Entries from December 2009 ↓

The show’s over now.  Time to reflect on the experience.

First off, being back on stage again was marvelous.  Over the five performances, we had around 400 people seeing the show, and I loved every minute of every performance.  And I loved the audiences as well, especially the woman sitting in the second row during the Sunday matinee who smiled through the whole show and the guy on Saturday night who gave us a standing ovation.  Taking a curtain call was everything I remembered it to be and it was a joy to have the pride-of-place, the last actor to take a solo bow.

One thing that surprised me was that I had absolutely no stage fright.  Back in the day I would always feel a bit nervous before stepping out on stage.  Nothing that stopped me, mind you, but definite butterflies in the stomach.  This time around I didn’t feel a bit nervous.  Excited, energized, and wired, to be sure, but not nervous.  I’m not entirely sure why that was: I’ll have to give it some thought.

And the positive review by the Washington Post gave me great joy.  (It’s here if you’re not one of the many to whom I sent it.)  I particularly enjoyed reading that “Joe Dzikiewicz shows formidable dramatic chops” - for days after if I started to feel a bit low, all I had to do was think “formidable dramatic chops.”  It sure beats the three words used to describe me the last time I was reviewed: “Moronic facial expressions.”  (Okay, so that was a complement - I was playing a simple comic character.  Still “formidable dramatic chops” beats “moronic facial expressions” any way you look at it.)

Taken altogether, I’m sure I won’t let another 25 years go past without going on stage again.  I had an absolutely marvelous time in every aspect of putting on this show, the rehearsals, the performances, puzzling through my character motivations, and mostly getting to know the other actors and the crew.

And therein lies the rub.

After all of that, coming back to earth again is a bit of a disappointment.  There is a hole where the show was, I cannot deny it.  I miss the adrenaline-filled evenings, diving into George Bailey’s emotions every night, the intensity of the experience.

But most of all, I regret what I expect is the inevitable fading of the friendships that I formed in the last two months.  Working on a play is an intense experience: there’s an incredible sense of camaraderie, a marvelous feeling of working together to make something special.  And theater people are fun to be with, the lively jokes, the energetic personalities, and the war stories of plays gone by.  I’ve come to truly like the rest of the cast and crew, and I’m sorry that I won’t be working with them any more.

Of course, that’s the way of life.  There have been many people who have passed through my life, people that I worked with, people that I played with, people that I’m related to.  So often, you’re lucky if you get the occasional note or run into them from time to time, people who once filled important places in your life.  These friendships, so intense, fade away.  It’s something that I deeply regret, and I expect I could fill pages with the lists of people who mattered so much to me, who matter still, and yet who I no longer keep in touch with.

Working on the play compressed this cycle into two short months.  A little more than two months ago, I never knew any of these people.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I never see any of them again.  And yet, for two months they were important to me, became close friends, became comrades in creation.

(To make it worse, the east coast snowpocalypse caused the last performance to be cancelled.  Not only that, but the cast party on closing night was cancelled (it’s been rescheduled, but I’ll be in Puerto Rico during the party), and the cast was going to go out for drinks on the last Friday but didn’t due to the snow.  So not only was this an ephemeral experience, but what there was of it was cut short.)

There’s irony in this.  The greatest gift that George Bailey has, the thing that learns to appreciate, is a place in his community.  George’s connection with the citizens of Bedford Falls is so rich that everyone’s life is diminished by his absence.  And his connection is so powerful that the whole town rallies around him in his time of need.

Yet here I am, coming off stage having acted out George Bailey’s connections, and feeling the loss of the connection that I formed to the rest of the cast.  So while I had an absolutely marvelous time doing this play and would not have missed it, and while I am grateful to have met and worked with the others who put the show together (Nancy and Bob and Diane and John and Shayne and Doug and Anna and Susan and all the rest), still the pleasure is not lacking in a certain melancholy.

But to all who have been my friends over the years, to the family members that I have not spent enough time with as the decades have passed, to those divided from me by time’s steady march, I send my greetings and my best wishes.  Thank you for your friendship, and know that I regret that I lack the gift of keeping in touch.

A postscript: I recently came in contact with a friend who I have not seen for several years, not since he got in his car one day and drove south out of Virginia.  Someone who once upon a time came to my house once a week as one of my gaming friends, but who for the last few years could have been anywhere or nowhere for all I knew.  But now I know that he’s still out there, and I’ve got a way to contact him.

So maybe George Bailey’s lesson applies to me as well, and it is a wonderful life after all.

Looking back, it’s been over six months since a WIBR post.  Hmm… admittedly, my reading has been a little off (I read almost nothing during Wonderful Life rehearsals, spending my time studying lines instead), but still.  Let’s see if I can remember everything I’ve read in that time.  I’m sure these aren’t in the right order: apologies for that.

- Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, by Evan Wright.  Evan Wright is a reporter with “Rolling Stone” who was embedded with a unit of recon marines in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  This is his report of the attack.  I read this after watching the excellent HBO miniseries based on it (said series being made by the guys behind “The Wire,” my choice of best TV series ever).  The series is excellent, so is the book.  Both are factual reports of the invasion and the soldiers who made the attack, the incredible professionalism of the men doing the fighting, the screw-ups by their commanders, and all with a slight anti-war tinge that doesn’t interfere with the reporting.  I strongly recommend both series and book.

- Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose.  Another case where I watched an HBO series and found it so fascinating that I had to read the book on which it was based.  This one is about one particular company of paratroopers in WWII who fought from Normandy through the end of the war.  Again, a fascinating and extremely well-done mini-series based on a fascinating and extremely well-done book.  Again, I strongly recommend both.

- Wellington by Gordon Corrigan.  A biography of the Duke of Wellington.  I’ve been wanting to read a bio of Wellington since reading the Sharpe’s Rifles novels in which he is prominently featured.  The man certainly led an interesting life, having been Britain’s preeminent general during the Napoleonic wars.  But I can’t really recommend this particular biography: it is a little too short and rushes past too much of the man’s life without giving any particular insight into him.  A good biography of a great leader should tell you something about his leadership style: this one doesn’t.

- The Trouble with Testosterone and Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on our Lives as Animals, by Robert Sapolsky.  Sapolsky is a biologist who writes essays of popularized science.  Over the last six months I read both of these collections of his essays and enjoyed both immensely.  Whether he is talking about particular scientific discoveries in the bio-sciences, or telling of his observations over many years doing field studies with African baboons, there’s plenty of interesting insights in these books.  I particularly enjoyed his takedown of the nature-vs-nurture argument: in Sapolsky’s telling, it’s a false dichotomy, as our genes moderate our responses to the environment, and thus nature and nurture work together.  Strongly recommended, and I’m sure I’ll read more of his essays in the future.

- Drood by Dan Simmons.  On June 9, 1865, Charles Dickens was in a terrible train wreck.  Although not injured himself, in helping the injured he saw terrible things that left a dark stain on his imagination.  He died exactly five years later, on June 9, 1870.

Drood is a historical fiction of those last five years of Dickens’s life.  They introduce the mysterious and horrible figure Drood, a sort of demon somewhat reminiscent of Dracula.  Dickens was a fascinating person, larger-than-life and quite complicated, and the book is a marvelous thriller centering on him.  And the depiction of the opium dens in the sewers of London is well worth the read.

- Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander, by David Cordingly.  Lord Thomas Cochrane was a British naval captain during the Napoleonic Wars.  His adventures and exploits were like something out of fiction.  In fact, he became the basis of Jack Aubrey, the hero of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series and the movie “Master and Commander.”  But after several years bedeviling the French, Cochrane was convicted of a stock swindle (though the book argues that he was wrongly convicted) and drummed out of the navy.  Needing an income, he became commander in turn of the navies that liberated Chile, Peru, and Brazil from their European overlords.

A marvelous read of a marvelous life.  Strongly recommended.

Last night, I was so excited I could practically bust.  It was our first night rehearsing in the actual theater, and what an absolute joy to be back on stage after all this time.

For the first several weeks of rehearsals, we don’t actually work on the stage itself.  In our case, most rehearsals were in various rooms at the McLean Community Center where the Alden Theater is, though we had one in the music room of a local elementary school.  You don’t get the actual stage until near the end of the rehearsal period, and in our case that meant last night.

But last night we were on stage with the set around us and the technical crew running the sounds and lights.  There was a fair amount of confusion, but then there always is at this stage.  That first rehearsal with the entire crew present is called the Tech Rehearsal, and it involves matching the light and sound cues to the scenes that we actors have been working on for the past two months.  It’s all a bit of a mess at this point, but I have no doubt that everything will come together smooth as silk by opening night.

But for me, just being on stage was an extreme joy.  Wandering around backstage, checking out the dressing rooms, and sharing war stories in the green room (or cast lounge) with the rest of the cast (actor’s do loving telling tales of past productions, all the wonderful things that can and do go wrong in live theater).  And just generally exploring: peeking my nose in all the nooks and crannies of the theater, looking at the light boards, climbing to the catwalks where they hang the lights, and feeling giddy at that sense of being behind the scenes as it the show comes together.

I feel confident that the show will be good.  The cast is solid, we have everything down nicely, and while the tech stuff needs work, the crew all know their stuff and are certain to pull it all together.

But really, I can hardly wait for that magical moment when the audience is seated and the play is about the begin.  Standing offstage waiting for my entrance, peeping through a hole in the curtain to count the crowd and look for familiar faces, the buzz of adrenaline as I get ready to go on.  Friday night can’t come soon enough!

And oh, a couple of useful links:

For details on the show, including a link to buy tickets, go here.

To read the preview from a local newspaper, go here.  They even spell my name right.  (Three out of four times, anyway.)