Dan Posluns

Well, Rocky came to its bittersweet conclusion this past weekend. I had somehow talked myself into the responsibility of making gifts for everyone who had been helping out on the show, and this proved to be a fairly monumental task, as there were no less than 17 people helping out at every single performance, plus five others we wanted to suitably honour: the director, producer, stage manager, music director and costumer. My initial plan called for a cast photo to be taken, which would be turned into photo-greeting-cards that we could sign and distribute to everyone. I was then going to find five inexpensive collage-frames for the others and load them up with photos of the show.

I ordered the greeting cards online and they arrived on Wednesday, but were printed at about a quarter of the resolution of the original file I sent in and looked horrible, so without sufficient time to place another order I wound up spending an evening designing them myself, going to Kinko’s and getting them printed and cut there. Meanwhile I was unable to find suitable collage frames in the budget I’d requested from the cast, so at one person’s suggestion I undertook the task of making the collages myself and fitting them into generic 16×20 inch frames, which was of course a much larger project than I’d originally signed on for or imagined.

In addition to these, in a stroke of luck/genius I’d come across mad scientist alphabet blocks which seemed like a perfect cast gift, but in order to give everyone blocks with meaningful letters on them I would have to order several sets. In a quick correspondence with the business, however, I found out that not only for a small price increase per block I could select individual blocks, but for a slightly greater increase they would let me pick all six sides for each block, which meant I could custom-tailor a block for each cast member. So for a smaller price than ordering multiple sets I was able to get each cast member their own customized mad scientist alphabet block with letters that I found meaningful to them. Sweet.

On top of this, I wanted to give the cast members a framed cast photo, so I had to get that taken care of as well. So last week was pretty much spent embroiled in getting all that together, and my condo looks like an arts-and-crafts tornado ran through it as a result.

Emotions ran pretty high for closing weekend. All three shows had sold out early in the week, so we knew we’d have good audiences. It was a long run and a good run and of course the only alternative to ending it while still wanting to do more would be to end it once we were sick of it, so there’s no option but to grieve and move on. My only frustration was that after many months of pristine health that was nothing short of miraculous I finally succumbed to a cold on our closing weekend, which of course had to be when they decided to make a video recording of the show. Boo. Fortunately the cold hasn’t affected my throat much, but it hit my lung capacity pretty badly, which wreaked havoc on my solos. The various meds I put myself on also impacted my acting in general, I think. Oh well.

I’ve added some more photos of the production to my gallery, including a whole slew that were taken when we went to see the movie version at the Admiral Theatre, and a couple of the cast with our most famous guest narrator, United States Congressman Jim McDermott:

Some newspaper came and snapped photos of the event as well, but I haven’t heard anything yet about the article.

As sad as I am to see Rocky pass on from my living world and into my life’s history, I finally made it back to an ensemble workshop at Unexpected yesterday and was startled at how much I missed my life there and doing improv. As much as I love doing scripted work, there is a naked honesty that improv provides that other forms of theatre cannot, and the people over there are so excellent that it pains me retroactively to have been removed from them for so long.

I suffered from the usual I’ve-been-away-I-sure-hope-I-remember-how-to-do-this syndrome, but I managed a couple of really decent scenes (and one spectacularly terrible one, but that’s how the improv cookie crumbles) and once I got into it and the feeling of it started flooding back to me, I was almost shaking from how much I missed doing it. I really look forward to sinking my teeth back in over there.

Dan.

Rocky Horror continues to consume my life, but in a good way. The microphones are still the one stinging issue that persists in being a downer for the cast… we’re now more than half way through the run, and there really is no reason for us to keep having these problems. It sucks not having any control over it, and the band is so loud that if a soloist’s microphone cuts out it’s as jarring as if they were to hit the “BLACKOUT” button on the lighting board and leave everyone in darkness.

In spite of this, it’s a great show and well worth checking out… we only have 8 more performances, so if you’re thinking of seeing the show be sure to get your tickets right away. Our Friday and Saturday performances have all been selling out as word gets around… Sunday matinées are a bit safer: we’ve been hitting about half capacity on those, although both this coming Sunday (with U.S. congressman Jim McDermott as guest narrator) and our closing Sunday are liable to be a lot more packed.

For the curious, we have some photos of the show, and I’ve uploaded a bunch of them to my album, including the following:

… Told you the show was sexy.

Dan.

The vacation was good. The more extended family came up for the last weekend, which was nice, as I get to see them even less often than my parents or brother. It was especially nice to see my grandmother, who has been in and out of the hospital these past years and is now pretty much confined to a wheelchair. My aunt also brought up Izzy, who is now 16 years old and getting a lot more bony and less active (but just as curmudgeonly as he’s always been… it’s as though his body has finally grown into his personality).

More blabbering on about Izzy… with pictures!

I got back Sunday evening. The flight was exhausting, as usual… I have a knack for somehow getting rearranged and shafted to the rear of airplanes, as both legs of my journey to Canada had already done so. When I saw the same thing on my boarding passes for the return flights, I spoke to the ticket agent and he was able to improve my seat on the shorter leg to Detroit, but was apparently unable to even access the much longer flight to Seattle on his computer. So the second leg had me at row 36 in a middle seat… the good news was that a family of four traded me the aisle so they could sit together; it should come as no surprise, though, that the bad news was that half the family was composed of a baby that wouldn’t stop crying and a little kid that wouldn’t stop talking.

So naturally much of the R&R I managed to accrue over the vacation was forfeit, and now between work and trying to catch up in the rehearsals I’ve missed for Rocky Horror I’m pretty well spent. It’s good to get back into rehearsing, but last night was my first time singing “The Time Warp” with the cast there and it was scary as pants for me, even though I’d worked on it just about every day while on vacation. Turns out most of what I’d worked on needed to be thrown out anyway, since there are a lot of nuances to the specific version we’re doing I didn’t know about (I only got the vocal score this week and have been working off of various recordings in the meantime). Everyone is very encouraging and supportive but the gap between myself and the others is dizzyingly wide… our Magenta especially has a stunning rock belt, and while I’m fortunate to have her backing me up, between that and the stellar vocals of the rest of the cast it’s all rather confidence-shaking.

Of course, my greatest dilemma is that the one thing this kind of music absolutely demands above all else is confidence, so I have no choice but to fake it and try to fool myself. Thankfully that’s an acting challenge rather than a singing challenge, so I’m better equipped to handle it.

Would that I could still fool myself in the moments between performing, though.

Dan.

I’ve obtained a photo of me in my new suit:

… Dashing.

This past weekend was hectic as a friend was visiting from Edmonton. We ran around the city doing and eating far too much. I performed at Theatresports and it was okay, although the energy was a bit weird in a way we couldn’t quite explain afterwards. I also attended what was hopefully my last wedding this summer… it was beautiful and the ceremony was (mercifully, in the summer heat without air conditioning) about the shortest I’ve ever seen.

My attempts at getting the iPhone have failed miserably so far. I went on launch day only to witness a line of several hundred people that apparently was taking as long as six hours for people to get through, and I was having none of that (although I did know three people in the line who were apparently much more dedicated than myself). I thought I stood a decent shot this morning as I returned from dropping my friend off at the airport… but after an hour and a half in line and being second to the front I was informed that they were all out, which was quite a bit infuriating as they kept insisting they didn’t know how many they had left but when the final answer is sixteen they are either deliberately misleading you or grossly incompetent. There’s talk that they might be getting more by Wednesday. My patience is wearing thin, though… I’m sick of my Ocean.

I grabbed a bunch of pictures taken from the last few hours of the Improvathon and added them to my gallery. Unfortunately I don’t have a more complete selection available. I’m hoping to get galleries online of other shows I’ve done as well… Damn Yankees, Urinetown and the like. Dredging up photos is hard, though.

I was feeling kind of ill today but I think I’m better now. It’s probably from all the sun, food and activity over the weekend. My stomach still hurts a bit though… bleagh.

We’ve been having some beautiful weather. I hope it lasts a while longer.

It’s audition season, and I have an audition every week for the next three weeks (including this one). Depending on how I do at them, I may have three callbacks as well in the final week. I’m also pre-invited to a callback in August. It’s all so much stuff… I’m almost as scared of getting cast as I am of not getting cast.

Dan.