Gwen and Cecily tag teamed some other badass dames, watching “The Heat” tonight, and laughed our asses off in some much welcomed air conditioning.
Listen, people: 90 degree weather doesn’t work well in the Pac NW. We don’t know what to do with that shit. And PERFORMING in it with a gillion watts of lights focused on us, in twelve layers before the corsets even hit…and suit jackets and silks and wigs and hats, was pretty much the human limit of human limits.
…It’s hard to be funny when your face is melting pancake and mascara in literal streaks down your face. And it is hard to be genteel in that instance as well.
Gwendolen does not “wipe.” She does not “itch.” She doesn’t even “blot.” She just sits there and lets the sweat drop in lines down the back, off the neck, into the corset, soaking the armpits, as she sits, stands, launches herself at furniture and pretends to be delightful and cool as a cucumber throughout.
…Nothing was cool.
Even the air conditioned theater made no difference to us. Not when packed with bodies breathing hot air at us, as we bake under heat lamps.
…And holding to what became the trend of the weekend, (after our phenomenal house on Thursday), the audiences across these past three days gave very little (and in some cases negative zero) help in energy throughout…whether they happened to be enjoying the performances or not. Thus, forcing us to manufacture everything from scratch…and sometimes even dig ourselves out of the black hole vortex that they seemed to be sucking us into, in a sweaty, clinging mass of humanity.
Some blamed the heat.
…By today’s matinee, I had totally given up on any responsive expectations, and just went out there to tease and flirt and argue and reason with some characters I know. Played with the team with less feed-back expectation than an average rehearsal… so thus wasn’t thrown when that is what we got.
…Then it was onto spraying down the drycleaning with vodka-water, laundry in the take-away bag…all the hats and jabots and cravats and cufflinks, earrings and watches, into our holding boxes…shoe-horned the shoes, aired out the corsets, wrote up our costume grievances, and beat it into an afternoon of heat waiting just outside the theater doors that all but smacked us on our asses.
Gwen and Cecily solved the issue by taking refreshment of giant lemon ice-waters elsewhere, and following up with ice creams, before home and laying about like limp ragdolls until regrouping for movie times.
…A rest-time that included discovering a delightful new talent…her music happily floating from Naughty Girl’s speakers beside me. A little Regina Spektor, meets Ingrid Michaelson, meets Lily Allen.
…A small collection of music. She writes her own, and grabs studio time when she can. I think she’s something pretty smile-worthy, and you might too. Hear and grab her tunes if you wanna, here. I’m pretty partial.
…And not just cuz she my Cecily
~D
