At a recent performance of Evita, our fabulous turntable hiccupped, stuttered, staggered and stopped. It failed, of course, at the very moment when it was needed to deliver the “lover’s bed/speaker’s podium” unit to the stage so it could serve as the anchor for the seven minutes of “A New Argentina” to close Act I. Oh, boy, I thought. Will they have to stop the show? A moment later I noticed the bed seemed to be moving again. As if the turntable had restarted. But it hadn’t. Puzzled, and squinting to make sense of what I was seeing, I noticed a moving black form under the bed which was taller than a normal bed and sloped.
OMG. It was Ada, our Assistant Stage Manager who had slipped under the bed and was, like some Marvel super-hero, forcing the wheeled bed loaded with two actors to spin around from underneath. Dressed in ninja black, she wrenched it with her considerable strength into position and through the scene. With no time to think, with the band innocently playing on, the bed simply had to be moved and so she just acted, did what needed to be done, in such a deft and seamless manner that most in the audience may not even have noticed.
It was a remarkable act that no one would ever have asked or required her to do. It was the kind of “above and beyond” act that I find so moving, that so characterizes the spirits of those who work in the theatre and reassures me that there is hope for the human race. In the chaos of alternate truths and adjustable morality, the spirit of dedication is a joy to see.
Several weeks before that, despite our vigilance, our production was beset by multiple cases of Covid. It overwhelmed even our double-deep understudy program and shut down the show. We lost the first four performances of the week. But the real story is how our stage manager, choreographer and cast saved the last four shows of the week. Perhaps most importantly, Nicole Helfer, our choreographer who had never performed any of the roles, agreed to go on with 24 hours’ notice. Our stage manager, Alicia, created a Rubik’s cube of role shifts — and the cast all agreed to do it. Here is the short version of the six understudies’ shifts.
The more detailed version was four pages long and I have no idea how she was able to come up with it in the time she had. No one could have required the cast to accommodate this insane list of shifts — and yet they pulled together, and all four shows gave the appearance of effortless ease. I was astonished and humbled by the dedication of the company to make the show work. And during the backstage mayhem, the box office was contacting 800 customers to cancel the shows, assuage their disappointments, reschedule or refund all the tickets, and hang around till show time to handle the patrons who never got the word and showed up at the theatre. All this accomplished with an understanding smile while their brains were exploding.
“Above and beyond” is such a lovely phrase. We see this principle put into practice over and over in the theatre. And in life. Being in the presence of people putting their own selfish interest aside for the sake of something grand is always reassuring and inspiring. And whether it’s a soldier pulling a wounded comrade out of the line of fire, or a stage manager making the bed go round, we understand it is the best of what we humans can do.
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The most deeply spiritual aspect of theatre is the community it creates on, behind abd in front of the stage with every being lifted above and beyond
It is the heart of the sacred in our daily lives
And so essential
Bravo to SFP
Thank you for sharing these behind-the-scenes. I have become a subscriber of the SF Playhouse only very recently, since the latest season (and the upcoming one) but I’ve been very impressed by the quality of the plays and the evident (and non-evident) work that everyone there puts in.
Kudos to you all for this!