The bloody dog is dead.

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Well, and the show is over now. Twelve performances. I don’t have audience numbers, as they were not relayed to us, alas, but my impression is that we had something like four hundred people over the twelve shows, with two really decent-sized houses (for the venue) of sixty-plus, and two houses under twenty, which isn’t good for anywhere. Thinking about it, that four hundred is probably high. Ah, well. I will say that we had only one performance that I thought was below par throughout, and one or two that started slow or low-energy but picked up steam. There were two or three that stood out for me as really good all the way through, at least as far as I could tell from where I was.

For one of the shows, I posted here some of the things I was pleased about and some that I was disappointed in. I’m not really prepared to do that for R3, at least not yet. I will say that I was particularly pleased and proud that nine Gentle Readers come to the show (if I have counted correctly, and if nobody came and went without telling me); I hope you all had a good time. In fact, I just realized that I brought in a pretty good share: twelve tickets, I believe, were attributable to my having pushed the show to friends and acquaintances. With a cast of eighteen plus a crew of five or so, if we had all managed a dozen tickets we would have cleared five hundred tickets, right? That said, I am quite sulky about none of my co-workers coming to see the thing. This is the third show I have been in locally since starting work there and nobody has come. This bothers me more because the two people I work closest with are occasional theatergoers; it seems like it would be a fun night out for them, rather than a social obligation. Further, since the theater where R3 was produced has a pay-what-you-will policy that seems ideal for students, I was hoping that some of my student workers would have made their way. Not so.

Well, and that’s all right. I pushed the show on y’all, because we are part of this Tohu Bohu voluntarily and without obligation; I am circumspect and diffident pushing the shows at work. I put up a poster and make sure everyone knows about it, but I try not to mention it more than once. And while we are co-workers, we are not really social friends—we do not invite each other to dinner at our homes, or go out to clubs and bars together after hours. Still, I am sulky and petulant.

Most of that, of course, is the usual post part-um depression that kicks in when an actor realizes that doesn’t get to play dress-up any more for a while. I am also very aware that I am unlikely to get to play another Shakespeare part for quite some time—I am lucky to have been in three Shakespeare plays, more or less ten years between them. And I am, I rush to clarify, really enjoying not being in the play, having no theatrical responsibilities to add to my family ones, seeing the lovely quiet evenings stretch out before me into the summer. I would not audition for a show this month if they were doing Comedy of Errors (I like to think I am not yet too old to play Antipholus); I want some time off.

I am, in fact, simultaneously relieved and saddened. But extra emotional, either way. I blame William Shakespeare.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

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