Meet Me In St. Louis and the Meaning of "Community Theater"

Greetings and Salutations!  

I hope you are all well and enjoying the arts in our area.

Today I wanted to talk about what "Community Theater" means to us at SPH.

On Saturday night at about intermission, our trusty Stage Manager, Liz, was informed of an unforeseen conflict for the Sunday Matinee.  She talked it over with Diane (Co-Producer of MMISL), Diana (ASM for MMISL) and me (ASM for MMISL) and we all decided that if Liz felt that she really needed to be elsewhere on Sunday, then she should.  We had plenty of backup, which I will talk about later in this post.

Now, for the rest of the evening, Liz repeatedly apologized for needing to leave and thanked us for being so understanding.  I noticed how tense she was and I just kind of blurted out something like "Stop making such a big deal!  It's OK if you can't work every performance.  It's community theater.  We understand."  She was choked up by now and replied "In New York, I'd get fired."  

And there it was.  I forgot that she had been groomed to work in NYC, and yes, as a union SM, she would have been fired.  And then I realized that she thought we would react the same way.  That kind of hurt my heart a little bit to think that after working with us for months she didn't notice how different we (and I hope all community theaters in general) really are.

After discussing the plan for the Sunday performance, it was decided that our "B TEAM" would be Diana taking Liz's place as SM (and working the turntable during scene changes), Justine (who is the Assistant to the Director for MMISL) working stage left, and me staying at stage right.  It was also decided that since Justine was in DC with her family and we can't control traffic, that we would keep Diane on call in case Justine was going to be late.  

As it turned out, Justine was stuck in traffic and arrived maybe 15 minutes before intermission, so Diane stepped in to work stage left.  It was decided that Diane would get the remaining headset because I had been working all weekend and didn't need it as badly as Diane would to hear all the cues.  Now, we normally have enough headsets to go around, but at some point earlier in the run of the show, one of the headsets was broken and has been shipped away to be fixed.  I'm just thankful I wasn't there when it happened because I can honestly say that I did not break it :)

There were a few hiccups in Act I, one of them being me (more on that in a bit), but Act II ran smoothly. Diana decided that she wanted to talk to the cast before we started the show to assure them that all will be well in Liz's absence.  As Diana was talking, Morgan (who plays Agnes), Naomi (who plays Tootie), Anne (who is in charge of costumes) and P. T. (who is in charge of props) all said that they wanted to help.  I nearly cried.  This is what it means to be a "Community Theater".

Diana and I ultimately decided that we would be fine with Diane on stage left until Justine could get to the theater.  

Now, as I have already stated, I did not have a headset for this performance, so when Justine texted me to say that she was just parking, I ran over to tell Diana (who then told Diane via the headset).  So now the three of us are standing there back stage waiting (not so) patiently for Justine to come walking in when I remember that I'm supposed to be holding the curtain open on stage right because Alice (who plays Katie) and Arnold (who plays Grandpa) exit carrying chairs.  I start walking back to my station to see that they are already exiting and so I try to run over to help, except that there are other actors exiting as well and coming toward me.  About 2 seconds later I realize that I can't get back to my station to help, so my next plan is to just get out of the way.  My instinct was to sidestep and slide past the exiting actors.  Good plan - except that when I stepped out, my foot didn't go anywhere because the platform of the house was there.  Naturally, I started to fall.  I tried grabbing on to the curtain to stop the fall but it moved, as curtains often do.  So, I tried reaching around the curtain to grab onto the set to right myself, which would have worked if we had stationary walls as the set.  So, with all the momentum I had going, I ended up tripping onto the stage (with the lights up and actors still performing) and pushing the flap in with me.  It was like those dreams where you're naked in school.  I was mortified!  I quickly righted myself, fixed the flap and walked off the stage.  Now, all of this happened in a matter of seconds but it felt like an hour.  Live theater = good times.  

Justine arrived about 2 minutes later, so at intermission Diane went home and Justine took over on stage left.  I didn't fall onto the stage again, so all went well haha.

What's my point?  Theater is like Life.  You're there for people just as you hope they'll be there for you.  And, if you fall, you get back up and keep going because the show must go on.

I have included pictures of our beautiful set taken by Bill Roome (our Technical Director).  One is of the exterior of the house - with the side flaps in.  The other is of the interior of the house with the flaps out to the sides.  When going from interior to exterior, the SMs move the flaps in or out and turn the turntable to show a porch or a parlor.

Tonight is the last night to see our brilliant cast in Meet Me In St. Louis - so get your tickets now!  The show starts at 8pm.

For more information, please visit www.summitplayhouse.org, "Like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/summitplayhouse