It is finally here. Opening Night. After all the toil, after a week of run-throughs and tech rehearsals, where we sometimes wanted to run ourselves through, it finally all came together in a night of glory.
Opening Night is an amazing phenomenon. During rehearsals, we actors can forget how good the play is, no matter how many times the director tells us that we are doing well. We question how funny our scenes are, and forget that there are other moments of humor. On Opening Night, it all comes rushing back to us because we finally have the missing puzzle piece that completes the play: the audience.
Without the audience, the right audience, a play will never reach its full potential. Tonight's audience was the right audience. Not only was it sold out (EEP!) but they were full of laughter. They laughed long and loud, not only where we expected them to, but in places that we had forgotten held potential comedy. It was, in a word, beautiful.
The applause. O, how I have missed that wonderful applause, and not just applause, but the cheers of approval. Those things lift my very soul. (Not to mention the faint "I love you Annie!" that my sister shouted out.) The applause is a wonderful immediate validation of all our hard work, and it lets us know that we have not performed in vain. It is a wonderful thing.
As for the inner workings of the play itself, I believe it went extremely smooth. There was one slight near cafuffle, though. You see, I have a hat as I play Cesario. Sebastian has one, too, because we are twins you see. I was about three minutes from going on stage after Intermission when I realized with a start that I had left my hat in the green room, on the other side of the theatre! I jump up, quietly, and run around through the shop to the other side. I say run, but really I did more of an awkward jumpy tip toe, because one must be extremely quiet back stage, and that is very hard to do with my clunky man shoes. When I get to the other side, I see Sebastian sitting serenely in a chair, his hat in hand. I rush up to him, grab his hat, whisper urgently "I left my hat in the green room, I need this!" and precede to hop back as fast as I possibly could. I made it just in time for me scene. Thank heavens Sebastian was backstage and not in the green room, else I don't know if I could have made it. At the time, my heart was pounding, but it is much funnier looking back on it, especially since nothing horrible came from it.
After the play, there was a meet-and-greet. The best thing about that was that they had free food! As soon as we exited the stage from the curtain call, we all ran up stairs in a frenzy getting out of our costumes as fast as possible. We all wanted that food. (It was good, though you could tell it was definitely free.) The meet-and-greet was so much fun. It is always nice when your friends come up and tell you how wonderful you are, and very gratifying when strangers complement you on your work. It really does make us feel on top of the world. My director came up to me after the show, and said very simply, but very intensely "Wonderful, Wonderful job. Truly Wonderful." That was one of those perfect moments. I am very glad that I made him proud.
My first instinct is to take judicious notes of everything that I did and try to replicate that for tomorrow's performance, but I know better than to do that. For the past few rehearsals the entire cast has been given the same notes: Listen and be honest. One of the reasons that tonight worked so well is that we finally started to truly listen to each other. The audience helped us to bring out the honesty and truth in the lines. So for tomorrow, I will not try to replicate every facial expression, gesture, and inflection of tonight. Instead, I will listen to my fellow actors. I only hope that tomorrow's audience will be as good as tonight's.
I cannot wait to do it all again!
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