So, I have not been so good about updating this past week. I have had very little time to myself and even less time to run to an internet café since my computer perished. Basically, here’s what’s been going on.
TECH WEEK AND SHOWS!
It’s insane! We had three days of tech before we opened at 10 AM Thursday morning for school shows. We invited three of the local elementary schools to come watch the show in the mornings on Thursday and Friday, so those shows were nice to have as some additional tech/dress rehearsals. The morning shows both went very well. It was a little difficult since we are presenting a bilingual show and the public school children are not bilingual, but they got the main idea, I think. The weather was also very nice for the morning shows. The evening shows however…
Thursday night was easily one of the most stressful nights I’ve had in a very long time. The Costa Rican sky opened up about thirty minutes before our curtain time, soaking all of our props and our “backstage” area, which is really just an area under a little car-park tent off stage right. The entire backstage was mud and sloshy grossness, so everyone was getting splattered with mud and the stage was absolutely covered in dirt and grime and rain water. It was disgusting. To make matters worse, off stage left doesn’t have anything covering it, so we constantly have to bring someone back there with us with an umbrella to cover us when we exit stage left. It’s really quite an adventure. We had the same weather problem on Friday night, but Thursday night was particularly bad for some other reasons.
About half way through the show, little José Daniel runs up to me saying, "Erin, Erin! My throat hurts really badly. I can´t sing!" So, I get the boy some water and tell him that when he gets home he needs to tell his mom to make him hot tea with lemon and to drink that the next morning, too. As I´m talking to him, he starts tearing up and getting really nervous, so I took him away from the big crowd of people out into the makeshift parking lot and tell him to try and sing his next song for me to see how his voice sounds. He sounded completely normal, but he said that it hurt really badly and fell into my arms sobbing. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me he was afraid that people would laugh at him because his voice sounded bad. I had never seen this kid upset before, but it absolutely broke my heart. I told him that he sounded great, no different than any other day, and that I was so proud of him. It cheered him up for the moment, but he was still a little teary. When he went on for the next song, his voice sounded fine, but he was so nervous that he mixed up the words. The poor kid was so upset all night, and I felt terrible because I couldn´t do anything for him but force him to drink multiple bottles of water.
On top of that, after the song "Be Back Soon" that Darío does with all the little kids, he came off stage absolutely fuming. Darío is a drama queen, but I´d never seen him so angry before. So he grabbed me and pulled me out into the parking lot to vent. He was angry at the little kids for messing up not only the words, the timing, and the dance, but also for acting unprofessionally on stage and looking at him to tell them what to do. Darío spent the last school year in the States, and now has a very different point of view about theatre from everyone else here. He takes it extremely seriously while a lot of other people don´t understand stage etiquette. After a while he calmed down, but there were more problems to be dealt with. For whatever reason, we had a 3 hour call, which means that the kids were in the theater at 4 even though the show didn´t start until 7. Most of them had not eaten dinner, and by about 8:30 or 9 at least seven or eight of them were crying because they were hungry. I am so glad Thursday is over!
By Friday morning, Danny´s voice was feeling much better, but I was still shoving a water bottle into his hand every time he came off stage. Friday night´s show was also much smoother. It still rained a ton, but I wasn´t dealing with nervous, sick, angry, or hungry actors. Quite a relief! Friday between the shows was one of the best times I´ve had here. Katherine and I took off to grab some lunch and then went back to the Bellbird School, which is owned by Heidi and Jean, two moms of kids in the show who are so wonderful and helpful. I love them both dearly. They offered to have us all come by and watch a movie with a bunch of blankets and snacks. When Katherien and I got there, we were the only ones over the age of 12. It was awesome. We watched American Tale (the one with the mice and the song "Somewhere Out There") and ended up taking a nap. There´s a couple really adorable pictures of Danny, me, and Katherine all completely conked out. I´ll have to post those once they show up on Facebook. After a while, Toto, Hellen, Darío, and Beatriz showed up too, and the kids turned on the movie "Enchanted". After a little while, all the little ones and Katherine left to grab dinner at Heidi and Leo´s while Toto, Hellen, Beatriz, Darío, and I stayed back to relax a little bit more. Then we headed over to the theater to get ready for the show!
Tonight is our last show, and tomorrow is my last day in Santa Elena. I cannot believe it´s almost over. Sometimes it feels like any minute I´m going to wake up and it will all have been some crazy dream. But this experience has been so amazing. Can´t wait until next year.
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