After my short pilgrimage, I headed down to Battersea for another exciting day of work. I spent most of the afternoon working with Greg, one of the technical staff doing basic gophering. There were so many different spaces in use tonight, so we spent a lot of our time running between different spaces and tech storage. He talked me through installing a video/sound system, though, so I'm gaining skills by the minute. :) Also, after running around all day, I'm much more familiar with the building, which is always a plus.
In the evening, I saw two short shows: one very good and one very disappointing. The first, entitled "Post Show Party Show" had so much promise, but very lackluster results. The one-hour play, performed by the playwright and his father (with some brief appearances by his mother), told the story of his parents meeting during the after-show party for a production of "The Sound of Music" in which they had both performed. I actually traded in my ticket for another show in order to see this one, and I was sorely disappointed. The writing was repetitive to the point of redundancy, and the delivery was weak: I felt like they were talking in my general direction, but they did not make any connection with the audience. Add to that the fact that all the details of the actual meeting could have been summed up in about a minute, and there were random lip-syncing and dance moments to the soundtrack of "The Sound of Music." As I said, my hopes were high when I read the publicity information, but if the show were running another night, I would advise my peers to run away from it.
The second show, Laughing Matters by an artist named Angela de Castro, was the most delightful ten minutes I have spent in quite a while. Yes, I said "ten minutes.' Essentially, the audience (of which there were about 20 people) sat in two rows in a small alley-style theatre (approximately Cave sized). Interestingly enough, this was the same theatre where "Post Show Party Show" had been, and they did the turn-around in a little less than an hour. The lights go down, they come back up, and a short, plump woman with rolled-up jeans, a sweater vest, and large black glasses is standing in the alley laughing hysterically. Over time, the laughter built from shy giggles in the audience to full out cackling...my cheeks were burning from smiling so much. My favorite part included Angela "grabbing" the laugh from her mouth (making a grabbing motion and being silent), then tossing the laugh back into her mouth...this eventually led to her passing the laugh to other people in the room, who played along surprisingly well. At the very end, she pulled out a ukelele and started strumming a song, which I quickly recognized as the Beatles "All You Need is Love." It quickly turned into "All You Need is Laugh (Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha)" and the entire audience sang along. The experience was amazing...I will admit that I thought she seemed crazy at the beginning, but by the end she had my complete respect (I would have been terrified to try to set an idea like that in motion). Her production is still a work in progress, and she asked for our feedback on a form afterwards. According to the written introduction, the idea was spawned from a Laughter Yoga class that she took in India a few years ago, and her questions included subjects such as the contagious nature of laughter and our honest opinion of the show (I believe the question was "Do you think I am crazy for doing this?" to which I answered "Absolutely, but in the best possible way."). It was a delightfully inspiring experience, and I'm still smiling as I write about it.
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