2003-04-30 - 3:53 p.m. Birth 6 Closing Time for Jack 4/29/00 Closing night. It��s the show anything goes. I am cast as Eliza J Whitney, which occurred about three months ago and this has been the biggest cake walk of a production. �� For me. All I have to do is not loose my gray bag with yellow trim. Included in the bag: 1 750ml bottle of Jack Daniel��s 2 Rubber bands for holding sleaves 1 small bottle of baby powder for flushed face and white hair. 4 shotglasses 1 Disposable Camera 2 Scripts 1 Sombrero 1 wild and crazy Hawaiian shirt 2 belts The most important thing is the Jack Daniel��s bottle because that��s a set piece; and it has liquor. It��s about half coke and half rum. The director told me to have all coke, and no rum (impling that I could ACT drunk without BEING drunk) but I��m not listening to him. Nope, instead I had a steady helping of whiskey as both me and my character became more and more drunk as the night went on. I am about to go on for my final scene in the first act, I am pretty plowed. I am thankful that I don��t have to sing or dance tonight, but I would do it really drunk if I did. In fact, a little more of this concoction and I just might. It��s not actually in my hand. On stage it was stolen by another character. He��s gonna leave it on the top of the ship, where I will retrieve it, in a rather pointless scene. Not tonight though. I have decided to make up lines tonight. All of them. I don��t think I said anything that I was suppose to. The audience loved it. I am funnier than campy 20��s humor. At least I think I am right now. The director is gonna kill me at intermission. I should hide underneath the stage. There might be rats there though. Showtime. I begin to stumble. Onto the stage. I fall up the steps. The audience laughs. I do too. The fall was planned, not the laugh. I climb to the highest point of the stage and crawl over to the Jack bottle. I am suppose to say ��whatza wherza whoza there?,�� as if I recognized the bottle as a person. I am the only one on stage, but no one seems to get this joke. Hell, I don��t even get it. Instead I lunge for the bottle and raise it into the air, as if it were my baby, and then I squeeze it tight, delivering the line, ��I��ll never let go Jack, I��ll never let go.�� Just as a background; Anything goes is on a boat and I am at the hull of the ship (or whatever the fuck the front is). This joke, works perfectly. I actually got a standing and clapping laughs. I was shocked. Apparently no one saw this coming. The director, at intermission did not kill me. He said, ��Why didn��t you change all your lines before?�� I wanted to say ��Because I am an unfunny hack writer who is bombed for no good reason and never wrote a good story let alone a musical?�� I said, ��I dunno?�� Anyway, this was my best show in my seven years of acting/singing. People laughed at me without me even doing anything after that. I came out for the dance scene, briefly. It worked. This is the only show I have ever done I can watch on tape. At the end of the night they gave out awards. I got the ��Best Supporting Actor Award.�� I was very pleased. I put it up in my room right in front of the Virgin Mary Statue in my room. The award was only there until I gave it out next year, but I was proud, if but for a moment, that I was funny. | |||||||||||
