"Curtain Up…"

Well, if there were curtains in theaters anymore, Their Town's is officially up. We opened last night - good crowd, wonderfully receptive, thrilling that they actually laughed at the jokes! As one of the actors, Leah Klocko, and I discussed after the show, you get so close to the material and lose so much perspective during rehearsals, you forget that the play is funny.

Ok, there was some questionable set stuff ("I hate that lamp post!" the director Adam Kukic told me after the show - it's some sort of big ol' Christmas candle), but hey, this is theater on a shoestring. What's more important is that the ensemble was great - I feel like I know the script by heart at this point, and they had their characters and lines nailed. Particularly exciting to me is that the character of Thornton Wilder - a statue in Grover's Corners' park - really works. Todd Betker plays him with a lot of humor and affection, and his mugging made the audience laugh. Poor Todd wears a suit and hat painted gray, gray face makeup, and gray gloves, so he's pretty hot by the end of the play. But anything for art, right? Originally, the script called for Wilder not to look like a statue, and to play various other parts, too - a la the Stage Manager in Our Town. But it was Adam's idea to have him fully "statuesque," and it was a great call - I intend to write it into the script after the run.