Opening Night Eve - Tumblr Posts

And again, on the eve of opening night for A Year with Frog and Toad, I find a second Frog and Toad related post, which, yet again, corresponds directly with a song from this show I’m in. 

Either the number of Frog and Toad things I’m running across on tumblr tonight is a sign, or this is some kind of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon specific to being in a certain show... Is there a theatrical version of that? Or maybe Baader-Meinhof isn’t the right term because I didn’t just learn about Frog and Toad, but it’s like that thing where one suddenly sees a thing everywhere just when it’s relevant. Is it a different type of cognitive bias, perhaps? Does anyone know the correct term for being in a play and then seeing things relevant to that play just before the show opens?

Like, I haven’t noticed any Frog and Toad-related content since I joined tumblr in November and the night before we open, I see two things. It’s crazy. Well, I guess I’ll call it good luck? 

But yeah, this one’s Frog’s solo. A very sweet little song. 

i just think this is so important and i think this is the greatest life lesson you could learn in your childhood, or at any age (from Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel)

I love reading all the stories here; I’ve been up and down the notes and I have several versions saved to my drafts, one of which I’ve begun writing out my own Fae story on. However, this post has actually had an influence on how I interpret the play I’m currently in, so it seems only appropriate to reblog a version of it on the eve of our play opening as well. 

The play is called Almost, Maine, and it’s a subtly surrealist series of small town romances. The blurb on the back of the script describes it as “a midwinter night’s dream”. Basically, weird, seemingly mystical things are happening in the lives of people in this town as they fall in and out of love, and at the end of the night, everyone sees the northern lights. You could read it just abstractly as ‘the northern lights make weird (or should I say wyrd) things happen’, or you could even rationalize most of the things away, but I’ve decided that it makes sense that Almost (that’s the name of the town) just has a very heavy Fae presence and the Fae--likely excited by the northern lights--are meddling in everyone’s affairs--much like in Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

I even decided that one of the characters I play, Ginette, actually is a Fae who left the Fae realm because she’s in love with a human, Pete. That explains, for me, how she *SPOILERS* walks all the way around the Earth in about 10 minutes for him--it’s done with the Fae magic she has, but in my interpretation, she has literally travelled all that distance for him. Then, when the northern lights appear at the end, it’s even deeper for me, because I’ve decided that for Ginette that’s a sign that the Fae have finally approved of her romance with Pete. 

Pete would be incredibly overwhelmed by all this. He freaks out when she says “I love you” for the first time. It’s best he doesn’t know all this. 

Anyways, I know this is a digression from the main subject matter of this post, but I just wanted to share how considering the Fae has been useful to me in deepening my acting and my character backstories. Thanks for all the great stories!

Irish people; The faeries aren’t real

Irish people; No fucking way will I go in that faerie ring

Anyways, I’ve reblogged something on the eve of opening night for the past two shows I’ve been in, so I guess it’s a tradition now! Unlike with Frog and Toad and Almost, Maine, I didn’t happen upon something for Mamma Mia naturally, so I had to go seek this one out, but it’s very pretty and tranquil. Happy opening night eve! 

Mamma Mia (2008)

Mamma mia! This means literally, my mother, but it is definitely a term that can express everything from exasperation to wonder.

If this was “people from Montana” it would be an entirely valid summary of the play I’m in right now.

People from Wyoming

I only watched Matilda for the first time a couple of years ago. And then I quickly read the book and listen to the musical about a dozen times after that. It’s one of my favorite stories, and I’ve always adored this moment of Matilda walking along the road with her wagon in tow! My mom recreated her iconic dress by upcycling a large women’s one she found at a thrift store. To match the floral pattern, she actually hand painted the red and yellow flowers onto the fabric. It’s one of my favorite things! 

Our production of Matilda opens tomorrow!! It’s been a while since I made a proper Opening Night Eve tumblr reblog, but then again, it’s been a while (like... 2 years) since I had an opening night! Actually, I realized the other day, it’s the longest I’ve gone not being involved in a play since I first got into a play in college, which sort of makes sense (given, you know, the whole pandemic) but also doesn’t make sense (because I still cannot begin to grasp the ceaseless flow of time). 

I loved this movie so much as a kid so it’s exciting to be a part of it in musical form :) It really is pretty touching with some lovely songs. It’s been quite a while since I saw the movie, so I’m having trouble remembering whether some things are different or whether I’m just forgetting them--for example, was the Russian mafia involved in the movie at all? I don’t recall them being there, but I’m playing Russian Henchman 2 in the musical! I also don’t recall the acrobat/escapologist story but those are some of the prettiest scenes in the play I think. Anyways, it’s a fun show to be in; here’s hoping we break lots of limbs tomorrow! (Which I suppose is all in a day’s work as a mafia henchman, haha ;) ) 

‎ Sometimes Matilda longed for a friend, like the kind, courageous people in her books. It occurred to her that such talking dragons and princesses with hair long enough to climb… such people might only exist in story books. But she was about to discover she had a strength… a strength she wasn’t even aware of.

MATILDA (1996) dir. Danny DeVito

oh yeah by the way here’s some awful memes i made wen i was reading the crucible in class

redesigned covers: the crucible

we are only what we always were, but naked now.

The show I’m currently in with my theatre company opens tonight (I almost missed making my customary opening night eve post, but I think it still counts as long as I do it day of!), but since it’s an original work written by our director, I couldn’t just search up the show on here like I usually do. So, since the show explores themes of home and what it means to be home, to go home, to have a home, and what makes a home, I decided to search up pictures that remind me of the place I still think of as home--the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

I haven’t lived amidst them for nearly a decade now, but there’s still something in me that only settles when I feel the arms of the mountains wrapped around me. I still felt it immediately last summer when we were driving out through Ohio--there’s a point in the state when it passes from flat lands to hills to the edge of the mountains proper, and the embrace of the mountains always feels like a homecoming to me. When we moved while I was in high school, I was sure I’d move back to Virginia as soon as I became an adult, but now I’m 26 and I still live in the Midwest. Most of the people I know back home have moved away; all my closest friends from the street I used to live on are now off in New York or California or Oklahoma seeking their own life dreams, and though I still love the place, it’s harder to return when I no longer know the people. The things that made up my home have been scattered, divided and strewn across the country, leaving me to choose between the places and the people I’ve thought of as home--and often, I choose the easiest thing, staying where I was planted. Home is a difficult thing to find. I don’t mean to get too philosophical and sad; where I am has its own charms, among them the theatre family that sparked this whole post, and there are things I’d miss about here too. 

But when I think of home and what it means to me, I can’t help seeing images like this in my mind’s eye--softly rolling mountains bathed radiant violet in the setting sun’s light, fading to misty periwinkle in the distance beneath pink clouds. If I could stick my face through the screen and breathe that crisp mountain air, take a sniff of those pretty flowers (phlox I think?)--well, my nose would already be deep in the screen, haha. When I mutter wistfully to myself “I miss home”, this is what I’m picturing. I love this gorgeous photo :)

Anyways, we open tonight, and two people dropped out of the show last minute so I’m going to be doing a quick change to a scene that I have only rehearsed with the other actress twice now, so... wish me luck and broken limbs! 

I'm in a musical (Bright Star) and the first show is in literally two minutes so I made a blinkie in my terror