My first paid gig, I worked on a show called Hannah. It was a show about a jewish POW camp prisoner. After 10 hours in the black box watching rehearsal, I was starving. I tried to break off a piece of someones home baked pear loaf and the foil crinkled. I was mortified. As I chewed the morsel I managed to get away with, I laughed silently thinking to myself I’m the prisoner not her. This notion tickled me but not for long. In two seconds, the playwright was in my face whispering “If you laugh again you are fuckin out of this theater, you got it?”
In all fairness I wasn’t the only person told that. And to be even fairer, I’ve heard much worse. The reason is this: It’s theater. When something as amorphous as theater in which extremely passionate people have to collaborate their work ethics with their emotions, things can go awry. In fact almost always, they do in some form. And the best week to witness these breakdowns is one of my favorite weeks: Tech week.
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