OnStage Blog: Theatre people understand that post-show hunger is not normal hunger. It is a full body emergency. You just spent two hours singing, dancing, quick-changing, carrying set pieces, pretending to die, or all of the above. Of course you need mozzarella sticks at 12:14 a.m. Be serious.
6 comments:
This is such a good article, definitely my favorite one this year! This author was spitting facts left and right. There is a whole art to making the art that our audiences see, and the best way to appreciate it is at a post-show debrief meal. Some of my most memorable times in high school were with friends after finishing up (usually hectic) shows. At CMU too, I have had so many post-crew Stack’d visits, and look forward to many more! This valuable time with friends might be even better than the shows/calls themselves! There is truly so much that happens backstage that, even though it is contradictory, it almost deserves to be as appreciated as what is happening on stage. We are often as choreographed and coordinated backstage as the actors are onstage. This becomes especially challenging and equally rewarding when you get into some crazy houses that have barely any space backstage.
This person gets it! It really made me relive all those late-night dinner runs, whether it was just fries or a whole meal. For me, it was always IHOP or Whataburger. These diner runs after closing night or a compitition was a way to truly wrap up the show. They always show the community that was built up throughout the production process. These nights are always filled with so much emotion that the late-night dinner is just a great way to debrief and laugh it off, even if you are about to fall asleep on your pancakes. Eating together as a company in general is honestly one of the most sacred things within theatre, I think. I loved how the author gave the specific description of the different people rolling up to the diner wether they still have stage makeup on and are half asleep, or are still running on show adrenaline. These post-show dinner trips really do bring some great memories.
This article mentions the importance of that in-between time, and this hits home so hard. I remember after closing every season, our theater would go to Wegmans and pull together tables in a corner of the seating area. This felt like where the show really came together for everyone. We could talk about everything that went amazing and everything that went horribly. In that late night and exhausted haze, meeting over food felt like we were coming back to Earth together. A tradition my high school theater also had was signatures during dinner, where everyone would grab a poster or playbook and set it on a table for everyone else to walk around and sign. That act felt like a recognition of the hard work that everyone put in to create something together. I remember my first Wegmans trip where one of the actors kept his Frankenstein makeup on, and I wonder what was going through the workers’ heads seeing that.
I’ve got a lot of great memories going on post show dinner trips like those described in the article, especially in high school. Closing night was always filled with a lot of emotion for everyone involved, and after the show, each major department, tech, orchestra, and actors, would split off and go to their own respective destinations once we were able to clear the house and shut down the theatre. Our spot changed a few times, but being from Atlanta, we eventually settled on the 24-hour open Waffle House. After the series of long nights we had leading up to the show run, it was nice to take some time after the final show to all get together, have some food, and just hang out and not think ‘oh crap we’ve got a show tomorrow.’ (Often though, we did have strike the next day. Overall, those after show dinners hold a lot of memories for me.
This was a funny article to come across but it’s so relatable and true. Throughout my time in high school. Getting food after a long night of rehearsals or a show makes the entire night feel complete. Every day after tech and performances throughout high school I would get food with the students in tech and it was always a great experience. I felt much more connected with them after getting food and it made working on the productions a lot easier and more enjoyable. I liked how he describes these dinner trips as, “a group therapy session with fries,” cause it really was. We would laugh, talk smack, and just overall reflect on how everything turned out from our production. It was always something I personally looked forward to during the ending of our productions. It was always so much fun because it also gave me the chance to talk to different people than just the people I worked around.
First of all, I love the tone of this article. Absolutely, ‘be serious’ about these post-show diner trips. The in-between world of the diner going from the theatre back to the real world again. I think the way that people transformed in that in-between space is poetic, and expressed as such in this article. It’s incredibly true that theatre, especially in an education setting, lends itself to closeness fast, no matter one’s role. That’s the nature of performance art, regardless of if you’re a performer. It’s fast-paced, high-stakes, and incredibly emotional. Like every other high school theatre group, we had a diner to ourselves at ungodly hours, too. I find, looking back, that those truly closing moments are the ones I tend to romanticise the most. The ones I get nostalgia for, unbecoming of a nineteen year old. The ones I hope to find again with new collaborators and friends.
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