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Tony Adams is a Chicago based theatre artist, husband and father, and artistic director of Halcyon Theatre. He's been fortunate to make my way as an actor, designer, director and writer (in alphabetical order) He also staged managed twice. He is a horrible stage manager.
Nippy Anyone?
Submitted by Tony on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 16:20
We had a pretty good house for last nights preview. Devilvet and Brian from The Director Sector made it out, along with artists who we've worked with in the past.
We made it a policy a while back to invite folks who've worked with us in the past to previews for free as a thank you. When I was putting together the list to send out the invite I was kinda amazed to see that we've worked with 138 people halfway through our third season.
It was nice to see so many folks braving the cold to make it out. One of our actors had bought a cup of coffee on the way to the space and drank about half of it on the train before getting off at the Western stop. It's about two blocks to the space, and there was ice in the bottom of his cup when he got there. When I got home from last nights preview, I looked at the clock and temp on my deskbar. It was 10:00 and -10°.
It was pretty cold in the space last night, the boiler in the building had a hard time keeping up with the frigid COLD. We had to turn space heaters on about halfway through the performance because of the temp. We're trying to figure out what we can do tonight to make it warmer, but I can't wait for tomorrow's balmy high of 21°.
Preview was good. Not Great, but good. The first time before an audience can always be tricky. It was a fairly low energy show last night, it's tough in the cold. The cast is doing some really great work, and I think it'll be much stronger tonight for opening.
Had a critic in the house last night for the preview. Their offices are closed Monday for MLK day, so it has to be ready to go to print this afternoon. We'll see what he has to say, and if he can shrug off the cold. Got some more coming tonight.
Before I turned off the computer last night. I came across this advisory for our fair city:
WEST WINDS AROUND 10 MPH COMBINED WITH TEMPERATURES WELL BELOW ZERO WILL RESULT IN WIND CHILLS OF 25 TO 45 BELOW ZERO THIS MORNING.
While print pubs are cutting back, and space is becoming increasingly limited, it's easy to forget that there are folks who care enough to disregard advisorys such as the above and go out to review a show by a small company in a church basement. Usually for less than a stage manager makes.
