At last, at last, tonight is opening night of Merely Players. It's been a great process, light and easy as theatrical endeavors go, where our intrepid band or actors and techies have wended their merry way to this fun and funny one-act we are proud to present to you tonight. We performed it for our waitstaff yesterday, and I am pleased that they were just the test audience I was hoping for. They laughed in all the right places and helped the actors figure out just where the pauses belonged, and drew so much energy just from hearing them. It's a perfect little light morsel of theater, short, sweet, and very funny.
As a text, it's not an important piece of theatrical writing. But it translates to the stage extremely well, particularly when you block it with as much humor as we did. And I like how it has meaning on multiple levels. I think it's a pretty clever spoof of the nature of theatrical collaboration, the broad, clearly defined characters clueing you into their significance even if you're not intimately familiar with the conventions of the theater. It's also a pretty good entree into the building of Shakespeare performance. I did a decent job of switching seamlessly between the plain English original text and the borrowed snatches of Shakespeare, again not requiring any deep understanding to get what's going on. And thirdly, the show is in many ways a love letter to Hold Thy Peace, making reference to our inside jokes and our long history together. The club's meant an enormous amount to me, and this piece is kind of my tribute. I joked that perhaps one day, God willing, Merely Players will become a staple of high school theater groups competing in one-act festivals. There are worse things one's writing could become.
We go up in Schwartz Auditorium at Brandeis University. Doors open at 7:15 so that snacks and drinks may be purchased beforehand. Show begins at 8. I look forward to seeing you there!
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