A few interesting notes from two nights of my new solo show, Shovel;
My second night performance was a much more enjoyable affair for me. On the first night, I told one of the first stories out of order, necessitating a mental gymnastics session of epic proportions to keep the show’s logic intact and ensure that transitions still made sense.
No one knew about this blunder except my director, of course. Even Elysha, who had heard me run the show the day before, did not notice, but it’s decidedly less fun to perform a show when a certain amount of your bandwidth is thinking ahead, rebuilding and repairing the structure of the show as you perform.
I mention a former student, Alexis, by name in the show, and she happened to attend the second-night performance.
A wonderful and lovely surprise for me.
When I mentioned her name during the performance, some audience members began pointing to her, but I saw nothing. When you’re performing on a stage under those conditions, you often can’t see the audience because of the amount of light shining in your eyes.
To emphasize the point, I brought my director and production manager onstage before the show to let them experience the stage under show conditions. Both were astonished by how bright the lights can be when performing.
Necessary for a well-lit show, but difficult for some people to manage.
Alexis wasn’t the only former student to attend the show. Several former students, now teenagers and grown-ups, came to my show. Another former student from my school, whom I knew well, also worked with the film team to help record the show.
Small damn world. Pretty glorious, too.
The show changed a bit from the first night to the second. In addition to keeping things in their proper order on the second night, I worked hard after the first performance to change and punch up jokes, add lines to help enhance and clarify things, and rearrange blocking. Because the show isn’t actually written on paper but is contained entirely in my brain, the changes only needed to be made in my mind. This makes tweaking the show easy because I don’t have anything actually memorized word for word, so I’m also able to improvise new material onstage, which I do often as well.
Of course, when someone asks me if I could make a script available online (which one person did after last night’s show), I have to tell them there is no script, which they find ridiculous and confounding.
Still, I missed one line in the show — a good one — both nights. It comes near the end of the show, and by then, I am so emotional that the line keeps escaping me.
I hope to actually speak those words onstage someday.
My team—David Golder, my director, and Kaia Pazdfersky, my production manager—immediately went to work the next day to research additional opportunities to perform the show, including festivals and larger theaters in New York. While I was teaching fifth graders to divide fractions, they were working hard, unbeknownst to me, trying to find new opportunities to perform the show.
I was overwhelmed with appreciation and excited about the possible opportunities. Shows like this are a funny thing:
You work for months creating something for an audience, and then, when it’s done, you wonder if you’ll ever perform that show again. Your friends and fans who couldn’t get tickets to the two performances because we sold out both shows might never see something that you would want them to see.
Two years ago, I performed three nights of “You’re a Monster, Matthew Dicks” at ThearerWorks and took it to two other regional theaters, but since then, that show remains only in my mind.
I love that show and would love to perform it again someday,
I love Shovel just as much — maybe more — and would also love to perform it again.
Hopefully, I’m going to find an opportunity to do so.
Both shows require almost nothing in terms of set or staging, so other than two or three props, I’m ready to go. This makes it easy for me to fit it into any theater’s schedule.
I hired a film team to record the show, and Kaia will be editing the footage into something I’m hoping to be proud to share with the world. This will be fine, but it won’t be the same as performing live for an audience.
Not even close.
Thanks to everyone who filled the theater on both nights of the show. I couldn’t be more thankful for your kindness and your spirit.
