377 days - Blog #4 Conversations in a theater and Barre Buddy Night

This is running very close to becoming a midnight post.  But, I guess… that’s what weekends are for in the coming 53 weeks.

Anyway, it’s another one about theater… which is going to be a frequent subject if you keep reading these posts.  I’m sure it will weary some – for another portion of my circle, I hope it resonates.

So the reason for me coming in at the last minute/second of the day is because I found myself talking late at the theater.  I don’t know what it is about those houses of performance art.  Certainly, Barre Players is a former church… so maybe there is some lingering energy of wanting to confess one’s soul.  But I’ve found it in theaters that are dingy basements or school cafeterias.  There is just something about the space in the hours after everyone else has gone home that is conducive to talking and talking and talking and still talking after you make plans to get dinner at the restaurant down the street and talking and then finding out you talked too long to get dinner, so why not get pizza and bring it back to the theater and talk some more and more and get up to say bye and then still find yourself talking in the dark in front of the building even as your eyelids wag heavy… and you’re not really saying anything that can’t wait until the next time anyway… but, I don’t know.  It’s like breathing in that air of sawdust and sweat and dust and old wood and paint and musty material is a truth serum.  

Tonight was pretty pedestrian… but it does make me think, wow, if those walls could talk and share their secrets of conversations… it would be interesting (and by interesting, I mean so startling the only word one could come up with would be interesting).

As I think about it, these conversations are what I love best about theater.  Well, maybe it’s in the top three.  I mean the creativity bit is pretty significant.  But the conversations that come at night… into the wee hours of the morning are like that moment when E.T. reaches out his digit and it lights up against Elliot’s finger.  Something electric.  Something kindred.  And yet potentially a new discovery to artists often introspective and introverted.

I have to laugh though.  I actually got in trouble – with the police!!! – for these conversations.  Well, this is Barre we are talking about.  But, this is me we’re talking about.  The goodiest of goody two shoes when I was young.  But I do remember one summer – either during Robin Hood (97) or Romeo and Juliet (98) when one of these conversations was happening after a show and instead of going anywhere… instead of some of the more, um, Bacchanalia type celebrations I was to come to know in other theater lives… a handful of us would just hang out on the stage and talk and talk and talk about who knows what? Probably at that point, Rent.  Or maybe I tried to explain the Oxfordian theory.  Or… who knows… maybe even the mystery of life and what we wanted to be when we grew up?  Pretty mellow conversation.  And yet, the cops knocked at the door because a neighbor (who was on the board) was complaining that someone was making noise.  So we were asked to leave the building… at which point we did and found a parent of one of the cast members in the back lot with her boyfriend.  Right.

Then there were nights after set building – staining the gorgeous staircase that was built for It’s a Wonderful Life – when all the noises of the furnace and chimneys were enough to make one go… um??? Is it really true the ghost of the Barre Hotel moved into the theater after the hotel burned down?  I didn’t believe in ghosts then – not really.  But now, after working at Beauport, it will be curious to go back and question those sounds again.  Although, I did like the idea that the chimney was a secret door to hell.

But before that winter was Barre Buddy Nights.  When I knew I had grown up enough and grown into a director that could create a fun experience for the cast.  It was really a consequence of the fact there is no where to go after rehearsal as one might find in a more urban theater.  So, someone went across the street, bought some Sam Adams and the handful of us who didn’t have to go home to kids or a school night just hung out for an extra hour or two and talked.  About Blackadder.  Or another attempt at Oxfordian theory.  Or what we wanted to be when we really grew up.  

Barre Buddy Nights.  I think they need to come back.  Granted, I'm more into wine now than Sam Adams… but… well, maybe tonight shows the building still holds that energy.  Of friendship.  Of pondering the mystery of the universe.  Of human connection.