March 29/07 Café

March 29

A quiet night on the audience front at the Café. It's interesting, we always hear that people want to come or they are going to come, and then we don't see them. Anyway, lesson learned. More publicity, more strongarming, etc.

Sher Clain joined us for her inaugural Café. She's been studying in the PreProfessional Training Program at Neptune Theatre School (Garry's one of the instructors) since the fall and she was the only one of her class who jumped at the offer to join our merry band of players when Garry said we were looking for a few warm bodies.

Sher takes notes as Eric explains the ropes

Okay, he didn't put it that way. But we were hurting this month, because Pip got a job (in her field, yay! Pip!) as ass't stage manager - or some other title don't quote me - for a production at Neptune; Andrea is in London temporarily - mainly to research for a play she's writing but probably she's also having some fun times too; and Garry couldn't come 'til late because he was doing another show called "Creatures of the Moment" with Metamorphic Theatre (http://www.metamorphic.ca/). Not that Shtev, Eric, Mike and I are not EXTREMELY capable, but ... you know.

Eric, Sher, Shtev and Kim working Da Big Ensemble number in rehearsal

Vanessa Furlong also hopped on board some time around Monday. She works at Grafton Street Dinner Theatre right now, and they didn't have a show this Thursday. Steven knows here from Bishop's days. She has a vast repertoire of Broadway tunes, does a kick-ass musical improvisation thing and also paints, so the "Add Art to any order" was extremely do-able this month.

Pushkin interrupts our musical rehearsal

In retrospect, it seems Eric and I scrambled a lot to get new things on the menu, make sure a lot of old things were still fresh and in the end, hardly anything was called for. However, I can't complain. There was a really good vibe in the diner for the first few hours when it was only half full ... I think all the performances that went out there were seen, heard, absorbed, enjoyed by everyone. Like they were all there together, but separate. Ah. My powers of description elude me. ANYWAY...

Best things of the night:

*Performing Emmett Williams' "Four-Directional Song of Doubt" for Garry Kennedy and Cathy Busby. We used the sounds: Da The Po Ter Po and Em Love with Mett for in their rendition which was mingled with another performance for an adjacent table involving plastic noisemakers for one direction and farm sounds for the other. So, at least from my side of the metronome, it was a great sequence of utter sincerity and playfulness. LOTS of laughs during the noisemakers' iteration as Eric had an uncooperative kazoo that refused to make any noise other than a miserable drone. We were entirely concentrated on the tables that had ordered the piece, but there was an incredible hush in the café for the whole performance. See above note about the vibe of diner-wide intimacy.

*Carolin and Paul coming AGAIN. I think they get the award for biggest (or most consistently attending) fans. They wanted the next installment of Urban Mysteriez, which was cool, but of course, half of the cast wasn't with us, so... next month guys!

*Doing sonnets and Apocalypse for part of the cast of Creatures who came after their show. A couple of us are going to see them perform tomorrow night, so it felt like sharing good things with people who get to share back another time.

*Vanessa's improvised song.... crazy beautiful.

*Pasta Bolero! Garry tossed out a couple of performances after he arrived and we were called upon for Pasta Bolero. So it has finally had it's Halifax debut. There's a lot of opportunity for this piece to be different every time, so there's life left. Can't wait to do it again! With relish - and I possibly mean this in the condimentary sense.

*Sher discovering that doing a sonnet through a puppet is strangely grounding.

*Eric's rant about sock puppets, actually using a sock puppet for part of it. Inspired!

*Thea's friends remarking as they left "I hope you're still going to do this in the fall. We're not here all summer but we'll be back!" and then hearing from Thea later that they in Thea's words "were loving it" and said "we can't get anything like this in Toronto." **KP licks finger and makes imaginary mark on imaginary wall**

Another night behind us, hopefully many more before. Who knows what the next one brings? I wish for even more people and more unexpected stellar moments. Twenty-nine days and counting...