William Connell is playing Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest

Ahhhhh……TECH.

The time when we put “IT” all together.

Lighting, the set, costumes and our acting are all thrown into a dark room with an expletive enunciated prayer to gestate for 2 long days. After that, if all goes well,…… A SHOW!!

I’m actually really excited about this tech, or ‘Technical Rehearsal’ to those unfamiliar with the term. Depending on your part or the show/theatre the experience can typically be a dreaded, boring and down right tortuous few days with very little sunlight. And I’m just one of the actors; the set, lighting and costume designers stay far far longer than any of us, and they are the busy ones. The actors generally just stand on stage as lights are focused (I’ll be wearing sunglasses) and costumes tweaked. It’s of course a good time for the cast to tweak as well. I know I for one will be using my tech to run my lines as much as possible (being the shows namesake character, I have a lot to say). To pull off Wilde, and to pull it off well, requires such an intensely focused precision and specificity; if a word or syntax is misplaced you know it in milliseconds because the whole speech or sentence you were saying comes unraveled in your mouth and brain too quickly to stop, a kin to watching red wine spill on a white rug in slow motion. I had a couple of those heart-attack inducing moments during our designer run last Saturday….

Anyways, TECH.

I’m excited because I can just tell this will be one of the better techs. To start we’re (the actors) coming into day one after 2 days off! I think we’ve needed it, our brains have been sugar-starved sponges of comedic excretion the past few days, and some needed processing has been in order. Aaaaaaannd our first day will only be a straight 6hr day. Half a day of tech after 2 days off? Sounds preeeeeetty awesome, oh and our crew and director are pretty f-in awesome too! It’s a blast walking out on a complete, brand new set for the first time in your costume, magic abounds! And, at least for me, I have this voice in my head that stops me and asks “whoa, WAIT, we’re really doing this?” to which I say, “YUP.”

I think it’s going to be a good show and I’ll know it’s a good show after Wednesday night!