Live Theatre - Sometimes the Vase Breaks!

If you haven’t had a chance to see Grosse Pointe Theatre’s hilarious new show “The Fox on the Fairway”, hurry up and buy your tickets – there are only three shows left!  And it’s a great show, says yours truly, an unbiased writer who also happens to be in the show.  

A good friend told me he literally pulled a muscle, he laughed so hard, so I gotta believe we’re pretty funny.

I’ve written about “Live Theatre” before.  For example, what to do if an actor “drops” or forgets a line?  How do you keep going when a set-piece catches on fire?  You know, simple things that we’ve all dealt with.  (True story – Apparently, I have a large lung capacity.)

But as your “theatre insider” it’s my duty to point out to the crowd who saw the Saturday night (March 15th) performance of “Fox” at the GP War Memorial, that the Ides of March were wreaking havoc on us.  And yet it still turned out to be a great performance!  

Remember that plastic vase that we use?  Well, it’s not plastic.  Yes, the one that we broke.  That's the one given to us from Detroit’s Historic PEWABIC POTTERY!  The 111 year-old Detroit landmark that makes beautiful pieces of art.

From an agreement arranged by our Director, Mike Trudel and his contacts, perhaps even as a trade or a break on the price of the ad they took out in our programs, we have been supplied with a few, real-life Pewabic Pottery vases for us to literally toss around in our show.  I should probably say “vah-ses”.  They are too nice to call them just “vay-ses”.  

They mentioned that they are “seconds” or even a couple “rejects”.  But to us, even Pewabic Rejects are still pieces of art and we are casually throwing them around in a monkey-in-the-middle style scene.  And I’m the monkey who has to figure out what to do if it breaks.

Which as I mentioned, it did last weekend.  There was that beautiful moment, frozen in my mind, where I can see it in slow-motion as the vase hit the ground, on its base and actually bounced!  “It’s going to survive!”  I thought in that millisecond as it lifted off the stage floor, only to turn upside-down and then break cleanly in two.  “AHHHH!”  I screamed.  I mean, my character would’ve screamed at that point, so I’m not sure if it was me screaming or my character.  Then I knew we had to enact Plan-B.

Being honest, during Tech Week we all thought about the real possibility of a catastrophe.  I came up with a few lines to say to keep the action going, Geoff Proven (stage manager) and Kathleen Lusk (properties chair) came up with the other logistics backstage -- because we need the vase again later in the show.  And we all were prepared to add little tweaks, if necessary, in the dialog to keep things running smoothly.  Well, apparently we pulled it off, our lighting and sound guys were cheering us on saying, “it looked like it was right in the script!”  Not a single audience member mentioned it.  So, I guess that’s a compliment.

When you go to the theatre, usually you’re seeing only what’s in the script, with little to no ad-libbing.  But that past Saturday, well, you saw something brand new!  That's what Live Theatre is all about.

   -- Tim

Ken Ludwig’s “The Fox on the Fairway”, finishes its run with three more performances, March 20, 21 and 22 at the War Memorial, Grosse Pointe Farms.  Call (313) 881-4004 or visit www.gpt.org for tickets.