It's all about underwear

Well, I've been quite neglectful of this blog (shame!), the ramifications being – aside from losing my audience :) - that so many things have happened that it's now going to be difficult to cover them all. So I'll try to be concise... but you know how that goes...

where to even begin...

Well, here are some of my impressions of the show. For those of you not familiar with “The Producers”, it's not the show for everyone. It has some difficult satirical humor about subjects most decent people don't find funny – like mocking gay people and celebrating nazis. Additionally, I think the funniest and most memorable parts of the show are the “Keep it Gay” and “Springtime for Hitler” numbers so that adds to the difficulty because it's what you remember. There's also some rough language (mom, be warned...) so it's not your typical golden age musical – which is fine with me as I've expressed here before that if I never see Oklahoma! or Guys and Dolls again it will be too soon. I'm not much for the sentimental happy ending musicals.

I'll devote a whole post to nazis soon because several things have happened that revolve around that aspect of this show. But nazis and drag queens aside, the main thing that I have to deal with during the show is that we have a huge show with lots of costumes and 25 actors and we're doing a 90 minute “casino” version instead of the 3 hour full version. This means is that all the long talky parts have been cut and it's now small segments of dialogue interwoven into song and dance numbers. Except no costume changes have been cut.

Normally, the actors have time to change during the talky parts and now they don't have time to change. A quick change means that the actor walks off stage and has quick turn around (usually measured in seconds and not minutes) before they have to be back on stage in a completely different costume . So where we usually have a show with 4-5 quick changes in 3 hours, now we have a show with 10-20 quick changes in 90 minutes. What makes this bearable for the dressers is what is called “underdressing,” which means an actor wears more than one costume at a time. For instance, an actor will wear a pair of tux pants underneath his cop pants and a tux shirt under his cop jacket, get off stage, pull off his cop jacket and pants and put on a tux jacket and in 10 seconds be transformed from a cop to formal wear.

But this means that all the actors are constantly wearing 2-3 outfits at a time so they are hot and sweaty on stage and then the backstage area is like a freezer – the air conditioning is on “arctic” all the time – so they come off stage and immediately start shivering. It's been a bit miserable and everyone has been sick. Of course in this situation, when one person gets a cold it's just a matter of time before everyone has it.

Don't you wish you were on tour in Atlantic City???

but the great thing about actors is that they expect a certain amount of discomfort in their jobs so they don't complain much. They have to wear uncomfortable costumes that are heavy or hot under intense stage lights, do difficult things, make impossible character changes where they go on stage as a cop and then a minute later have to be a prisoner, wear a lot of itchy wigs and heavy makeup etc. Learning to work under physically difficult conditions is part of being an actor. So is having to wear the same shirt over and over and over without it getting washed as much as you'd like.

Which leads me to the other major aspect of this show – for me. Laundry. 25 actors, a minimum of probably 30 costume pieces per actor ranging from t-shirts to fully beaded show girl outfits and no set schedule for how all this gets cleaned. PLUS, from everything I've heard, the last wardrobe crew apparently decided that laundry was hard – which it is – so the solution was not to do it. Shirts didn't get washed, dry cleaning didn't get sent out, actors complained, the wardrobe crew felt put upon and as things built up it just got more daunting and less doable so less and less got done, etc. This is a miserable situation. Trust me when I say that when the actors are unhappy, no one is happy. All of our crew jobs revolve around them being able to do their job and none more so than costumes.

here's the thing about my job. And those who know me will laugh, and then shake their heads and think there must be something to this karma notion after all... My job is to be the mom and I have 25 kids to look after. For 6 days every week I have to make sure their underwear is clean, I'm the one that's there when they are in bad moods and just want some sympathy, I know when they've gained weight or pulled muscles or they are sick, I'm the one they go to when their shoes hurt or their dresser isn't being helpful or they've lost their socks or something broke 2 seconds before they have to be on stage and my main response has to be that I can take care of it – whatever it is – and in the process make the actor feel that they are in a comfortable place and can go on stage and do their job. As such I talk to each one every day to make sure they have everything they need. I have this stock of goodwill building up between up between me and them such that they speak well of me to upper management – which they do – and make me look competent and good at my job, it makes our department run well so stage management doesn't get complaints and they can deal with things that are actually important and the actors are happy so the show goes well, the audience likes it and they say good things to other people who then come to see the show.

Apparently it all comes down to about clean socks and sympathy.

But maybe that's a good lesson for life, yes?