2000-09-27

He said "scrim."

Here's the problem with evening rehearsals: they're in the evening. It's 7 o'clock at night, you haven't seen the inside of your house since 8 that morning, and likely you've fortified yourself with coffee and something cheap-n-quick, from any one of the number of fast food purveyors en route to the rehearsal space, in order to get you through the next few hours of pretending that the guy who two minutes ago was making derogatory comments about perceived foot odor is the Messiah.

I get punchy at these rehearsals. I think I act more immature during the rehearsal process now than I did when I was in high school, when I took it all so deathly seriously that I not only memorized my lines, but those of the entire cast plus the italicized stage directions. Because, you see, I was going to be a Big Star on Broadway. Now I'm lucky if I can get off-book by the first dress rehearsal.

Last night I was just in really sad shape. Attention span of a gnat. Everything was titillating and amusing in that 14-year-old-boy way, and it's bad enough when I'm standing there sniggering to myself about otherwise technical terms like "thrust." But, you see, now I've got an accomplice, who not only finds puerile humor in the mundane, but encourages it in others, namely me.

If you're unfamiliar with Jesus Christ Superstar, or the whole story of the final days leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus, two of the Big Bad Guys are named Caiaphas and Annas. It was the latter name that set me and Bo off onto a two-hour excursion into Blatant Immaturity.

"He said �Annas.'"

"grxxlpth." (Here I use onomatopoeia to approximate the sound of childish snickering.)

"Which door does Annas enter through in this scene?"

"Huh-huh. The back door, dude..."

"grxxlpth."

And so on. We'd just about exhausted the arsenal of "Annas" jokes, when we were convulsed afresh by the following word: scrim.

Scrim - a word that I hear on an almost daily basis, working as I do for a major theatre company. There's really nothing terribly funny about a scrim, but Bo had never heard the word before, and in hearing it through his ears, I began tittering like a 12-year-old girl at the first sight of chest hair.

"Scrim."

"grxxlpth."

"Yeah, I did that last night."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." (pause) "With Annas."

"grxxlpth."

I need help. Or maybe just a nap.

lisamcc at 17:07:19

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