The answer is YES…and I’m currently suffering the effects of the last middle school production called‘ Lucky Hudson and the 12 th Street Gang”. Why may you ask? Well in my case I just spent September – April working with twenty-one middle school students rehearsing for a YMCA Gala where we did Disney snippets including song and choreography and as of last week, they performed their end of the year play to two sold out audiences. You would think I would be saying to myself “so glad it’s finally over” and I get my Thursdays and the better part of second semester Saturdays off!! Instead, I’m sad thinking about all my wacky, wonderful actors that gave me a weekly dose of youth and energy, not to mention one of our greatest shows to date!
Actors experience the effects as well. You are coming off an energy charged week known as “hell week” which is your technical and dress rehearsals right before a play. The director, staff and actors are working off pure adrenaline. We are all putting in long hours of work, school, and rehearsal for one week straight. The norm is the play comes together the finale night of rehearsal after many missed ques and some improv to pull the actor back into their dialog. The next phase is the excitement of all their accumulation of putting together the blocking, the choreography, the delivery, and transitioning on and off stage. Let’s face it, we ate, slept, and breathed life into each performance. Fortunately for this director, nothing short of spectacular! We laughed together, cried at times together (mostly from laughing so hard), applauded one another and most of all showed support. In every sense of the word a
family.
The curtains fall the final time and after the celebration and cheers from the audience you are left with the ghosts of the play. Your actors are gone, loaded down with flowers, smiles, and memories from only moments ago. You look around. You see costumes draped (soaked in sweat) or literally tossed backstage. Wigs, props, and hats are literally everywhere and not placed properly for the next performance, just left where they exited or thrown on prop or dressing tables. Scripts soiled and crumpled under or on top of their backstage chairs, water bottles strewn about (did I tell you we lost our air conditioning?) and lastly food wrappers and make-up covering just about every table in what I call our green room (the room located exactly across from the backstage door).
I look at every piece and I can put a memory behind each little item, each struggle to get their wig on straight, every tie that I tied for that week, every costume that needed a few pins and every prop that miraculously reappeared right before the show started because someone was playing with it. Yes, there is a story to every item and every piece of dirt. I try not to cry as I stare all of this down because these brilliant students were mine, mine for a whole year to transform them into confident, talented actors. Confident to perform better not just on stage, but in life. I say good-bye to my eighth graders in hopes the high school theater programs will meet their expectations and give them the same pride and joy they felt performing for their middle school. There will be summer camp with different kids of all ages from veterans to rookies. Some of the middle schoolers have been promoted to the main stage play that begins in the fall, but you can’t escape the feeling of being with these kids’ week in and week out for this play.
Yes – I will be depressed and long for their laughter, their craziness and all they bring every week. Yep, my vitamin pills – I LOVE YOU ALL!
