Friday, February 7, 2014
Hidemi’s Rambling No.504
When my role in a drama club at junior high was still lower backstage
work, I was assigned to give the cast members a cue on one school play. I
needed to cue them in the dressing room when the show before us was
about to end. I counted down from forty minutes before the cue to make
their preparation easier by watching the show in the wings. The stage
was far from the dressing room and I had to go back and forth between
them to tell them the time left. On that play, the heroin put on makeup
and got dressed so slowly, and I felt sure our play couldn’t start on
time. I rushed her while reporting the progress of the show before us by
running laps between the stage and the dressing room. But as I had
thought, she couldn’t make it. The previous show had ended, the audience
was waiting, and she remained wigless. Those who helped her dress got
hysterical and began to take it out on me who kept on cueing. Back in
the wings, the teacher in charge of the school event stormed at me. We
had to start without her and I asked other cast members to prolong the
opening scene by improvising. They got panicky and complained to me.
Eventually, everyone yelled at me who was just a cue person. While they
were desperately improvising the play, I took her from the dressing room
plowing through the people on the crowded hallway for her. Then I had
gradually promoted to the higher backstage work play by play. As the
curtain drawer, I needed to learn how to draw the heavy main curtain
smoothly. If it opened or closed in several separate movements according
to my tugging, I would get reproved. The curtain was used frequently to
shift scenes and drawing it seamlessly was such a tough job. As a
prompter, I was pointed out that my prompts were too loud. Then as the
stage lighting, I needed to get the knack to create a blackout on the
stage by turning numerous switches off in one quick sweep by my hands.
The switches were too many and big, so I had to hold my breath and put
my whole weight on my stretched hands to slide them all. All those
years, I didn’t quit because I really wanted to be cast and play on the
stage some day. It must have been a strong aspiration as I spent a good
three years just training and working backstage…