Special day yesterday. It began inauspiciously enough. I put up a few posters at sporting good stores throughout the city. In the afternoon I attend Melanie Gall's Piaf and Brel: The Impossible Concert (beautiful, educational, and moving) and Breakneck Hamlet (exhausting!) before heading over to St. Mary's to get ready for our 7:30 pm performance. Barry from Firecube was there to film it, as we are creating a high quality production for the Hall of Fame. And then it happened.
"They're really lined up out there," one of the volunteers told me. It quickly became apparent that we were going to run out of chairs. Tyler set out every one he could find, determined to accommodate as many patrons as possible. My husband Randy, daughter Robin, and friend Dan opted to stand at the back. I perched in a pew along the side wall with another lady -- and we were off! Afterwards, I found out Tyler had crammed in 132 bodies - 118 of which were paying customers. I don't know who was more excited -- me or the volunteers or Regina Fringe board chair Layne Arthur. "Congratulations," he told me, "Attendance is up all over the Fringe and I have to get more tickets printed." "A wonderful problem," I told him. Two ladies attending were friends of Mary's and remarked about some tidbits from the play. "The part about the Hugas range was ironic," one of them said, "because Mary was such a great cook. And also, I didn't know that was how Chick got her nickname." Although this will be the seventh time I have seen the play, for the first time I heard "South Bend, Michigan" in one of the announcer's sound bites. South Bend is in Indiana, the home of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. In fact, many of those football fans were quickly converted to Blue Sox fans in the 1940's. I checked the script -- and the reference isn't in there. Hmm. We'll definitely have to fix that!
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Maureen UlrichPlaywright Archives
September 2018
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