and still actors still have their scripts on stage!  Ok… so I’m one of them but it is more of a crutch than anything else.  Besides, as I said there are still 17 days until the curtain goes up and the “NO BOOK” deadline is set for Friday.  I think tonight I will go completely off book.  I don’t need it!  There are just a few of those incidental phrases that throw me off every time during the rehearsal process.

This is kind of a different role for me.  One reason being, I have the opening line of the show.  Nothing can start until I say so!  I can hold the audience, my fellow thespians, the directors, everyone in the palm of my hand!  MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  I may have had the opening line for School House Rock but that was recorded.

Oh, yes… I received some fliers at last night’s rehearsal which I took around town to display along with some Oktoberfest announcements.  So come one come all to the Huber theatre October 9-11 and solve the mystery of whodunwhat to whom.

OOOPS… wrong show… or is it?.  Tonight was the read-through for my latest on-stage endeavor.  I will say that reading the script with the actors (sans one) was an absolute RIOT!  You Have the Right to Remain Dead is much more than an audience-participatory murder mystery, it almost plays like a melodrama.  I believe I alluded to the fact that this is a play-within-a-play with the actors portraying actors on stage as well as the characters within a very Tennessee Williams-esque production.   It will be quite a challenge to keep under control as the hilarity ensues throughout.  All of the actors are on stage throughout the entire show.  Among the colorful cast of characters are the actors within the local community theatre, the director, the teenage backstage manager, and an inept detective who I believe will be very reminiscent of Columbo (rumpled trenchcoat, tattered notepad, and all).

The fun begins when one of the “actors”  is murdered.  Each of the remaining thespians (on and off stage) and the audience itself is suspect.  Everyone has a different motive for doing the poor sap in and it is up to Officer Bainbridge to discover whodunit, how, and why.  Nothing is as it seems, the clues pile up at a hilarious rate, until the guilty party is revealed.  In order to find out who did what to whom and with what it was done to whom be sure to come to the Huber Theatre October 9-11.  A double show on October 10.  Judging from the read-through this will be yet another memorably great production but aren’t they all memorable…good or bad?