Another Openin'

Ready to go, the house is open. The audience can't see me five feet away behind a stage flat. My sister is laughing on the other side of the wall. I imagine she is laughing with her husband, her husband that she was supposed to marry today, but back in February, she couldn't wait any longer. Still, their Hawaiian honeymoon starts tomorrow. It sounds like she is laughing at everything he says. It sounds extremely happy. And it made me cry.

Audience response was light. Both my stage wife and I have scenes where we get laughing, and my stage sister has a great laugh line . . . so three or four spots I heard the audience laughing. But Act 1 ended to dead silence. Weak ending, poor segue to intermission, or a terrible play, I don't know; but I was already changing clothes by the time the applause started.

Act 2 begins with me waiting for my cue in the church kitchen, behind the audience. Without my glasses, the view through the pass-through window over the audience to the stage is fuzzy combination of steel table with coffee maker in the dark, then the window to the dark house overlooking the lighting table and crew, enough chairs to seat a hundred, mostly empty, and then brightly lit happy blues and summer accents as Barbara and Jane work through the opening. As I wait, I count 16 people in the audience. My sister, Joy, her husband, whose name I forget, and my niece are there. I didn't know she was there. She's had 24 hour morning sickness for the last three weeks. So I was surprised and glad she was there. I figured that Joy's friends had not come because they were not seated right with them. I was very glad for that - I'd been horrified that they were coming to see me for the first time, on opening night of a drama. But I was wrong, they were sitting elsewhere.

Act 2 had some nice connections - nice rhythms - honest reactions - very good stuff, followed by generous applause.