Kate Garfield, Nathan Brisby and Kevin Russo show off their blasters. Photo: Joshua Sterns.
A playwright gets very used to seeing things happen only in his head. A massive space battle runs through your head for a few nights while you're trying to sleep, and finally you decide to set it to paper. "He explodes and exits," reads one stage direction. "They fight. It's very, very exciting," reads another. In your mind, this is all very clear—a dreamy hybrid between fantastic science fiction and the reality of what it might really look like on the stage. And then, once a group of very kind people spend a couple of months actually putting it on the stage, it doesn't look how you imagined it at all. It's real, now, and that's better than any nonsense you could ever dream up.
We had our dress rehearsal yesterday for Tales of Love & Lasers. Opening night is tomorrow. I'm less nervous about this than I have in the past, and I'm not sure if that's because I'm getting more used to opening nights, or because this has been a nearly painless process. (Of course, like painless dentistry, painless theater is an impossibility.) The production team is extremely talented, and has worked together before. The actors are game, hardworking and fun—which is to say, they are actors. And because we're squatting in another play's space, the set was built when we walked in. (Thankfully, it's just a few abstract metal sheets, and not the set for a revival of Superior Donuts.) And because we've been developing these scripts for the last year, I was called on to do no late-night, post-rehearsal rewriting—a shame, if only because nothing makes me feel more like Moss Hart.
So at dress yesterday, I sat and drank a very large cup of tea. And then I drank another very large cup of tea. And then I snuck out to go to the bathroom. At this point, that's all that's required of me.
If you haven't bought tickets yet, shame on you. Get them here. We're running from tomorrow until May 21st, at the Drilling Company, a cozy little theater on 78th Street, just east of Broadway. If you come by tomorrow, say hello. Look for the slightly drunk man trying not to laugh at his own jokes.
Lastly, we had an excellent production photographer, Joshua Sterns, in yesterday. He took several hundred pictures, and I've included my favorites below. All photos are Sterns', and the actors are Kate Garfield, Nathan Brisby, Kevin Russo, Monica Jones and Jeff Johnson. Look on our work, ye mighty, and despair.
