Finale

So Lion King closed on Sunday.

Sad.

EXHAUSTED.

And on to the new show. But more about that in a second.

First, a couple of small hints from me to all of my 3 readers. Don't buy tickets for the Sunday evening show. Theatre shows typically run from Tuesday to Sunday and the Sunday evening show is the 8th show of an 8 show week. The chances of the actors being on top of their game is minimal. Sometimes you'll get the best show of the week, but more often they are tired and crabby and ready for a day off. As are all the backstage people. On the other hand, the Saturday evening show is often pretty good. The actors are warmed up from performing the show once already that day and they're in the groove... We've also had outstanding Saturday and Sunday matinees for the past several weeks. But we've had good audiences for those shows, which makes all the difference.

Secondly, I overheard the ushers talking about an interesting thing. An experienced usher was training a new usher and telling him that for this show, they were not ushers but "hosts" and the audience members weren't customers but "guests." The experienced usher told the newbie "This means that if you seat someone and they decide they want coffee, you need to go get it for them. Ask them how they want it prepared, tell them how much it will cost, get it for them and return their change. DO NOT TAKE TIPS. We are not allowed to take tips. Disney is very strict about that rule and you will lose your job for taking tips. In fact, they invite people to shows in a 'secret shopper' type capacity to make sure the ushers aren't taking tips..."

how about that? They don't call Disney "Mouse-shwitz" for nothing...

So, go see the Saturday evening show, be a responsive audience member, ask your usher to get you a beverage and for crying out loud, don't tip them.

that is all...

And what am I on to next? Funny you should ask. I started at the Arizona Opera yesterday working on their new opera, which opens next week. I'll post about it later as I probably couldn't have picked a show more different than Lion King if I had tried.

Actor Eccentricities, Part Due

In a past city, one of the current ensemble actors, Thabile - pronounced, Tabilay - was an understudy for the part of Rafiki. When an ensemble member is an understudy, they have an entire set of their own costumes for that part so they can step into the part when needed.

For those of you unfamiliar with Rafiki, she's the wise baboon most famous for the "Hakuna Matata" song in the animated movie. In the musical, she looks like this :

(and in one of our shows a little two year old in the audience started shrieking and crying in terror when Rafiki came out on stage. Fortunately she was distracted and consoled by the appearance of the elephants...)

So, back to Thabile.

Thabile is from South Africa (which will be relevant in about 3 seconds) and when she was removed as an understudy, her Rafiki costume went to the new understudy.

How did she handle this? Not well. My suspicion is that her main problem was being removed as an understudy (for reasons unknown) but she couldn't do anything about that; so, instead she decided to torture Gillian, the Wardrobe Head.

In complete seriousness, she told Gillian that she had put a voodoo curse on her Rafiki dress and anyone else who wore it would die on stage in some horrible manner. She said she had put a voodoo doll on the dress and hexed it.

She looked right in Gillian's face and said "I have the power."

And Gillian believed her, because Thabile is from South Africa and who knows... So they took the dress out of commission and spent several days looking through all the charms to make sure there was no voodoo doll.

Finally, in the words of Gillian, they realized that really, "Thabile was just a lunatic."

So they gave the dress to the next understudy, and still she lives.

Because it's not enough to have to deal with actors eating and smoking in their costumes, now we have to deal with hexes and a would be voodoo princess.

Actor Eccentricities, Part One

It's a well known fact for crew people that actors can be impossible. They can also be devastatingly charming and funny, but actors at a certain level tend to think that they know better than the crew.

This is rarely true.

Take the issue of costumes. I realize that when an actor does a show like Lion King for 4+ hours a show, 8 shows a week, they are likely wearing their costumes more than they wear any other single piece of their personal clothing. This makes them feel like the costume belongs to them and they should be able to do anything in it that they would do in their street clothes.

And you know, call us crazy, but when a costume costs $4000 we would prefer that you not eat fried chicken while wearing it. Or birthday cake. Or drink coffee. Or paint your nails.

Weird, I know.

Despite this, actors are known to do whatever they want to do and if they are talented, the producers let it go and just suck up the cost of replacing the ruined costume.

So last year, the actor who played Scar was a chain smoker. The kind of smoker who can't go for 3+ hours without a cigarette. Now if you think we tend to get hysterical about grease stains and icing smears, imagine our dismay at the prospect of smoke smells and burn holes. However, he refused to wait until the end of the show for a cigarette break.

So the show in San Francisco found Scar on the street in front of the theatre at intermission, mingling with the theatre goers in his full costume and orange makeup, wig, headress, corset and the long claws he wears over his fingers, having his intermission cigarette and chatting everybody up.

Can you imagine driving down Market Street and seeing this?

Except it was San Francisco, so really, that might be the least weird thing you were likely to run into that night...