when I was done with my hair, made up, finished checking props, and in costume that I felt the first threat of nervousness. By now I couldn't burn off my excess energy by roaming around upstairs, so I had to stay in the dressing room, chatting with Gabriele, and perking up whenever the stage manager came by with a time warning.

I must say, we had a wonderful stage manager. How she kept her perfect good humor through the entire rehearsal period, now matter how grouchy the actors got, I'll never know. Whether she was sitting in the front row of the theater during rehearsals, answering our pleas for "Line?" or even on one or two occasions getting up on stage, script in hand, and walking through the scene in place of an actor who couldn't come that night, she seemed to have boundless reserves of energy. And for opening night she was doing everything she possibly could to make things easier for us: offering to bring us water if we were thirsty, or to retrieve something we had left upstairs. Her amazing good cheer just continued as she gave us our time warnings.

"The house is open!" And she would continue down the hallway, repeating her message for all the dressing rooms.

"Thank you!" We would all chorus in response.

"Fifteen minutes!"

"Thank you!"

"Ten minutes! Does everyone have enough water?"

" Plenty! Thank you!"

"Five minutes! Did everyone check props?"

"We did! Thank you!"

"Places for Scene 1, please!"

Since Hannah did not appear until Scene 2, I hardly noticed when the play actually began. I was talking to Ansel downstairs, and suddenly I noticed that Gabriele was no longer there. Once I realized that the action was underway, I went up into the wings at stage left, to listen to the scene and to try to judge what the audience was like. It seemed like a decent-sized crowd, and they were already laughing at some of the lines.

By the time Scene 1 was about half done, I knew I had to find a quiet spot downstairs to gather my concentration and get into character. The downstairs hallway by the stairway leading up to stage right happened to be empty, so I stationed myself there. A few stretches and some deep breathing exercises (for which I silently thanked my voice teacher) calmed me down again, and in my head I went over my first few lines in the upcoming scene. Just as I was about to go upstairs, Gene (who had been working off his own nervous energy by pacing back and forth along the length of the downstairs hallway) came by and said, "Break a leg." I returned the same to him and went upstairs.

Greg-Val was also waiting at stage right, and I exchanged another "break a leg" with him. I had come upstairs in time to hear Ann's exit, and she was soon followed offstage by Gary, Greg-Noakes, and Rick. Gabriele and Tim were then the only ones left on stage, and from that point there was little left in the scene. After a brief exchange about life and death at Sidley Park, as represented by Lord Croom's devotion to hunting, Gabriele went off through the upstage center French doors, and shortly afterwards Tim came offstage through the stage right door. I waited for the lights to go down for the scene change, went through the stage right door (nearly colliding with Tim, who had forgotten that I entered through that door), took up my position by the reading stand, and waited for the lights to come up again. I was surprised and curious that the audience did not applaud at the end of the first scene -- possibly David, in his pre-performance spiel to the audience, had asked that they hold their applause until intermission.

The lights came up, and Scene 2 began. I was only onstage for a moment, examining Mr. Noakes's book of sketches of the Sidley Park gardens, before I grabbed the theodolite off the table and went offstage through the French doors. (David and I had decided that Hannah must have been struck by something in Noakes's sketchbook and had to check her ideas by immediately surveying a few angles. Go figure.) Then I had a few more minutes to collect my thoughts while Bernard and Chloe came onstage looking for me, Chloe went offstage to look for me in the garden, and then Valentine came onstage for his exchange with Bernard. Valentine's exit line always got a laugh, so I had to be careful not to come back on stage too soon, or I would interrupt the audience's reaction -- but I couldn't wait too long, either, or Bernard would be stuck all alone on stage with nothing to do.

Once I was back on stage, it was just Hannah and Bernard. Although Bernard turns on the charm as soon as Hannah enters, their repartee gets off to a slow start, since she are still wary of his motive for being at Sidley Park, and she is cautious lest he means to steal her research topic. Of course, Bernard doesn't want to give Hannah too many clues about what he is researching, either. Most of the fun in this scene comes from how thoroughly they are able to take verbal potshots at each other, while their entire conversation is carried on in the best polite English manner. Chloe briefly returns just when Hannah and Bernard are in danger of liking each other, and at her exit Chloe drops the bombshell that shatters the polite academic atmosphere: she gives away Bernard's true identity -- he is the university professor who wrote such a scathing review of Hannah's last book. Hannah is about to storm off in disgust, but Bernard coaxes her to stay by appealing to her intellectual curiosity. He reveals a few details about his "discovery" that Lord Byron may have been a guest at Sidley Park. In the end, Bernard decides that he simply must stay at the house a little longer, so that he can look for more clues about Lord Byron and his connection to Septimus Hodge, Ezra Chater, and the Coverly family. As he goes off stage, Chloe comes back on, to tease Hannah about him (the scene from the audition!). The scene ends with Gus silently appearing to give Hannah the gift of an apple; as the lights go down, Hannah is in a rare state of confusion. She has an academic enemy rummaging through the library, doing who knows what to disrupt her own research, the Coverly daughter has already set her sights on that same academic, and now it turns out that Hannah is the object of crushes from both of the Coverly sons!

The scene passed surprisingly quickly and without any problems. Gene and I had our timing down pretty well, and the only danger came when either of us had to give a longer speech. Gene never faltered, and neither of us forgot any cues. I hesitated over a word or two in my line about "the only known likeness of the Sidley hermit," (try saying that five times fast and you'll see what I mean) but nothing worse than that. The only thing that came close to being physically difficult was carrying Chloe's tea tray offstage in the dark, after the scene ended and the lights went down. I was convinced that I would trip or run into something, but thankfully Tim, who was ready for his entrance at stage right, held the door for me, and I slipped offstage in the blackout with no trouble at all.

Scene 3 was just long enough for me to change costumes, grab a drink of water, go upstairs, and get my props, and then it was time for me to go onstage again for Scene 4. This was not a tremendously exciting scene for me, but I found it quite interesting. The whole purpose of Hannah's presence was to act as a foil for Valentine and ask enough questions for him to explain a little bit about chaos theory. Hannah and Valentine get into their own version of a scholarly dispute, since Valentine simply cannot accept Hannah's idea that Thomasina Coverly was a mathematical prodigy. Being something of a math whiz himself, Valentine's pride is bruised by the idea that a 13-year-old girl working with pencil and paper could have developed theories which never occurred to him with his computer. Near the end of the scene, Bernard prances in, having found a book in the library containing an inscription which refers to Ezra Chater. He believes the inscription was written by Byron, but Hannah remains stubbornly unconvinced. She sees her first glimmer of doubt, however, when Valentine says he found a reference to Byron in the estate's game books. Bernard rushes off to find Chloe, who knows where the game books are kept, Valentine goes off to help Gus, and Hannah is left with Valentine's parting comments about Thomasina's math equations, which start to make her wonder just who the hermit of Sidley Park was.

Intermission followed, with everyone touching up makeup, changing costumes again, having another swig of water, and commenting on the audience. The show was half over -- wasn't that an odd thought? It was getting warm in the downstairs dressing rooms, and we were all too pumped up to sit and wait, so everyone who had to be on stage in the next scene was upstairs in the wings before too long. Finally we saw the house lights blink and we heard the audience return to their seats, and it was time to get going again.

Scene 5 was my personal favorite of all the scenes in the play. Bernard is rehearsing the lecture he means to present to the Byron Society, using Chloe (who is enthralled), Valentine (who is distracted and feeding his tortoise), and Gus (who is perplexed) as his test audience. Hannah bursts in with some news about her own research that she wants to share with Valentine, but after Chloe tells her to be quiet she sullenly takes a chair to wait until Bernard is done. However, she does not wait patiently -- instead she heckles Bernard every chance she gets, finally launching into full rant mode when she can no longer stand the glaring inconsistencies and omissions in his lecture. Bernard retaliates by taking a few more shots at her last book and then continues, managing to offend everyone in the room before he finishes. The Coverlys sweep offstage in indignation, one after the other. Out of steam at last, Bernard brushes off the unpleasant incident and promptly turns around and propositions Hannah. She is momentarily startled but flatly refuses. It's just as well, since it turns out that Bernard will be returning to Sidley Park in a few days to be Chloe's date at the annual garden party. When Hannah accuses him of having seduced Chloe, Bernard doesn't bother to deny it. Before he leaves, he pulls out something he found in the library: a book containing a reference to Hannah's hermit. Valentine then reenters, and Hannah can finally show him what she found: a letter which seems to imply that it was the hermit, not Thomasina, who was the math prodigy at Sidley Park. Valentine is still unconvinced, but Hannah is thrilled -- her hermit has gone from idiot to genius, and all she has to do is find proof of whom he was.

Overall the scene went very well, getting some excellent laughs from the audience -- I was hard-pressed to keep a straight face in a few places, since I wanted to laugh along with them. And best of all: the slap was perfect! During Scene 6 I had to make yet another costume change and take my 19th Century dress upstairs to put in place for my fast change later on.

Suddenly I realized that we were about to go on stage for Scene 7, which meant that the show was nearly over. How had it gone by so fast? Quite a lot happens in the final scene, since it resolves the action in both centuries, and part of the action takes place simultaneously, with dialogue from one century overlapping, complementing, and in some cases explaining dialogue from the other. What I always wished I could see from the audience's perspective was the part of the scene when Valentine and Hannah are on stage but then Augustus enters and speaks for the first time. And he doesn't just speak -- in full bratty-younger-brother mode, he teases and laughs, letting Thomasina chase him all around the room. As I mentioned before, this role is played by the same actor who plays Gus, so there is a wonderful moment of surprise and confusion before the audience realizes that he is playing a different role. Our first rehearsal of this scene had been strange enough, so I always wondered how the audience reacted.

Hannah's final vindication comes in Scene 7, when she finds the conclusive piece of evidence that shatters Bernard's theory about Byron, which by now he has published and even talked about on several television programs. He tries to sweet-talk her into keeping it quiet, but it's too late: Hannah has already sent the information to the London Times, and she is rather gleeful about it (in a subdued British way, of course). Bernard reluctantly concedes that victory is hers and takes his leave, wishing her further success with her research into the hermit. When she says she cannot yet prove whom the hermit was, he responds: "Publish!" Valentine also achieves success of a sort, having finally taken a good look at Thomasina's math equations and plugged them into his computer; the result is a numerical masterpiece. Finally it is Gus who brings Hannah the final clue she has been searching for. And meanwhile, on the opposite side of the stage -- where they have been the entire time the 20th Century characters are concluding their action -- Septimus and Thomasina have their short moment of happiness and part to meet their separate destinies.

There were no technical problems or missed lines in the final scene, and what seemed like a surprisingly short time the lights were going down to mark the end of the play. In the blackout, Tim and Gabriele exited right, and Ansel and I exited left. We had a breathless moment to realize that the performance was really done, and then we all came back out in our rehearsed order for the curtain call. I still couldn't quite believe that Gene and I were last! Finally we all joined hands and took a well-deserved group bow. The audience didn't give us a spontaneous standing ovation, but the applause still was gratifyingly loud. After a final company bow, we all filed off-stage.

And it was over! There were plenty of hugs backstage, and then someone -- I think it was Tim -- said we should go out to greet the audience. I had wondered how this custom would work at this particular theater; usually audience members come backstage to offer congratulations, but at our theater there wasn't nearly enough room. Having the actors return to the stage made much more sense.

I had found out at the last minute on Wednesday that my three friends from work who had thought they would attend opening night would not be able to come after all, so I wondered if I would know anyone in the audience. Surely someone I knew was there! It would be awful not to see any friendly faces on such an important night. Thankfully, no less than eight members of my search-and-rescue team had come, and they all came up to say hello. The next person I recognized was the director of the Light Opera Guild, who gave me a huge hug and said I had done a wonderful job. Her congratulations meant a lot, since I had heard she rarely came to see Main Stage Company shows. (And maybe this meant I hadn't completely sabotaged my chances of being cast in a Guild show, after all!)

After talking to my friends for a little while, and doing lots of smiling and saying "thank you" to other passing audience members who had enjoyed the show, I was quite ready to go home. I grabbed my discarded clothes from stage left, zipped downstairs, changed back into street clothes, hung up my costumes, threw everything else into my backpack, and was on my way. My dog would get a very abbreviated walk, and then all I wanted to do was crash into bed and sleep. And then I would get to do it all over again the next night!

Staying in character for the length of the play was relatively easy, since in many ways Hannah was very like me. There were only two spots in which I was likely to break character: Scene 5, when I was tempted to laugh along with the audience at the funny spots (none of which Hannah would find amusing). And in Scene 7, when Hannah was busy doing research and I was in danger of actually reading the many books on the table, instead of just intently leafing through them while I waited for my next cue. Being the bookworm I am, not paying attention to the text on the pages in front of me was difficult. Especially since some of the books were quite interesting: a collection of 19th Century poetry, a biography of Charlie Chaplin, and a history of Europe during World War I, among others.

The action in Scene 7 had also caused a very funny moment during one of our last rehearsals. David suddenly decided that, instead of delivering one of my lines from my chair, I should get up and walk over to Valentine while I was saying it. The line did work better that way, but then I had to figure out how and when to get back to my chair -- I couldn't just stand there, and a later stage direction also had me getting out of my chair, which I couldn't do if I was standing already.

I asked David how long I should wait before I sat down again, and he just said to find a moment that felt comfortable and do it then. So, we ran the scene: Greg-Val gave me my cue, I stood up and moved towards him while I said my line, and he answered; then I drifted back towards my chair, pretending I had gotten up to stretch after a long period of research but still paging through the book I was carrying.

While I was drifting, Tim and Gabriele were continuing the scene. We were arranged in alternating chairs, so my seat was now between Tim and Gabriele. Anyway, I was hovering a few paces behind the table, pretending to read and half-listening to what Tim and Gabriele were saying. I couldn't very well sit down between them while they were in the middle of talking to each other -- even if they were technically invisible to me, it would have been distracting to the audience -- so I waited until there was a slight pause in their conversation, and then sat down.

And David went absolutely nuts! He leapt out of his seat in the audience, practically shouting, "That's it! Perfect! Yes! Do it exactly like that! Wonderful!"

All of us on stage were rather stunned by his reaction and burst into surprised laughter as we looked at each other in amazement. David had always been enthusiastic about the show, but nothing we did had ever gotten a reaction like this!

The reason for David's excitement? I sat down just as Tim was saying, "He is not aware of your existence." The double meaning suddenly apparent in the phrase was just too much for David, who was thrilled with it. The audience would probably miss it entirely, but he would see it and that was enough for him.

From then on, every time we did that scene I had to repress a smile when I sat down again, remembering David's reaction to my serendipitous timing.

******

My sole purpose in life on Friday (aside from getting work over with as quickly as possible and getting to the theater on time) was to find copies of the local newspapers so I could read the reviews. Since our opening night was a Thursday, we had not followed the normal theater ritual of the cast hanging out in one of the downtown bars until 2:00 A.M., when the morning paper was delivered. Not only did most of us have to work the next morning, but also having two 16-year-olds in the cast meant going to a bar on any night was impossible.

I eventually tracked down a copy of the Gazette in one of the break rooms in the lab building at the plant, but the Daily Mail eluded me. I had to hear about the review from the other actors at the theater that night and then finally get my own copy the next day.

Arcadia a low comedy in highbrow
By Pat Hendricks
April 16, 1999
Gazette staff

The Main Stage Company opened its five-night run of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia on Thursday night at the Capitol Center theater before a rapt, respectably-sized, rainy weather audience. It was a well-rehearsed, well-timed, well-costumed production of a very difficult, wordy script.

Stoppard, the Czech-born English playwright who recently added both a knighthood and an Oscar for co-writing the rave-reaping Shakespeare in Love to his already impressive resume, is known for his clever wordplay and highbrow subject matter. Both were heavily present in Arcadia, a single-set play with a split personality, dual casts, and a two-century timeline.

It's as if the action were toggling between Windows 1809 and Windows 1999 screens, both sited in Sidley Park, and English country manor of the Coverly family, a notable collection of eccentrics, except for the occasional genius who defies genetics.

Thomasina Coverly, a teenage math whiz, convincingly played by Capital high junior Gabriele Wohl, solves a physics theorem nearly two centuries before it's possible to do so.

Her tutor, Septimus Hodge, engagingly portrayed by Tim Mace, strives to protect her innocence, as her curiosity shifts from physics to the physical upon hearing about the "carnal" activities reported to her by the servants.

Within minutes of the opening dialogue, explanations of sexual function and procreation are dominating the plot. The mix of intellectual topics and earthy preoccupations continues throughout the drama, with liberal injections of explicit and scatological verbiage -- all delivered in rapid-fire British accents.

Ann Saville, an import from the mother country, adds authenticity and substance as Lady Croom, mistress of the manor (and of several visiting males).

Veteran actor Gary Brown's professionalism adds luster and sympathy to his thankless role of Ezra Chater, third-rate poet, egomaniac, and cuckolded husband.

Among the 1999 cast, Gene Lafitte as Bernard Nightingale stole the show with his large physique and vital presence. His exchanges with petite Liz McKenna (Hannah Jarvis) were visibly amusing.

Bethany Cline and Greg Garner acquitted themselves with aplomb in an evening of polished, if sometimes puzzling, theater.

Performances continue at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday and April 22-24. Tickets are $10 adults, $8 students/seniors, available at the door.

The review from the Gazette wasn't bad, but I wasn't thrilled with it. The woman who wrote it wasn't their usual theater critic, and my suspicion that she had left the show before it ended was later confirmed. She had left about half an hour into the second act -- behavior, in my opinion, that is rude, shows disrespect for the efforts of the actors, and is entirely inappropriate for a theater critic who, after all, is being paid to write an opinion of the entire show.

Clever Arcadia Adds Up
Play reveals beauty, art through principles of mathematics
By Mark Sadd
April 16, 1999
Daily Mail staff

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia is an articulate and articulated work. The show opened Thursday at the Capitol Center Theater.

Stoppard, who co-wrote the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love, is known for his machined, engineered dialogue. The trait is a hallmark of Arcadia -- one of the most pleasantly challenging plays you can see anywhere in West Virginia this season.

That goes for its themes, too, a weave of literary arm-wrestling and mathematical horseplay. Sounds different? It is.

Set in the north of England in both the early 1800s and the present, Arcadia alternates between two times in a room of a country house. In the first scenes, the house tutor, Septimus Hodge (Tim Mace) instructs the young Thomasina Coverly (Gabriele Wohl). Enter poet Ezra Chater (Gary Brown) and landscape architect Richard Noakes (Greg Morris), untalented representatives of the two great pursuits of the age: shaping words and shaping land into perfect works of Arcadian, pastoral beauty.

Their patroness is Lady Croom (Ann Saville), who, quite affected with proper appearances, bluntly reveals the motivation of her patronage: it is simply the "in" thing to do. Every English manor must have its own Lord Byron and Capability Brown, respectively the greatest poet and landscape architect of the day.

Lady Croom's 20th Century descendants, Valentine Coverly (Greg Garner), Chloe Coverly (Bethany Cline), and Gus Coverly (Ansel Payne) pursue their own contemporary pastimes. Valentine continues the family fascination with mathematical themes. In the meantime, the Coverlys are besieged by Hannah Jarvis (Liz McKenna) and Bernard Nightingale (Gene Lafitte), two literary historians who compete to uncover the latest sensational tidbit to cash in on the latest craze -- Byron mania.

It all goes around again and then again, creating a structure of Arcadia that is quite mathematical. Indeed, Arcadia is an extraordinarily clever application of mathematical principles to the creation of art and beauty. It also reveals the inherent art and beauty of mathematics.

The Main Stage Company cast is populated with experienced actors who devote their considerable energies to harnessing the challenges of Arcadia. With few exceptions, they manage the dense thicket of a script over the course of a two-and-a-half hour evening.

It adds up to a night of interesting theater.

Arcadia continues at 8 p.m. today, Saturday, and April 22, 23, and 24.

The review in the Daily Mail was much better, being written by a much more experienced critic who had obviously taken some pains to become familiar with the show. His approval of Stoppard's talents was obvious, and while he didn't single out any of the actors for extraordinary praise, he was complimentary of the cast's talents as a whole.

******

After getting through opening night with hardly any problems with my lines, I was pretty confident about the second performance. However, I had forgotten that it's not only your own lines that you have to worry about: you have to keep in mind what the other actors are doing -- or not doing, as the case may be. This point was brought home rather strongly in the middle of Scene 4, when Greg-Val didn't interrupt one of my lines where he was supposed to, and I had to continue the line, just making up something to say and desperately hoping it made sense, until he picked up the cue and started talking. Thankfully David had often reminded us that we needed to imagine endings for all of our interrupted sentences, which I had tried to do, so I don't think I sounded too incoherent. It just took me a moment to recover from the moment of blind panic that flashed through me when Greg didn't come in on time.

There were no problems in the rest of the show, and once again we had some very solid audience applause at the end. The director had arranged a reception for the audience and actors after the show, so that is where I went after I got all my stuff organized backstage and downstairs. My two friends from work were there; both of them congratulated me and promptly started quizzing me on aspects of the play they hadn't understood. The most amusing encounter of the night was with a random audience member, a gentleman who fervently shook my hand and thanked me from the bottom of his heart for such a good show -- apparently he was a scientist or engineer of some kind, and he felt that technical subjects weren't covered often enough in the local theater scene. I shared that opinion, but his depth of feeling was surprising.

As the performances continued, it was interesting and amusing to watch all the little habits that the actors developed (me being no exception). Night after night, we arrived at the theater in the same order: me first (because of that blasted curling iron), then Greg-Val, then David and Gabriele, then Ann (who had the easiest commute, since she lived within walking distance). I never found out exactly when the rest of the men tended to arrive, but they were always there by the time I was done with my hair. Bethany was usually the last one in, coming downstairs just before the theater was opened for the audience.

As we were waiting for the opening curtain, both Gregs and John would be in one of the men's dressing rooms, working on a crossword puzzle from the New York Times. As I was putting on my makeup, I could always hear them through the wall, discussing clues and possible words; and once I was done with my preparations I would usually join them for a little while, to see if I could contribute anything. Gene was likely to have started pacing up and down the hallway already, including the stairways in his route if he needed extra mileage. Gabriele usually stayed in her seat by the makeup mirror, where she could use the makeup table to do homework.

The bookworms of the group were Ann, Rick, and Ansel (who was reading Proust -- very impressive for a high school junior). They could be found either in their dressing rooms or in a chair under one of the stairways, engrossed by whatever they were reading that night. Ann had a distinct advantage in selection, since she owned a bookstore, but Rick managed to get through five or six books during the performance run.

Bethany, despite knowing most of the cast members from pervious shows she had done with the Main Stage Company, proved to be relatively unsociable during the performances. If she was not actually on stage performing a scene, she would be in her dressing room with the door closed, and she would not emerge until shortly before her next entrance. The friendly overtures I made -- trying to make conversation, or offering a backrub if she was stressed -- were not exactly rebuffed, but neither were they returned, so eventually I gave up and respected her obvious wish to keep to herself.

******

The two weeks during which the performances ran were incredibly busy for me. First there was hell week, then the three first performances, then I was out of town for a business trip, and then the three last performances! My poor dog, who only saw me for the half-hour between when I came home from work and when I left for the theater, and again after the show before I went to bed, must have thought I had gone completely crazy.

The business trip was supposed to last the whole week, but I had to cut it short on Wednesday so I could be back at the theater on Wednesday night for our brush-up rehearsal. (My plane landed at six o'clock that evening, and rehearsal started at six thirty!) This was another "lines" rehearsal, just like the Sunday of hell week had been. This time, however, we were at least in the right theater, not at the State College, and we didn't even bother going through the blocking. We all just claimed seats in the first row or two of the audience section and recited lines from there.

David watched everything from his usual perch on the edge of the stage, seeming slightly amused by just how fast we were all speaking and occasionally throwing in a correction as he followed along in the script. At the end, he looked at his watch and announced that, if we could do everything on stage as rapidly as we just had, we could cut an hour off the running time of the play. The image was pretty funny: I could just see everyone sprinting around the set, whipping in and out of the doors, and zooming through the lines. And just imagine how much more bewildered the audience would be!

******

At work on the Thursday when our second weekend of performances began, I came to the conclusion that theater gossip is truly widespread and inescapable. How else could I explain meeting another community theater enthusiast while I was down in the records department, trying to track down an engineering drawing for one of my projects? I was reminding the two records clerks that this weekend was their last chance to see the show, and a third woman who was there helping them with some data entry jumped into the conversation.

It turned out that she had also acted in several shows in the area, so she was familiar with the Main Stage Company, the director, and a few people in the cast. She was pleased when I told her this was the first play I had done since I moved to town, since in her opinion it was always good to see new faces up on stage.

"Otherwise, it's just the same people over and over again," she said. "Like Bethany Cline -- I suppose she's in the show, too?"

I nodded and said she was.

"You know," the woman said, leaning towards me a little and lowering her voice, "I heard that she initially wasn't going to do it. Apparently someone else got the part she wanted, and David had to sweet-talk her into taking a smaller role."

Oh, dear. The only other part Bethany would have wanted was Hannah -- my role.

The woman's eyes got a bit bigger as I gave her this interesting piece of information. "Well! That's certainly a compliment to your acting skills, if you got the part instead of Bethany!"

I was entirely sensible of the compliment, but I was inwardly groaning about the tangled intrigues of community theater politics. I hoped there was some other reason that Bethany might have initially said no to being in the play -- a conflict with her work schedule, or having to spend time with a sick relative. Or maybe the rumor about her having refused to accept Chloe wasn't true at all.

In all likelihood, however, it was true. Actors who have their heart set on getting a certain role are capable of some extremely immature behavior -- and I'm no exception, although I try to limit the extent and the duration of my immaturity as much as possible. Perhaps this explained some of Bethany's cool attitude towards me, but at least she hadn't been openly hostile. (When I got the part of Minnie Fay in Hello, Dolly! two years ago, the girl who thought she was the only possible person who would get cast in that part spent the next two months sniping at me behind my back. I only found out about it from other people who had heard her badmouthing me, since I've never met the girl!)

No matter what rumors were flying around, however, I wasn't about to change my behavior towards Bethany, and there was no need to mention the incident to her. There was nothing either of us could do about the casting now, so the best thing was just to keep my mouth shut, be a good sport, and carry on as always. In the theater world, professional behavior is always appreciated, since you never know when you might have to perform a role supporting someone else -- particularly someone else who supported you in a previous show.

******

The second Thursday night performance had the best audience yet! While everyone had laughed at the obviously funny lines, this audience was laughing at the lines that we -- as the actors who had the whole play memorized inside-out, backwards, and upside-down -- knew were funny, but every other audience had missed. For the first time we had to occasionally pause between cues to let the laughter die down enough for the lines to be heard. Getting such an enthusiastic response from the audience is wonderful, since the actors can pick up on their energy and use it to improve their performance.

Thursday was a tough night for Gene, though -- the poor guy just went blank during a long speech in Scene 2, and had to scramble though some ad-libbing until he came to a point that he remembered. I wanted to help him, but unfortunately it was at a point when Hannah is staring at Bernard in stony and outraged silence, and I couldn't think of a way to break in. Gene also missed another line in Scene 4, but it wasn't anything nearly important as his first mistake. Such a lapse would have thrown me completely, which is one of the reasons I always work so hard to make sure I have my lines memorized cold; however, Gene handled the glitch very calmly, and I was very impressed by his composure and by how he never broke character.

******

After the Friday performance, we had yet another photo session, this one for the archives of the Main Stage Company. These photos would be shots of various scenes from the play, and they would be turned into slides. It was apparently a Main Stage Company tradition that David hosted a party every summer for everyone who had been involved with any of the shows during the previous season, and part of the entertainment would be watching a slide show of pictures from the various productions. We would also be able to order copies of whatever pictures we liked, so I was suddenly much less worried about bringing a camera before opening night.

So starting from the final scene, since that's what we were all still dressed for, and working backwards, David got us set up for the shots he wanted. He would name a scene, or a dialogue, or a pose, from which we would begin, then let us continue until he called "Freeze!" Then the photographer would snap the picture. Had it been a rehearsal, it would have been an excellent acting exercise, since going through the play backwards meant we really had to think about whose turn it was to be on stage.

******

As the performance run neared its conclusion, there was still one theater tradition left to complete - the cast party. Arcadia actually ended up with two parties, since Gary hosted one at his house after the final Friday show, and Gene hosted one at his apartment after the final Saturday show. It was interesting to see who came to the parties and who stayed away, illustrating a few more character quirks in my fellow actors. David and Gabriele came to both for a short while, but then left for home. Gary, Gene, Rick, Greg-Noakes, Julie (the prop mistress), and I went to both. Greg-Val, Tim, Ansel, and Bethany went to neither. (Tim and Ansel at least had the very good excuse that they lived an hour away from the theater, so no one blamed them for not wanting to stay out late.)

Ansel's long commute for rehearsals and performances created an unusual situation, since he did not yet have his driver's license. His mother and father earned the joint title of Theater Parents Extraordinaire for driving him into town and waiting to drive him back every single night. And they weren't the scary, overbearing, pushy kind of stage parents, either -- they were so wonderfully supportive of Ansel's acting and so happy and proud to see him in the show that it was really touching to watch. When Ansel eventually wins a Tony award or a Nobel Prize (or both), I'm sure they will be the first people he thanks in his acceptance speech.

******

It was not until closing night that I remembered to bring a permanent marker so I could add my name to the many already on the walls. It took me a few minutes to decide what to write, but I had narrowed it down to my two favorite lines in the show. Both would be equally incomprehensible to people coming afterwards who didn't know the show, but since one line was longer than the other, the decision would depend on how big of an empty space I could find among the other signatures. I found a likely spot across the hall from the second men's dressing room, about halfway down the wall, and wrote:

******

As with all the other performances, the final Saturday show was over far too quickly. No one was very sentimental about its being the last show, but everyone was aware of it to some degree. By the time I finished changing back into my street clothes after the final bow, the prop crew was already putting away the books, the rabbit, the theodolite, and the tea tray. The set would stay up until later that weekend, when the set crew returned to dismantle it, but the table looked surprisingly bare without its usual clutter of Hannah and Valentine's work.

Some good-byes had already been said: David had come downstairs before the performance to thank us all and to say what a pleasure we'd been to work with. I made sure to give Ansel a big hug before he left, as well as thanking his parents one last time for lending us their son. Gabriele also got a hug, and Ann got a more dignified farewell.

Finally we couldn't stretch out the departure any longer -- no one was so reluctant to leave that they wanted to get locked into the theater for the night! So one last time through the empty dressing rooms to make sure nothing had been left behind, up the rickety spiral staircase, out onto the stage, down into the audience, up the aisle to the lobby, and out the door to the street.

I had to sit in my car and stare at the theater for a minute before I drove off. I couldn't believe it was all over! Did I really not have to come back the next night? What would I do with my evenings if I wasn't at rehearsal?

Actually, that question was easy to answer: count the weeks until the next audition!

In my opinion, the best part of any performance isn't the theater "experience," the acting, the costumes, or even reading the reviews. The best part, by far, is meeting the audience after the show and hearing how much they enjoyed it. I get an incredible thrill from hearing total strangers, who paid their hard-earned money and gave up three hours of their valuable time to come see us, say that we did a good job. If they had something congratulatory to say about my individual performance, great, but otherwise I was perfectly content to enjoy praise of the entire cast. It does wonders for my confidence in my acting skills, since I am still surprised that anyone thinks my performance is that enjoyable.

My friends who came to see the show were (of course) required to say that I did well, no matter what they really thought of me. The most meaningful praise, however, came from my fellow actors and from members of the audience who were also active in the theater community. I figured that these people, whose talent I certainly admired, had to know what they were talking about, and if they said I did well then I wasn't about to argue with them. My favorite compliment came when Gene told me that he always laughed at one of my lines in Scene 6 -- until then, I had no idea of his opinion, and for all I knew he thought I was the worst actress on the face of the earth. However, if I could make Gene laugh, then winning over the audience was easy.

Two weeks after Arcadia closed, I went to see the opening night of Follies, which you may recall was the show I initially auditioned for. I was curious to see what the show would be like, and to see the actress who got the part I wanted. The Light Opera Guild did their usual wonderful job, and all of the older actors and actresses stole the show. However, my overall impression was that I was really glad I hadn't gotten cast in it! The part I had wanted was pretty small, and the character was an absolute twit! At the reception after the show, I was much happier that several people recognized me as Hannah, instead congratulating me for being part of Follies.

Had things worked out differently, I'm sure I would have enjoyed myself in Follies, and I would have done a good job as Young Sally. However, Arcadia was by far a better experience -- easily the best theater experience I've ever had, and not just because I had a large role. There was an inspiring director, a talented cast, and a supportive crew. Theater doesn't get much better than that!

Here's hoping I get to repeat the experience in the future, and thanks to my readers for letting me share it with you!

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