Curiosity: Piqued.

[fancycwabs]

An email I received last night, edited to protect various identities:

Dear Cast,

During the performance this morning, $DIRECTOR noticed a few actors drastically altering their characters in unpleasant ways. At his request, I am sending this e-mail so that this does NOT happen again. Those of you who are guilty, know who you are. While you may think it is funny, it is simply unacceptable. Please fix this problem immediately. If you have any questions please let me know.

$STAGEMANAGER

Since we have day casts and night casts for A Christmas Carol, and the night cast (which includes yours truly) hasn't had a performance in several days--I'm assuming this is relating to the day cast. I'm curious as to what might have happened: Sudden change to Jamaican accents? More onstage drunkenness than usual? The mysterious reappearance of the magical fart machine? The mind boggles!

Comments

[spatch]

Three words: Spontaneous musical number.


Also, is it just me, or is it totally passive-aggressive for the Stage Manager to email the entire cast with this note instead of taking aside those responsible and reading them the Riot Act in a quiet manner? Jesus. SMs are supposed to be able to Get To The Goddamn Point.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

In her defense, I'm not sure if she noticed the onstage misbehavior (Christmas Carol is a fairly tech-heavy show, and as long as the actors aren't actively in the way of moving scenery and everyone makes their entrance, I'm not sure that she pays attention to character interpretations), and was probably acting on behalf of the director who may not have named names.

But--probably also not as confrontational as the best stage managers are, either. We've had some backstage antics among the teenagers that would have had some nuts in a vise with other productions, with more nuts-in-a-vise type stage managers.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

"Everyone else" includes a fair number of fourteen and fifteen year olds, especially among the males in the cast, so there's a good chance that suddenly some Cockney lamplighters became jive-talking lamplighters or gay lamplighters, which could be hilarious to the under-18 set but wrong, offensive, and detrimental to the show.

[loree-borealis.livejournal.com]

"Altering their characters in unpleasant ways."

I love this phrase. :D