It seems I must resign myself to a weekend-free life. Per usual, I spent this past weekend in the Cranford, NJ sweatshop known as CDC theatre. Remind me again why I toil in third world conditions for just pennies an hour? Ah, yes, for the love of the thea-tuh! And in this case, love stinks - both literally and figuratively. We’re talking rainforest-like heat and humidity and lethal levels of black mold and mildew [insert long, self-pitying sigh here].Free time in general seems to be a rare commodity for me lately. Having just spent months in rehearsals and the last three weekends in performances of The Wedding Singer, I had hoped for at least a brief respite from all things Jersey [insert second long, self-pitying sigh]. Every night last week I commuted to NJ for rehearsals of our Young Artist’s production of Donizetti’s Elixir of Love. Unfortunately, there’s this little thing I do during the day called “a job” that has a pesky habit of getting in the way. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I do appreciate the steady paycheck and commensurate lifestyle it affords, but that damn NJ/NYC/Queens commute does me in. I may just have to bite the bullet one of these days and relocate to at least west of the East River. It will pain me to give up my New Yorker status, but…oh God, I just can’t think about it right now. It’s like considering a move to Siberia.
Anyway, the opera went as well as can be expected for a 90 minute reduction of a 3 hour opera translated into English performed by grade school kids and accompanied by an orchestra of three (violin, flute and me on piano) sight-reading the score. Given the unfortunate overlap with Wedding Singer, poor Val was stuck with the mammoth task of producing and rehearsing this one on her own. Despite the reduced rehearsal time, the kids still managed to pull their sh*t together in time to make us look good.
So after a week of tech hell, two performances (our final Saturday night performance was pre-empted by the Westfield HS prom!), how do I choose to spend the rest of my weekend? Luxuriating at an Upper East Side spa? Enjoying the services of a high-priced rentboy? No, silly. At the theatre, of course!
With the Summer Conservatory just around the corner, Val decided we should get a head start building the set for Meet Me in St. Louis, one of the summer shows we’re producing with the high school group. But not before a celebratory Thai feast (we de-virginized Chris Grimm, yeah!) and making a drunk supply run to Home Depot. So armed with paint brushes and Egg McMuffins, we found ourselves right back at the theatre at 9am on a very hot Sunday morning trying to build a Victorian Mansion and full-sized working trolley car on the miniscule CDC stage.
Luckily, we had forced our brown and white sons - Greg and Chris respectively - into slave labor and hired our trusty paintress, Christy, to add her artistic flair to St. Louis. After ten hours of continuous labor we had painted most of the side stages, constructed half a trolley car and built various random pieces of Victorian furniture. Thanks to some creative dumpster diving, Greg was also able to find us some nifty trellis pieces. I love that the Westfield trash is better quality than what I have in my own apartment.
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