So we had a solid opening weekend and now is the time of cleaning costumes. Although I have to deal with my own socks, we otherwise have the luxury with the Players of a team responsible for laundering and dry cleaning everything else. (Though I don’t know how Tina is going to deal with the suspenders that are sewn onto my suit pants.)
I’ve been sleeping well, but I felt the need for a power doze offstage during the end of Act I. My blood sugar just falls off the table mid-afternoon, I guess. In the James Lee, there are two more or less comfortable places to hang out between scenes: the interior loading dock area, just offstage left, furnished with a few chairs and a scary second-hand couch; and the makeup room downstairs, which usually has the outside door open for a breeze. Where you don’t want to be, at least in the summer, is stage right, in the shallow wing space with hardly anything to sit on; or downstairs in “the hole,” the combination lumber storage and dressing area. The hole is also where the dimmer packs for the lighting equipment are. The very hot dimmer packs.
The rest of this character’s accoutrements are fun, too. I have a tight-fitting pair of Harry Truman spectacles scrounged from somewhere: good thing that I don’t have to read anything through them, because they’re bifocals with a strong reading correction. And Beth has become my bow tie wrangler—just one of her jobs along with hair and makeup.