So, here’s what happened.

About four months ago, I wandered onto Craigslist and saw an audition notice for Deep Impact Theater, listing an ambitious schedule that included Antigone, Titus Andronicus, Tartuffe, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysistrata and the Charles Mee duology Summertime and Wintertime. It said that the stipend would be $1,000 per performance, which I found hard to believe. But I applied for the audition, which was outdoors in an amphitheatre space on the San José State campus. I successfully demonstrated that I could make myself heard, and was offered roles in Romeo and Juliet and Wintertime. I was also recruited for a long-form improvisation show, “Catharsis.” I asked whether the stipend quoted in the audition notice was on the level. Director told me it was, but I decided that I would believe it when I saw it.

By the time rehearsals started, Antigone, Titus Andronicus and Summertime were off the schedule. Those of us who accepted roles were required to sign a “ways to the stage” agreement stating that we would be willing to rehearse outdoors (to help promote the festival), sell tickets and get our lines learned. Under this agreement, we were required to come to rehearsals at least 15 minutes early, to avoid delays in starting. Nary a word about compensation. As I said, I decided I would believe it when I saw it.

It was about two weeks after the start of rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet that the director first failed to show up. We could not reach him on his cell, and the assistant director’s mailbox was full. The first grumbles were heard, to the effect that if he expected the actors to show up 15 minutes early he should extend the same courtesy to us. The next day, the A.D. sent us all an e-mail of apology: the director had come down with food poisoning and the A.D. was dealing with a catastrophe at his “real job.”

And so it went. We usually rehearsed on the quad at San José State, or in a vacant studio in the Communications building. Not all of the roles were cast, and the process was slow, possibly because the director came down with “food poisoning” a few more times. (To which I said: “I thought he was going to stop eating at that place.”)

Some of us had costume fittings. Some of us sold tickets. (I didn’t.) We moved rehearsals to the San José city park where we would perform. It had no amphitheatre space of any sort and miserable yellow lights. Supposedly, a stage was being built. We rehearsed as best we could in the twilight dark. Director called a makeup workshop, at which attendance was MANDATORY. I pointed out that I had gotten an “A” in the makeup class I took at Lycoming College many years ago and thought myself fairly good at it. It was scheduled for 5:00 pm on a Friday in the park. I did not go, as my schedule at my desperately-needed “real job” precluded getting there by 5:00. When I showed up for a scheduled Romeo and Juliet rehearsal at 7:00, I found several furious actors who had taken time off from their jobs, fought rush-hour traffic and gotten there at 5:00… but NO ONE had showed up. No reaching the director, either. Apparently, he told the cast of Tartuffe that the workshop was cancelled, but the message didn’t get to the rest of us. He never did show up that evening. The “Catharsis” director (who was playing Tybalt and choreographing the sword fights) took the rehearsal.

By Sunday night, two of the actors had walked out of the productions, sending off angry e-mails to the rest of the company. This brought an equally angry message from our costumer (the director’s girlfriend) about the “negativity” and back-stabbing going on in the company. I responded with a measured private message pointing out that I had never heard that the makeup workshop was cancelled, and that little apparent effort had been made to communicate that fact.

She e-mailed me back with a confidential message, the gist of which was that the director has a serious health problem. The times when he had “food poisoning” had in fact been times when he’d had to go to the hospital. I responded that I thought things would have gone better if we had known of his limitations from the beginning. After all, one of my recent productions had a director who was eight months pregnant on opening night. (Yes, I know that pregnancy is not a disease.) It’s been my experience that people get really upset when they think they’re being treated like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed s***); after all, the lesson of Watergate was that the cover-up had far worse effects than the initial crime.

I was initially sympathetic to the director’s health problems, but his posting of an audition notice on Craigslist took a good chunk of that away. I won’t work with him again, which is a shame, as the only other director I won’t work with was actually abusive.

A two-day leave for the director turned into a complete departure. He dumped everything in the lap of the assistant director. The cast of Lysistrata, which had lost three members in the crisis, voted to cut its losses and cancel. “Catharsis” was also cancelled. The other shows voted to go on. Then, after much waiting around at City Hall, the two directors learned that a) we had no permit for a park performance; b) the permits are given only for regional parks, not community parks; c) there was a 90-day wait for those permits; and d) we risked arrest if we attempted to present the plays in the planned park anyway.

Now renamed “One for the Road,” we went on with a few performances. We drew a few people to the performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream at Memorial Park in Cupertino and to a free preview of Romeo and Juliet at Trinity Cathedral. Then, another actor dropped out. I filled in for him as Demetrius in Dream at Trinity. That night’s performance of Romeo and Juliet was cancelled due to only one person showing up to see it. (The only other time I’ve had that happen was the notorious Kaddish for Rubenstein, which was called “theatrical vomit” by one of the Philadelphia alternative newspapers.) Wintertime was cancelled, as were the San Francisco performances of Tartuffe.

Cast of Midsummer Night’s Dream after the performance at Trinity Cathedral.

This was the sort of experience that makes a “real job” look good. But, I did get $300 out of the experience. I’ve made some new friends. I’m sure we’ll be like a bunch of old vets who went through the Battle of the Bulge or the Tet Offensive. And, I’ve landed in another production already! Go back to my homepage to see where I’ll be next.

Last updated September 2, 2008.