M*A*S*Hed

This is going in the school paper, so I figured it would be good enough to post here.

What it's like being M*A*S*Hed

by Tim Strain

Thursday, November 16th, Opening Night

I'm exhausted already. It's been a long day already, with a trip to Bowdoin College and a lot of restless attempts to sleep on the bus. I couldn't sleep last night, probably didn't get more than five hours. How could I? It's my first non-musical show at the high school, and I'm nervous. I've been groggy all day and had to slug through it all with red eyes tinted with the eye liner and mascara that I couldn't get off after last night's dress rehearsal. I stay after school to do 'the work' that I have no time for after the show. Surprise, surprise, that plan got axed. Instead of working hard like I promised myself I would, I end up listening to music for three hours. At 5:15, the cast arrives. The Diva Himself, Zach McCoubry, rolls in with his purple aviators. Marcus Strout blares the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Megan Curtis and her mom bring in the now-famous pizza bread, a tradition before each show.

And then, the make-up.

Oh god, the make-up. I would rather lick a toilet seat then wear it, but hey, it's important, I'm told. I apply the cake to my face and neck, put on my 'manstick', and Mrs. Mercer applies my eye liner. The butterflies start to kick in as I'm never going to have another M*A*S*H practice again. The realization hurts, in a bittersweet way. I try to keep my cool though, since I'm an upperclassman now and a 'veteran' (isn't that a scary thought...).

Jyselle Joplin yells out "five minutes!" and the electricity in the air surges. Most of the cast is in the cafeteria, which has been deemed the base of operations now that the music room is dark and talking is forbidden, to cut down on the excess volume. Feeling the need to create some sort of new tradition, we throw around an orange until it turns to pulp, and Kavan Gervais gets hit, well, where it hurts. And then the most anticipated/dreaded word of the night rings through: "PLACES!!!!"

We head out on stage, not able to see a thing and hardly able to contain our emotions. Ryan McGowan and Kyle Stetson start the play off with their phone-to-phone scene, and all bets are off; the show has begun. All the hours practicing have come down to this. It goes surprisingly well, with an ensemble cast spitting out their lines quickly, the way it was meant to be acted out.

And like that, it's over. Two months of practicing have come and gone, and the curtain closes on opening night, after only about two hours. We hug each other, laugh our asses off, and all breathe a collective sigh of relief. "That was the hard part", we all try to think. Only four more to go.

Friday, November 17th, Second Night

I bust through the double doors of the Gym Entrance at 5:45, blood surging and mind revitalized after the best nap I've had in a long time. I feel a little streak of cockiness as I walk into the cafeteria and it seems as if it's business as usual: the make-up is out, the costumes are hung, and the music is booming. It's going to be a good night.

I walk through the routine, applying the cake, putting on the man-stick (ahem), and getting the eye liner. Its weird to think of applying make-up as a normal thing, but it really is, especially when I'm pushing my other fellow castmates from the mirror that we're all sharing. I put on my uniform and dog tags, then tie up my boots. The curtain opens again, and it seems to me that tonight is the SparkNotes version of opening night; short, sweet, and to the point. I find myself lieing on the floor, in my position for my first lines. It's like I'm watching something bigger than myself unfold, something whose individual parts are greater than its body as a whole. The two hours are suddenly up, and we're taking our curtain calls. Maybe it was the nap, but I feel like I've just floated through the night. I say bring on tomorrow, back-to-back shows and all that accompanies them.

Saturday, November 18th, Third and Fourth Shows

After a long night of sleep after an eventful Friday, I arrived at the school around 12:30. We were missing about half the cast and our director, mostly from District II Band auditions. Most of the cast that is around is pretty groggy, with not a lot of energy (a matinee after a night show is tough). We sleepwalk through the make-up, get into costume, and pass the time until about 1:40, when the band returns in a frenzy, needing to get ready before places will be called at 1:55. Fortunately, everyone gets ready on time and all goes smoothly.

Except for the crowd.

To be completely honest, this was the worst crowd any of us in the show had ever experienced, and we have some very experienced actors. There was only about forty or fifty people in the auditorium (about three-hundred showed up the night before), and we didn't hear much from them at all. It's tough, and frustrating, to put so much effort into something for as long as we have, and then get nothing back from an audience. The custom after the show is for the actors to jump off the stage to greet/hug/receive compliments from the audience after the show is over. Many of us, myself included, were too pissed off to do so. We just went back to the cafeteria and waited for the nightcap to ensue.

And it did, with a blast. After about three hours of waiting (the first show only took about ninety minutes through curtain calls, thank God), we suited up out boots, tucked in our fatigues, and marched out to the stage in front of a full house. As the curtain opened, I had a good view of the crowd, which from the get-go I could tell was livelier and more energetic than that of the afternoon. This couldn't have been more of a relief. Personally, I could barely stifle a smile that came naturally after the crowd laughed at a few of my jokes, which the afternoon crowd hadn't. 98% of the play ran smoothly (I messed up one line-DOH!) and by the end, we were all in a great mood. We all went optimistically (though drained after back-to-back performances) into the thought process for the next day. It's pretty odd to think of it as the beginning of the end.

Sunday, November 19th, The Finale

That's the show, folks. I'm sitting here now, in the music room, as the set is being struck. M*A*S*H is over, and there is barely any evidence that it ever existed. Not here anyway. We are all in our street clothes, with the costumes already wrapped up, and the stage is almost completely empty. The pizza party is going to start in about a half hour, and that will really be the nail in the coffin. We'll sign each other's posters, which will hang on many off our walls, and then we will exchange good-bye hugs, as if we aren't going to see each other every single day for the rest of the year.

As for the show, it ran prety smoothly. We know it inside-out by now, although that only goes a certain length during The Event. There were plenty of stumbles and screw-ups, but by this point we were laughing at them afterward, instead of stressing over them. I don't want to get too sappy, but it's been a great time. In two hours we will all be out of the building and back in the real world. I've got Spanish to work on and believe me, I won't have much energy or focus tonight. When I start stressing about that though, I'll sit back, take a deep breath, and close my eyes. I'll smile as I think about the new friendships that have formed, the old ones that have been solidified, the script we all hated, and the laughs we all shared. It's been an up-and-down ride, but hey, that's show business.