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Community Performance Inc.

November 10, 2008

Note to self: When doing a project in such close proximity to the University, do NOT schedule a performance during the GA-FLA game weekend. YIKES. The cast and audience both dwindle. But now that the game is behind us in Franklin County, the ticket sales have sky-rocketed. We sold out Saturday performances, and came close to sold out on Friday. Phew. And there is luckily one more weekend for this season's run of "The Last Hard Times".

We've experienced the football phenomenon for years. Cast members who are cheerleaders or football players or play in the band, as well as parents who work the concession stand or direct traffic. These are usually Friday night high school football games. Our cast size goes down on those nights during the fall. We also expect smaller local audiences on those nights. One time, we opened a show in Winona, Mississippi, a day late. Our original opening night had to be moved, because it was also the Homecoming Game for the town's High School, and they take their football and homecoming very seriously. We looked at cast conflicts, as well as ticket sales, and realized we weren't going to have cast or audience! Not to mention-- it was a custom there to shoot off the old cannon every time a goal was scored. The football field was only about a quarter of a mile away from the open-air barn where we performed the show. Imagine canons going off every fifteen minutes or so. I say, no thanks to that-- we had enough of that when we worked in Rio-- when the canons were the real thing! then, in Colquitt, we have volunteer firemen in the cast who run traffic for the football games, so we lose a bunch of men on those nights.

But in Franklin County, we have discovered the fall season is very tough because we've got Friday night high school football games, as well as the Saturday College game days, and then Sunday is the pro-game days if the Atlanta Falcons are playing a home game. Zowie.

The ticket sales increased exponentially this week, after the Ga/Fla game. (We won't talk about who won.) It's certainly making us think about scheduling for the remount. You just can't fight football, can you? Aside from that, the remount of the production has been a great experience. I saw some amazing transformations since last year. One of our teen girls, Mariyln, who we could have produced a CD that just said "Louder, Marilyn, louder" during last year's production was clear, loud and completely in control this year. I watched as Leola, who didn't have a line in last year's production take on a pretty good size role this year, and she performed powerfully, and has one of those voices that lets the audience know, "Sit back, listen up, I got this." I've also had a lot of fun watching John, who has probably one of the most dignified roles in the play- that of General Phillips-- turn around and just be incredibly hilarious in the moonshine song in the next act. And what a dancer he is, too. And I've seen connections made through the process that introduced people who otherwise may never have been introduced, and where there was once nothing, there is now relationship. So that when audiences come, they witness not only the play unfolding, and stories of their own lives and towns unfolding, but relationships as well, as the cast works to hold each other up-- offering lines when they are forgotten, offering support to change sets for each other, offering up what's needed when someone needs them. They witness all of these things. Except, of course, on game day, when they're watching the football game. Which is another kind of performance. But with a football game, somebody's got to lose before it's over.

   

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