By Rhonda Hansome
As you know
Dear Readers*, my Rhonda Hansome Comedy Divorced & Bitter Tour recently
returned from an astonishingly successful stint of performances in Tel
Aviv. What you may not know, in
spite of the humongous number of woman hours (the ubiquitous uber-opinionated
“THEY” dictate as NECESSARY) I devote to a myriad of social media, multiple
electronic platforms and smoke signals to
promote myself - every gig, whimper and fart; is that I am a
thespian. Insert your own sexual
orientation joke here. Yes, I am
an experienced, trained and (she said modestly lowering her eyes and tucking
her toe into the red earth beneath her) respected theater director**.
Dante’s
Inferno is stocked with a most diverse assemblage of souls suffering the
excruciating pains of hell. It is
home to the unbaptized, lustful, gluttonous, greedy, lazy, heretics, the
violent, con artists, and disloyal.
There is one particularly heinous ring of hell that Bing, Google and
Wikipedia do not mention. It is that terrifyingly banal, agonizingly
predictable sulfurous pit of despair (cue evil dramatic music) TECH SUPPORT!
I am in fact,
in the middle of a the second week AND second venue of the two week run of It
Takes A Village To Raise…Hell by Michael A. Jones, produced by Spencer Holden
and directed by me – under the name, Passion – the only one of my many alternate personalities, I will
consciously acknowledge. Now, to make a long story longer... When
I interviewed for the position of director on the project, I mentioned several
times that my long planned for (11 day) trip to Israel, fell smack dab in the
middle of the rehearsal period.
Who in their right mind would hire an M.I.A. director for a
project? My producer and
playwright did!
Don’t ask
why we scheduled a week of shows in Times Square and then on short notice, another
week in Harlem. Suffice it to say,
I opened my blabber mouth about nomination eligibility requirements for a
prestigious*** theater award.
Jump cut to
yesterday’s tech at 308 W. 133rd St. near St. Nicholas. All lighting, sound, equipment and/or
operator errors may be multiplied by 2; for a taste of tech the previous week
at our first venue.
Theater tech
entails coordinating lighting and sound cues with the words and movement of
actors and tasks of the backstage crew.
If this detailed plotting, synchronizing the hair trigger timing of
lights and sound is (under the best conditions) a delicate symphony; our venue’s
Pleistocene era equipment,
operator error and missing actors rendered our tech rehearsal composition an
atonal, abstract hit and miss mélange. So after six and a half hours of this dissonant jazz
riff repeated, with slight variations as each piece of equipment or personnel
malfunctioned, and with an under rehearsed understudy in costume, we began the
show.
It was an
inspired performance by all the actors including the understudy! They were so compelling that I managed
to keep my wincing at technical miss-cues to a minimum. Yikes, the phone’s ringing,
when we should hear Dianna Ross warbling.
OMG, my lightning speed scene blackout cue is an unnervingly slow light
fade, during which I silently recite the entire Lord’s Prayer- in Latin. But it was the audience, responding with
spontaneous applause during and at the end of almost every scene that co-signed
my thrilling director experience of seeing my vision alive, breathing and
truthful on stage.
At some
point during the tech rehearsal, I remembered my blog deadline was fast
approaching. I had the brilliant
idea to tape cast & crew members doing an impression of me in the thrall of
one of my many crazy director moments; that will be really funny & they can
do all the work. Some were
actually game to participate & I used my cell phone to capture their (not
very exaggerated) extremely hilarious antics.
Jump cut to
4:00 AM this morning and my laptop’s stubborn refusal to recognize my
Blackberry Curve smartphone.
At 4:30 AT&T tech support conceded defeat and transferred me to Blackberry
support. At 5:30 after
uninstalling and reinstalling the desktop manager, Josh handed me over to a
more expert technician, Pat, who took me through the same ineffective steps
conducted by James and Steven. Pat
humbly handed me off to the supremely confident sounding, Fabian. Fabian after walking me through yet
another unsuccessful uninstalling and reinstalling session said he would call
me back. Yeah right… I’ll be
damned, 6:30 on the dot- it’s Fabian!
We uninstall the desktop software and he pulls his ace card. Some kind of cleaner we download that
will clear everything up after we reinstall the desktop manager.
At 7:00 AM,
the morning air is thick with sulfur as Fabian, hat in hand and no longer
self-assured, wishes me a good day.
Good day? It hasn’t even begun. I’m exhausted and there sits my smirking
deadline, mocking as only a frenemy can.
Damn Dear Readers, it’s hot in here.
Arrive early at 308 West 133rd
St. @ Nicholas and be the 1st person at the box office to say “She
So Funny” and receive One (1) FREE ADMISSION to It Takes A Village To Raise
Hell. Be the 2nd or 3rd
person at the box office to say “She So Funny” and receive a $10.00 discount on
the $25.00 regular ticket price.
Performances: Thurs. – Sat. Oct. 11- 13 @ 7:30 PM & Sat. Oct. 13 @
2:00 PM
*** So
highly regarded you have never heard of it.
The Lord's Prayer - in Latin! ha ha ha
Brava, the play sounds wondrous. Don't know how you're doing it ALL, and under tech-duress (both on and off stage) no less. Wish I could hear that recording.