LOVE HATE
WAR PEACE
If you have ever been backstage at Big Idea, this has been etched on the wall....when working on KJ, the director (Scott Divine) pounded a version of this into our psyche from day 1.....
love - hate - live - die
these are the choices that the Smiths and Joe Cooper had ....no more no less....
It seems surreal that we left the majority of the Smiths laying dead and dying and Dottie giving her final declaration last night after wanting to do this show for 3 years....for as a semi-sensitive guy that I am...I made it through the closing night pretty well....
Shannon Mahoney (Sharla) and I had a few final moments as our characters...feeding me parts of our back story every night to get Ansel fired up to confront his son....she was masterful at it...taunting Ansel - pestering him - warning him....every night she was a champ..
Dear sweet, Kat Wolinski.... one of the scenes I had internal struggles with was with Kat...throttling and subjecting his daughter so that a stranger may use her for his wants.....every night when Ansel exited - I would make sure she was ok....
it was clear...her and Shannon have the biggest fucking balls in this cast or of any cast in any show Sacramento has seen...hands down...wanna challenge me on it?? Bring it...the hell that those 2 women/characters go through is like none other has had to endure ...and every night they gave 120% and were ready for more!
Rick Eldridge - our Will Farrell - Joe Cooper....fucking intimidation in a 6'5" package...and backstage...every much the gentleman that Joe was (without the sadistic fuck-ness in him)
Justin Munoz - holy shit...want a fight to look the most real ever? want someone to throw themselves into the abyss of darkness? Justin's your man...68% anyway.....
our director....Mr. Divine and I had many MANY emails and face to face conversations as to who Ansel is and would be .... a few times I thought he was out of his ever lovin' mind.....but he pulled shit outta me that I didn't know what deep down in there...for such an alpha male as I like to think I am...pulling out the cowardice, emasculated, dullard that Ansel is was more of a chore than one would think.....(side note - big thanks to David Fox for dealing with all this like a pro and champ....friggin RTE boy....lol)
I digress...I began by telling you about closing.....I was fine...great...felt good about the performance.....but at curtain call...we normally bow, then exit....as I began to exit, I looked at Justin and he said 'let's do one more'.....and then my tear started to fall....the whole sold out crowd rose to its feet and with that....it was over....
I am sure I will have some after thoughts in the next week or so...but I wanted to write this while fresh in my mind....I loved seeing this on the wall every night...it truly is that simple most times.....
Thanks to everyone who came out to see this production and support the theater. Thanks to those of you who lived, loved, related to and had their stomach turned....we loved all of you (well, maybe except the one patron with cell phone that lit up at the suckiest of times.....)
and for those who didn't.........
