Finally, opening night had arrived. The Hobbit always likens directing a show to being a football manager, once the team is across the white line there isn't much else you can do. You've trained them, guided them and then they're on their own. Great words of wisdom but they didn't help the nerves I felt as we went into our first paid performance.
Lighting Dude had set up a set of cans (headphones that let the technical and backstage crew communicate) by the side of the hall so I could talk to him, Director Zombie (as the sound guy, not about the weather and that) and our pretty awesome Stage Managers. I got myself a stool from the bar and made a home for myself for the next couple of nights.
We had a reasonable crowd booked in, 43 for the opening night of a play was pretty good, all that hard work pushing ticket sales had been worth it. We had told the audiences to be there for a 7.45 start, even though my plan was to start at 8! People do have a tendency to turn up just as the show starts and I wanted to be sure that they all had time to grab drinks and visit the loo before the show started as we were not going to be letting people come and go whilst the performance was taking place.
7.45pm Lighting Dude gave a 15 minute warning for drink buying and loo visiting, then another at 7.55pm. I went to see my cast and told them all to break their legs. Then we were off.
I sat on my stool with my heart thumping the whole way through. My head was telling me not to be nervous as it knew my cast were totally in the zone, but my heart ignored my head completely for the duration of my play. The cast were fantastic, as always and the punters seemed to love it. It was great to finally have a fully live audience, they laughed at the funny bits, gasped at the scary bits and sometimes reacted in unexpected and unexplained ways. Nowt queer as folk as they say up north.
Performance 1 out of 4. Done!
Song of the day - Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren - Goodness Gracious Me (look it up on YouTube)
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