Chagrin and bear it: The show must go on

Photo by Russell Young

Within weeks of our Portland debut, Teatro Milagro is on the road with the beginning of its year-long national tour of  B’aktun 13.  The show went well in Portland, but we knew there would be challenges to performing the show on tour. From venue to venue, you never know what to expect; you have to remain flexible and adaptable. Without too much pain and suffering, however, we solved early on the problem of protecting our precious conch shells for the tour by re-staging the opening!  Oh, what a sacrilegious blow we dealt to the director, our most respected deity of theatre.  Yet he knew that day was coming and we all shall live to see tomorrow without too much chagrin.

After spending a week preparing for what we would have hoped was a glorious first journey of the show into the outside world of non-theatre venues, we arrived to our first school performance site to find a theatre without stage lights!  They had been taken down and carried away in the middle of the night by their children’s theatre owners.  Oh, the sadness that fell upon our chagrined spirits! What's more is that the school's choir director then informed us the existing dimmer packs had been blown out and was adamant that fluorescent lighting would have to do.  Oh dear, more chagrin upon this woesome tale!

Yet, from the wings entered two amazing overachievers from the drama program who proposed an incredulous solution.  Upon electrical inspection by an authorized official, the youngsters proceeded to individually patch each instrument with a separate power cord, then plugged six power cords into each side of the stage.  During the show — via hand signals and visual cues — one student would unplug his six cords as the other student would plug his in, thus creating the requested blue wash for one scene followed by a gold wash for the next scene.  Then during the hurricane sequences they would wiggle the plugs to create a flashing effect.  It was some of the most ingenious lighting on the fly that I have seen in over 20 years.

So we hail the creative energy of youth and send a shout out to the theatre program of Corbett High School – you get the gold star for the day and the drama teacher should get a big red apple. We can only hope that all our touring shows will be this great!