Wednesday 16 June 2010

A hideous curse!

Well, I've been in shows which have had their fair share of catastrophies and hiccups, but at the moment I am beginning to wonder if there's some sort of curse lurking in York's Gilbert and Sullivan groups.  Or worse, in me, since I'm a common factor in both.  One group may be just about back on track, although from now on I'm calling the show named afte the Emperor of Japan the 'Japanese Play' as it seems to be the operetta equivalent of Shakespeare's Scottish Play, except that in this instance the curse attacks members of the directing team and committee.  However, following three resignations, a directorial reappointment, two sets of recasting and and EGM, hopefully the music's now learnt, the theatre booked, the tickets on sale and we can get on with learning choreography- until the next problem!

But the university society seemed to be going so well, despite the university's apparent ambition to stop all performing societies from operating and generally make life difficult for students.  This time it was actually the students' union, (I've come to understand that that term must be used ironically,) YUSU, that was causing the trouble.  Stating that all societies must hire equipment from certain companies with whom YUSU has a contract sounds fine until you realise that this is a much higher cost than the sharing/ begging/ borrowing which most societies have to do to make ends meet.

But somehow we'd survived that, and even managed to get money from YUSU to pay for the cost of the problem they created.  What could stop us now?
 
Room bookings, it appears.  Last night's rehearsal room turned out to be double booked thanks to a glitch probably in the electronic system.  Yet even this we turned to our advantage by squeezing into a music room to go over some of the music, delaying the run through of Act 1 that we were supposed to be doing until the other group had finished with our room.  This meant that when we did get our proper room back, we were able to get all the way through Act 1 without stopping.

Well, that must be it.  The rehearsal's over, nothing more could go wrong that day.

Then the musical director started choking and had to be taken to A&E, unable to breathe.

Over the years I've seen a lot of directors exhibit practically every documented symptom of stress, including dreaming that each member of the cast is killed in one way or another.  But never have we come so close to any of them being actually unable to take part in the show.  Apparently he's now fine, though, or at least he says so.  So, the show(s) must go on!

What could possibly go wrong?

I'll let you know.