My feelings were certainly mixed on Monday evening when I helped strike the apartment set that had become my home-away-from-home for the past six weeks.
The Odd Couple was my first ever performance on a theater stage, and the experience could not have been a better inaugural one.
Andy Daniels, our fearless director, did a great job in handling eight new stage actors.
I knew a few of the people involved in the play already, but most I did not know, and that was the most rewarding part of the whole deal. I got to make a brand new set of friends for life, and that includes the cast and the stage crew.
I have a new respect for folks who appear on stage for a living. Acting is not easy work, and a production is just as hard for those in charge of props, set changes and costumes.
Things can get tense at times, but I can’t think of a single instance where anyone involved in this play got cross with another, and that by itself is amazing.
I’ve said my piece about how great of an experience it was, so indulge me as I entertain you with a few behind-the-scenes stories that the audience may not know about.
The first story involves my terrible depth perception.
My focus is not the greatest, due to a genetic eye condition called Nystagmus, which essentially means that my eyes shake all the time.
This can cause problems in a number of areas, and Jath DiCecco (Felix) found that out during the first dress rehearsal.
There’s a point during Act I where Felix is running from his friends, hysterically, while Oscar sort of sits there and watches it unfold. Oscar goes to the bar, where there is a half-filled glass of water.
I was supposed to pick up the glass, and throw the water in Felix’s face to calm him down.
On the first night, I guessed wrong on the distance between Jath and myself, and I not only threw the water in his face, I hit him square in the forehead with a pretty solid piece of glass.
You could clearly hear the echo of the cup making connection with his skull.
Like a pro, however, Jath simply fell back into the arms of one of his cast mates, as the script had called for him to do, and he did not show any sign of being hurt until the scene was over.
To my knowledge, that was the only bodily harm I caused while on the set.
I had another problem that night, when it came time for the famous “flying pickles” gag.
Disgusted at Vinnie (Gaston Lyon) and Murray’s (John Nobile Bellapanni) infatuation with Felix’s bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, Oscar comes up behind them and smacks the plate out of their hands, sending a couple of pickles flying through the air.
Lost in trying to get our lines right and also trying to slap the plate and make the pickles fly as far as poosible, we all forgot that a few minutes prior, Felix had poured Murray a tall glass of beer.
When I slapped the plate, it went right into the glass of beer, sending the suds flying across the table with the pickles.
From that point on, Murray made it a point to clutch the glass of beer until the pickles went flying.
There’s a part in the first act where Oscar and Roy are arguing over Oscar’s terrible finances. The dialogue comes to a head when Oscar grabs the bag of chips Roy is eating from and he shouts “Then don’t come to my house and eat my potato chips!” and the bag is supposed to rip.
On the first rehearsal night, we used Fritos, and we discovered very quickly that Fritos makes their bags a little stronger than most chip companies.
Oscar and Roy tugged for several seconds, but the bag would not rip, and thus the chips did not go everywhere, as they were supposed to.
From that point on, we used Lay’s, and our great props department made sure to cut the bag just a little to make it rip easier.
I think all three of the gags mentioned above went off without a hitch during the four performances last week.
After opening night, I got a visit from my good friend and neighbor, Doug Adams, who informed me that the New York Mets cap that I wore during the first performance was a late 90s cap. The play is set in 1968.
Fortunately, he happened to have a 1968 Mets hat on hand, to lend for the production, so the size eight cap that sat atop my eight-and-three-quarters head for the final three shows came compliments of the greatest baseball fan I’ve ever met.
Backstage, some of us fell into some quick bad habits during early rehearsal, which included eating the chips and cashews that were intended for the “date night” scene with the Pigeon Sisters (Marcella Baker Simmons and Melissa Baker Townsend).
I won’t mention any names, but a few of us also helped ourselves to some of the beverages (props) in the refrigerator.
This went on until Emily Shafer sternly said, “Stop eating my props!”
We were definitely a handful during rehearsal and production, but thanks to veterans like Wallace Skelton, Don Sykes, Nancy Woods, Rivers Phillips, Pat Adams, Camile Branton, along with Leigh Hargett Lane Paxton, Karen Daniels, Adelaide Fletcher, Cindy Baird and Jennifer Schaumburg, and many others, all eight of us stumbled onto stage four times in front of four sold-out crowds and delivered a performance we will remember for the rest of our lives.
