backstage | 3 for the road

recollections

Rozentheater | Amsterdam

I remember being so nervous before we went on. It didn’t help that the group we had to follow was killing it…I mean, it was ridiculous at one point. We were actually concerned that the crowd wouldn’t have anything left in the tank by the time we went on.

We were positioned right behind the upstage curtain for our entrance, just standing in the dark, pacing around like caged animals, and desperately trying to stay connected.

I look at those photos we took just before the show and see that I was so beside myself that I had put on a little too much makeup, my eyes are all tarted up and my cheeks and lips look strangely rosy red, I actually look like a little marionette of myself with a painted on smile. I think I must have forgotten, at least twice, that I had applied makeup already…and just kept at it. I’m surprised I wasn’t wearing two sets of clothes.

Once we hit the stage that night, it all slowed down and the audience looked like it went on forever and the stage felt like we’d been there before somehow. I remember feeling so connected to my brothers that night, so far from home.  --SK

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Kimo Theatre | Albuquerque

We were there doing a benefit in this beautiful old theatre. When we arrived and asked where the dressing rooms were, the stage manager casually informed us that the lower floors beneath the stage were haunted by the ghost of a six year old boy who was killed in a water heater explosion.

As we descended the narrow stone stairs just off stage right, we passed “Bobby’s Shrine” where we were supposed to make “offerings” to his spirit, and he would leave us alone. I immediately didn’t like this kid, especially since he was spiritually blackmailing us right out of the gate. (It wouldn’t surprise me to learn he was tampering with that water heater in some way.)

All I can say is that whenever I was alone down there in the dressing rooms, or in those long strange hallways…it felt very weird. And yes, there was the standard “I could swear someone was holding that door shut from the other side” moment. I think I may have tossed some old sponges from my makeup case into his shrine. Is that bad? Stupid dead kid.

I also recall how we were instructed to “keep it clean” because this was a benefit for someone in the LDS community and we might consider “pulling it in” a bit. This was truly a terrifying thing to ask us, and was really on my mind leading up to the show. It is the old “Don’t Spill Your Milk” scenario, where you invariably end up spilling your milk because you are trying so hard not to.

Does this mean no kissing another man, even if I was playing a woman? Is that considered “unclean?” Things we never usually have to think about…and the language! How was that going to go down? No bad language?

To Tim’s credit, he was pushing these boundaries  to the limit throughout the show. In the long-form, my character was actually telling him to “watch his language” and I was playing a gangster!!! It was insane. We had a wonderful show nonetheless, and managed to raise a little money too.  --SK