History of The Talented Talent Bros -- Chapter XVII

That early Sunday matinee performance must have been trying for everybody involved. My recollection of that particular performance is minimal. What I do recall is trying to maintain my composure between every scene because I was afraid I was going to have a breakdown at any moment. I recall making it through my long scene with Mel thanks to her strong performance and the fact that the theatre’s air conditioning was blowing right on me. I seem to recall that it was raining after the show and that Mel drove me home. I went right to bed and slept all day and all night only to awake Monday morning feeling like I needed a nap.

Who knows what the rest of the cast thought. You have to give them props for continuing on in a show where the producer and lead actor looked like he had just pulled himself out of the grave. If they thought that, they weren’t too far from the truth.

The final three festival performances of The Broken Jump at Where Eagles Dare were much less eventful than the previous three. We had some good audiences and some small ones. We received a nice write up and I received some positive feedback from a few of the people who caught a performance. I felt better and better with each subsequent performance … the after-effects of my little seizure becoming less and less with each passing day.

Back Through The Looking Glass

Our final festival performance was on Sunday, August 5th. Immediately after the show we hauled everything from Where Eagles Dare on 36th to The Looking Glass Theatre on 57th. We wouldn’t reconvene for a week and a half. But at that time we would need to set up, deal with lights and sound and get ready for the second half of our run.

I had hoped that would go smoothly. With the number of Weasel folks around who were familiar with the space and with JB’s help, I figured this half would be a walk in the park compared to the run during the festival. I should have known better. Nothing has ever been easy where Baby Hippopotamus Productions is involved.

JB had a family emergency and he and Grace would be heading to Texas. We would be without our stage manager and somebody to run our lights and sound for our load-in, tech rehearsal and first weekend performances on 57th Street. The cast rallied together to implement a plan to cover for Grace during scene changes. With a little luck and an ad on craigslist, we found somebody to run our lights and sound and Jack Boice brought in a friend with lighting experience to hang and focus our lights.

But with those issues handled, other issues arose. We were without half of our cast for our tech rehearsal. I was quite disheartened. The camaraderie that had existed during Weasel Erotica was severely diminished this time around. With JB and Grace in Texas, Mel dealing with an emergency in Jersey and other cast members unavailable due to other engagements, the bulk of the load fell on those remaining. Most of the credit in getting everything ready for our “re-opening” must go to Jack Boice and, of course, brother Matt.

Imagine that: Matt once again proving to be the guy that holds everything together.

First Weekend Back

This trend of being disheartened escalated during those first three performances at The Looking Glass Theatre. Our crowds were tiny. I had extended our run to provide our cast with the opportunity to work on a longer run. I, for one, hate the idea of rehearsing for 6-8 weeks just to give two or three performances. Well, we had a longer run, but it didn’t look like anybody cared. I had also hoped that the additional performances would give us a chance to re-coup some of the financial loss. Instead it looked like it was going to only contribute to the financial loss.

And having quit my job that very week sure didn’t brighten my monetary outlook.

The aggravating part of all of this was that the performances were getting stronger and stronger. This was turning into one hell of a show … and nobody was going to see it.