Happy Holidays, Oceano!

In the magic days between Thanksgiving and Christmas (and right up until the stroke of the New Year), were the hardest working days I ever had as an actor.

Yeah, I know; it you've ever toured in a Children's Theatre van with a load of scenery and a two-show-a-day in who-knows-where, usually starting that first show before most people actually had their second cup of coffee....well.....yeah, that's pretty harrowing as far as work schedules go.....but......

Okay, maybe it's not so bad, after all.

The Great American Melodrama in Oceano CA does a Holiday show every year; it opens just before Thanksgiving, and runs six days a week for awhile, and then runs two shows a day six days a week, and then sometimes seven.....and you're also working the bar and the crowd.....and there are children in the cast, lovingly referred to as 'human petri dishes', and it's not a question of 'what will you catch?', but 'when?'

Three acts:  The first act, an adaptation of Christmas Carol (where I played Scrooge from 1999-2002), a half act 'opera', which was just a very funny fractured fairy tale set to music (my favorite continues to be The Three Pigs Opera....always laughed out loud, even after seeing it sixty or so times) and a Vaudeville Review.  Two and a half hours of constant movement, thirty minutes of turnaround, and do it again.

It was sometimes painful, most times tiring, one or two times damned near impossible, and all the time memorable.

Painful:  The first year I did Scrooge, the director wanted an effect where the ghost of Jacob Marley would levitate Scrooge.  They built this contraption hidden behind a curtain that I could back into; it would create a kind of saddle between my legs and two burly guys would haul on block and tackle and slowly raise me off of my feet.  It got a heckuva reaction from the audience.

And I felt like I was getting a twice-a-day 2x4 enema.   and yes, they dropped me once, and it felt like they drove my tailbone into my throat.

Painful:  The Ghost of Christmas Past jumping the gun on a cue, and pulling me off of my feet so I could faceplant center stage.

Almost Impossible:  Caught a bug from one of the kids one year, and it hit fully on the 22nd of December.  Two shows with a fever of 101 and unable to really project without attempting to eject a lung.  I can recall standing on stage left, watching Young Scrooge get dumped by his Young Fiancee, and bursting into tears...and then realizing that I couldn't.....stop.....weeping.  Felt like it went on forever.  Then, once I got it reasonably in control, and managed to justify this overblown emotional display within the characterization, I turned to the Ghost of Christmas Past, and she was crying, too. 

'Twas an interesting night.

But something amazing happened through all of that.  The laughter in the dressing room was easier; the smiles infectious; the work at the bar became less stressful and more festive.  The lights on the decorations made life a bit brighter.  The spirit really came alive during those stressful halcyon days.......

Yeah.

I miss it.  I miss the piano, and the people.  I miss the smell of the air coming off of the Pacific and the smell of the cramped backstage; I miss the people, every single one.

Another memory, trapped in amber.

And I say Thank God.