FREE BEER !!

The opening performance of "Dial M..." started off as all openings do....with speeches. It's not bad enough that openings are usually populated with sponsors and their staff who are looking at the evening as a work thing, and then there's people who got free tickets so that's what the evening is worth to them....but then you start the whole thing off with a really ripping batch of announcements and a grippingly intense stack of thank you's for the sponsors. I know the sponsors are a great thing, and we're happy to have them, it just makes our job all that much harder to then get the audience awake and interested....especially if they're half-pissed, which they usually are.

However, I'm happy to say that, in spite of a fairly frosty response at the beginning of the show, we had them by the balls by the end. Several of us did develop a bad case of the 'clumsies' through the evening though. I, for the first time in my theatrical life, walked smack into a wall during a black out. There's nothing quite like that tell-tale 'smack', followed by a hushed, "Shit!", then followed by the quiet giggling of your fellow cast members. Deb not only tripped over the carpet, but also nearly took herself out by kicking over the garbage can on stage. James, in the blackout at the end of ACT 1, smashed himself into one of the occasional chairs, nearly finishing himself AND the chair. But, we survived and proudly display our bumps and bruises as we tell the story in exchange for a drink.

During the reception afterward, James 'introduced' me to two elderly ladies. Actually, what he was doing was dumping them on me because he couldn't get rid of them and they were driving him nuts. I actually found them quite entertaining. They were going on and on and on about how they couldn't believe that I could lie 'dead' on the stage for that long. "I'm a nurse ya know", said one of them. "And I was watching for the vein on the forehead that's a sure giveaway that someone is still alive ... and yours never pulsed ONCE!!" Of course I graciously accepted the compliment, telling them how it was my years of training and my constant devotion to the daily practice of yoga that allows me to be in control of my very veins.

Tall tales aside, the show is a hit and everyone went away quite satisfied and raving about how much they enjoyed it.