Hurry Up and Wait

This was a big weekend for Leiris/Picasso. Saturday was our all-day actor/set integration, and Sunday was our all day tech rehearsal. Timed perfectly, we began the day at 10am and finished at exactly 10pm, a day full of starts and stops and replays. It’s important to remember during a tech rehearsal that the only reason the actor is there is to mark movements and spacing for the booth, a day where you truly are simply “moving and talking furniture”.

I spent a good portion of the day backstage listening and waiting to go on, filling my downtime with some light napping and reading. At one point, I was waiting backstage for about 3½ hours, before coming on to deliver two lines right before an hour long dinner break.

There’s a scene late in the play where Mike takes off my pants and puts them on, leaving me sitting in my underwear. Not a problem. However, I don’t exactly have my costume pants yet, nor any other costume pieces from the waist down. (Consequently, this means that my jeans were the ONLY pants I had.) So were we really going to run this move with my jeans and whatever boxers I happened to be wearing that day? The answer was yes. I couldn’t very well say no, since Melissa had already had one “wardrobe malfunction” and Jenny was standing behind me in her underwear. I suppose ending up strapped to an overturned chair on stage in my underwear was unexpected, but not as unexpected as sitting backstage afterwards, pants-less and cold, and waiting for Mike to finish his scene so I could get my pants back. I’ll make sure on Tuesday that I’m prepared for any and all eventualities…

- Joseph L. Roberts