Four Days Out
In the days before opening a show, everything feels like organized chaos. Or, just chaos. Add to that state the challenges of the NYC Fringe Festival and you are in for a wild ride.
This has been a particularly challenging process for many reasons. One of the joys of working on a new play is that it is ever changing, adapting, being re-worked and re-tweaked. It’s thrilling because you can feel the script getting closer to what feels right, what feels complete. And it’s terrifying because a week before opening, we are handed 40 new pages. Luckily, I am not the one who has the bulk of those 40 pages-that’s for other actors to emote about-but it’s scary nonetheless; because the shape of the story is still being crafted and created. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. To know that each day we get closer to what the play should be is like chipping away at a block of stone to the figure you know lies beneath. And you are reminded that the process is not about creating, it’s about discovering.
All to say that I am still not sure how we’re going to solve the problem of the constantly-breaking IKEA table, the $700 setee replacement cost if the grape juice thrown about in the final scene goes where it shouldn’t, the search for size 11 women’s workboots and what happens if the show gets stopped by a fire marshal to pull some set piece out from under us.
But, my fellow Fringe-ys, isn’t that what the fun’s all about?
See you all at the theatre!