As The Man With The Plastic Sandwich opened on Thursday I’m basing this entry starting then. So far, the show has been an excellent experience. We had a few small flubs on Thursday night…nothing too serious, but as myself and the rest of the cast are proud actors we beat ourselves fairly silly about it. It was opening night, and the full house that we were expecting turned into eight people.

What happened there was that night was turned over to a promoter who promised that Thursday was going to be a great night for ticket sales. Well, he was sure right about that, just the wrong Thursday. Some mistakes occurred in his promotion and the full house is now next Thursday. The theatre and ourselves found out about this too late, and had been telling people that they couldn’t get tickets due to the “sellout”. Damn!!! Anyways we shrugged it off, and gave as good a performance as we could anyway, just as any actor should. Sh*t happens.

On the other hand, Friday and Saturday were amazing shows. Friday would have been a perfect line-run for me, something I pride myself in being able to do…but then I experienced some unusual tongue-twisting at the end of the third act. Still got the meaning of the line out…but it took a bit longer and some extra interesting syllables to get there. Excellent audience though…they responded very well to the humour and I received many complimentary greetings afterwards. Most asked question of the night (and most likely the entire run) – “How did you memorize so many lines?”. Hell, even I’m not certain how I do it sometimes. I’ll discuss my techniques on a future post.

Saturday I was very proud of. A few of my friends/classmates from Second City came out to see the show. Diane, Dmytro, Chris (all the way from Buffalo!!!) and Jeff along with his wife Debbie and son Mike (who takes the teenage Second City course) fit themselves right into the front row and assisted in providing me with the energy I needed to make it a topnotch performance. Awesome stuff. After the show, we chatted for a while, drank some good wine, and then due to the overwhelming pressure of the rest of those in attendance at the after-show party, the entire Second City crowd jumped on stage and did our first Improv act together. Colleen (my director) and Marianne (who plays Lenore) joined us. It was a fantastic time. Afterwards, Jeff and his clan had to head home, so Diane, Dmytro and Chris headed up the street to Sneakers for a couple pints and some chow and ended up pretty near closing the joint. I then came home still stoked with energy and the knowledge that my first weekend of performances were over. Pretty much took me an extra hour before I could crash, but when that time came my body just went to jello…relief that a milestone had been reached.

There actually was a lot more happening this weekend than just the show, but I didn’t want to make this entry too convoluted. I’ll continue on Part Two.