Well...realizing this blog is not a journal, I know I don't need to "catch up" but I really did want to write about this and, just to let you know, I now trying to remember this from a a while ago now...
So, a couple weeks ago, I was mired in an unprecedented amount of work one Wednesday, working at home until one night when I realized this was the ONE day it was at least POSSIBLE to get out to see a play that I'd been meaning to get to. I recklessly cast aside my work at 6:30 and headed down the peninsula to BusBarn Theater in Los Altos, to see Little Shop of Horrors.
Now, let me explain why I did this. To do so, a little background.
The Dickens Faire (http://www.dickensfair.com/) is basically one of my very favorite things in the world - it's essentially a Renaissance Faire but Victorian, rather than Elizabethan, and is lots more fun because you get to waltz all day (in a corset, no less). I'm part of a Bay Area dance community that waltzes and does dances like you'd see in a Jane Austen movie. There are a bunch of us, really...more than you might expect.
Even so, it's a small city, and we do see the same folks around at various events. These are a special class of people you know. Not friends, per se, because you don't REALLY know them, you just see them around, maybe chit chat a bit, but mostly what you do is dance with them. However, it's odd, because even though you don't know them personally, once you have danced with someone, on a fairly regular (at least annually, sometimes monthly) basis, for years and years....well, you kind of know them.
Now, the people who put on these themed balls also provide themed entertainment at these events, and there is one gentleman who is the most accomplished actor/entertainer of the bunch, the belle of the ball, so to speak (if the belle were a guy, which, in the Bay Area, isn't unlikely). His name is Charles (and yes, maybe I don't like to use full names, but he's, you know, semi-famous. Like, I can mention Brad Pitt by name, but my partner remains "J.") and he's locally famous for his off-the-scale personal charisma, which is so abundant and delightful, you just can't help but notice him.
Now, Charles is also a working actor - he has lead or very strong supporting roles in local theater productions all over the South Bay. I discovered the fantastic Jesus Christ Superstar I've mentioned before because, knowing Charles acts, I check his blog occasionally so I can see his performances. There's so much theater in the area, I try to attend shows that have friends or acquaintances in them. So, to Charles, I'm one of those people he sees around occasionally at his shows. I always wonder if he'll remember me, an audience member once a year, or someone frequently waltzing by at a ball.
A couple of years ago, my partner & I went to BusBarn for the first time, for a performance of all of the plays of Shakespeare (three actors, reduced versions and one comic evening). On the drive there, I mused to J that I missed performing, and was hoping to be on the stage again. Maybe take an improv class. Anyway, it was a gorgeous gentle summer evening and I was delighted to be going to a play.
Now, BusBarn is special. From the outside, it looks like one of those temporary classroom structures you see at city colleges, but inside it's actual little theater, probably not more than 70 seats or so. It's next to a soccer field and a baseball diamond, and if you go there on a gentle summer evening, it's like stepping back into childhood. I didn't even really have that kind of baseball-diamond-soccer-field childhood, but it makes me feel wholesome and innocent anyway.
The feeling of being a kid again is also enhanced by the fact that the patrons all tend to be seniors - in fact, J & I were probably the youngest people there by a decade, that night. It's just a completely wonderful place, in its simplicity and normality. You can, as I did a couple of week ago, take off your shoes and run around the baseball diamond, getting your bare feet wet in the evening dew, and enjoying that quality of dusky summer light that is romantic and nostalgic and promising all at once.
On that first occasion, Charles saw us arrive and I thought I saw at least a glimmer of recognition. This proved to be unequivocally true, because when the time came for the actors to select an audience member to join them on stage (it was that kind of play) as Ophelia, Charles bee-lined toward me, despite the fact that I was in the last populated row.
Now, Charles is empirically good looking. He's actor-handsome. He's doubly so when all suited up as a comic Hamlet in rich black velvet doublet and jaunty feathered cap, brimming with performance energy, and extending an hand with an elegant bow, inviting you up on stage when you'd said, not even an hour earlier, "My, wouldn't it be nice to be on stage again." It was a magical moment, on an already magical summer evening.
The shtick in this play consisted of audience participation to buildup to Ophelia's (i.e. my) big scream. I had no lines. The actors did their thing, got the audience chanting & clapping and such, and I did my scream. But no actors are ever satisfied with audiences on the first try, so we did it all over again, and this time I really screamed.
Now, I can be loud. I sing, and one time when I asked J if my voice was getting better, he said, "Well, it's getting louder." Aretha-loud, he meant, I know, big black woman knocks your socks off loud. Point is, I can do that. And that is how I screamed. Must have made some impression.
We chatted with Charles after, talked about how some of the more contemporary references were lost on the blue-haired audience, leaving, in many cases, just J & I laughing our asses off at many of the jokes. "Yes, of couse, I could hear you guys laughing" Charles confirmed. "Thank God!"
That was a couple of years ago. This Wednesday, I was back at BusBarn, there to see Charles in the part Steve Martin played in the Little Shop of Horrors movie, the sadistic dentist. I was curious as to how they would handle the plant (it was a series of ever-larger amazing puppets) and how they would handle the fantastic tight harmonies (and this little cast rocked it like nobody's business). Charles played, I think, nine different parts, including a rather hilarious woman. He worked. They all did. Just about a dozen folks, the actors and a small band, sang and danced and acted their hearts out, for about 50 of us on a Wednesday night in Los Altos. God, it was terrific!
And I had one of those moments, when you feel grateful for all the marvelous things that humans do. These actors can't be making much, and the theater obviously needs more funds that it raises on tickets (a long donor list in the program evidenced as much), and it was friggin' Wednesday night in basically suburbia, but it was still magic. There's something about performing that makes you feel alive, and there's something about watching a good performance that makes you feel alive, and there's something about doing either on a small, almost adorable, community scale, that makes you - well, made me just happy to be alive. Yup, a happy to be alive moment.
Charles knew me, this time, and gave me a couple of those encompasing sweaty, post-performance actor hugs I used to love so much, back when I was in the theater. And I was so moved by the whole performance, I meant to make this post more a review, at first....You know, tell everyone I know to run, not walk, to BusBarn. But, rather typically for me, I went so late in the run, and then never got around to it in time that this story is really more about evoking the feeling.
Anyway, now you know where you can go to really get some feeling, some really great dusky warm summer evening good feeling, and maybe you'll get rustled up on stage when you least expect it but totally want it.
And don't miss Charles. It's one of those "do it at least once in your life" things. Go to the Vampire Ball in Alameda in a couple of months. He always plays Lestat. It's something you'd be the lesser for missing.
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