NOTE: I am currently working as an assistant director for a play with an all-male cast at an off-off-Broadway theater for part of the week, and working as a server at a French restaurant with an all-female wait staff the rest of the week. I’m documenting my experiences in this series of posts. The production is The Changing Room, directed by Terry Schreiber at the T Schreiber Studio. The names of the restaurant and my coworkers are withheld for privacy.
I’m reminded this week how exhausting it can be: both restaurant work and theater work are, at times, physically, mentally and emotionally draining. As a server, especially on a busy night (as we just had this week, with Valentine’s Day), you can get so overloaded with tables and orders that your brain goes on the fritz and you get down “in the weeds”, as they say; then there’s all the bustling around and running back and forth you have to do, which takes a toll on your body; as well as the fake-smiling and smothering your contempt for difficult customers, which can be emotionally taxing. Add it all up and by the end of some nights, you feel like your body is one big ball of soreness, your mind is gone to mush, and you just might strangle the next person who looks at you. On nights like those, after closing, some of the girls (myself included) will often steal away behind the bar and pour ourselves a quick glass of wine before heading out, just to help ease ourselves back into the real world.
In the theater, the week prior to opening night is always an exhausting one: the actors, crew and designers spend eight to twelve hours a day in the theater, several days in a row, meticulously and carefully putting the finishing touches on the show, trying to nail down every last detail – sound, lights, cues, props, sets, costumes, entrances, exits, actions, reactions, etc. We aren’t there yet with The Changing Room, but it’s fast approaching: opening night is Saturday, February 26, and tech week starts TOMORROW! Even though I’ve only recently discovered the exhausting nature of restaurant work and am only now starting to adapt to it (it’s a miracle that I managed to be an actor for so long WITHOUT working in food service!), I have been working in theatrical production for at least 15 years now, so I’m all prepared for tech: I’ve taken most of the next week off from work at the restaurant, I’ve done all my laundry, cleaned my apartment, and stocked up on plenty of snacks and made-ahead meals to keep in the studio fridge during rehearsals. I once worked with a producer who stated that she didn’t “believe” in tech without food, and would always keep snacks and beverages around for her cast and crew during technical rehearsals. Because it’s tech! And tech is exhausting.
Rugby is a pretty exhausting game as well – especially rugby league, the type of game played by the lads in The Changing Room. In his background notes on the text, playwright David Storey writes that it is “a very tough, professional, tackling, running and kicking game” in which the players “wear little or no padding,” and that it is “full of fouling and physical exhaustion.” Even acting like a rugby league player can be physically demanding: for instance, in the second act, when the players run back into the locker room for the ten-minute break between the first and second halves of the game, they have to look as if they’ve just been playing hard and fast for the last forty minutes or so, on a field that’s nearly frozen and in weather that chills to the bone. The actors have to psych themselves out right before this scene: jumping jacks, running up and down the hall, push-ups, rubbing hands together, tensing up their backs and shoulders… anything to trick their bodies and their subconscious minds into believing in the circumstances of the cold and the game, leading them to more authentic behavior as they walk onstage. It’s gotten to the point now where every time we come upon that point in the play, I involuntarily shiver with the “fake” chill the actors are bringing in with them as they enter!
Of course, all of this exhaustion isn’t for nought; after all, nothing really worth doing is easy. We made a lot of money on Valentine’s Day at the restaurant; and although tech can be tedious, by the end of it you (hopefully) have a fully lit, fully cued, fully costumed show, ready to open; and for all the bumps, bruises and cuts a rugby player may endure, the aches and pains eventually fade with a hot bath, a stiff pint, and the thrill of victory.
