Half-life

Our week in Stebbins has given us new perspective. Compared with all the other residencies I’ve had since starting this job, Stebbins is in a class of its own.

Friday afternoon we waited for our cast to arrive for dress rehearsal. At 3:00 we had maybe five kids even though everyone was called for 3:00. After sending the kid wranglers (teachers) after them we had most of our cast about 45 minutes later. Unfortunately, two of the kids still missing were two of the four mermaids. We began the dress rehearsal hoping they would show up, but we didn’t hold our breath. Dress rehearsal was awful, I won’t lie. Catastrophe was the word I used when discussing it over a cafeteria dinner with J.D. With the show less than two hours away and only two mermaids, we called in our backups or, rather, decided to make two teachers our backups then called them in.

I was not expecting much for the evening show and that may be putting it kindly, but the show must go on. The audience trickled in, we slapped some make-up on the kids, and we began the show. Maybe it was the chance to impress their families or maybe it was a “do or die” mentality or maybe standing in front of a crowd and speaking just put the fear of God into them, but whatever it was the kids rose to the occasion. I can’t say it was the best show they could have done, but they did a good job. I was very impressed by some of those kids. Even though I prompted about half the lines in some scenes and two of our mermaids were teachers with scripts, the show went much better than I expected.

During one scene when Amelia and Ophelia, two of the mermaids, are visiting the world above, Kristi, who played Amelia said the most promising thing I’d heard all week. The Sea Scouts were lined up in front playing the sinister soldiers speaking their lines and Kristi turned to me and whispered with great concern, “They need to be louder.” I can’t tell you how great it was to hear that; she’s got potential.

Greatly relieved to have the show done with for the night, J.D. and I spent the night doing some Playstation button-mashing at our piano player’s place. The following day after some extensive wrangling we got ready for our second show. Between Friday’s show and Saturday afternoon, we lost five cast members. When we started the show Saturday afternoon we had a cast of 30, just about half of the 61 names we wrote down after Monday’s auditions. Now that’s a cast-atrophy (do you get the wordplay?).

We’re now in St. Michael about 20 miles away and it looks like it may be a similar week. During auditions today, just as we finalized our cast and were about to take down names, the four girls we wanted as mermaids walked out. Then as we announced the last of our cast, the leads, three of them told us they wouldn’t be here Friday night and maybe not Saturday either due to a basketball tournament. That left us with only 2 of 8 lead roles filled. We’re going to talk with a few kids in the morning and hopefully that will solve our problem. Life in the Bush: not for the faint of heart.