We're Cursed

I’m not entirely sure why, I’ve heard conflicting theories. We could be haunted by the spirit of a dead fly. It could be due to someone whistling across the stage. Our director ran across the stage at one point shouting “Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!” just to prove that it was all superstitious hooey. This was the same man who thought it would be fine to open on Friday the thirteenth!

Yeah, we’re thinking about killing him.

Since this show went into rehearsals: our set designer broke her foot; a lead actor had to duck out of one performace; his understudy broke both elbows; I twisted an ankle; Falstaff’s grandmother died; and our star’s been plagued with knee injuries.

We opened with great success and some minor backstage panic-attacks on Friday. Saturday we nailed the show to the wall, owned it. Sunday . . . Sunday I stopped mocking everyone else for implying that we were cursed.

Sunday the underunderstudy came on, the one called in to replace the one with the broken elbows. He’d less than a week to learn one of the larger parts, so we all huddled alone backstage and ran through ways to bail him out if he got tangled in his lines. Turns out we didn’t need to, he was nearly flawless. And a bit lonely, in his perfection: our star was terribly off, Falstaff was more riffing his lines than reciting them, cues were dropped like confetti. Of course the reviewer was there. At one point, the underunderstudy tore his pants (the ass-seam, from end to end nearly) and we had roughly five seconds to resew them. No sooner was that crisis managed than another actor came booking off stage, bleeding profusely from the face—attacked by a prop gone mad.

“That’s it,” I said to Drama Queen. “I’m bringing a priest with me on Wednesday.”