Third time is the charm? But this is my fourth time!

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It’s raining in Dublin, after two beautiful days. That’s good when you’re in the theatre, because beautiful, long days mean that people want to stay out, instead of going indoors to see a show.

So here’s to full houses tonight…we’ve had small but appreciative audiences thus far, and Tuesday night’s performance was strong and well, lit. (As opposed to well-lit).

There was a last-minute scramble on Monday (Opening Night) when we arrived for a runthough, when we discovered that the lighting plot we’d used to set lights/levels during our tech on Sunday had been changed (which is a cardinal sin at a festival!), and suddenly the actors were sitting in the dark, rather than in the past. And there was another show before ours (which had also done its tech with the original plot, and was similarly stunned) that had to go up at 7:30.

We made up something, and I was rude to people, which I instantly regretted and which will be something I think about late at night, added to the catalogue of evil I have done to others in my life, dating back to the previous century, starting around the time I tripped Lisa H. in the hall when I was about 6, then ran away after she fell and split her chin and then had to get stitches.

I won’t run through the litany…it extends nearly half a century.

Oh, the mistakes you can make, even in your fourth try! Each year, I find new ways to screw up.

I can’t actually remember what I did between our second tech and the show. I know I got the programs and gave them to our venue manager, I distributed presents.

I waited upstairs as the first show finished; it’s a musical, and I heard the singing and the flute and piano, then the applause. Then downstairs to the theatre, to take a spot toward the back of house and hope for the best.

They played the show well, the audience loved it, and got it, and I wished I could SEE the actors better. We’d made plans for yet another tech at 5 on Tuesday, and I let it go for the night. We wandered out to grab a bite before the opening night party…and should have remembered from last year that there wasn’t going to be anything open. Because it was Monday night. After 9pm. In Dublin.

We settled on a slice of pizza in a little storefront just off Temple Bar, where there were black & white art photos on the wall, including one of Lady Bunny, and it was like a little glimpse of a guardian angel from NYC watching over us. I’m sure Bunny’s been called that before.

Then up to the Arlington Hotel for the festival’s opening night reception. Because of our start time (8:30), it looks as though we’re always going to be among the first arrivals to the after-show gatherings (show times range from 7:30, 8, 8:30 and 9:30). So we grabbed some free wine, and soon the other folk started trickling in. And pretty soon it was a real, full-on party.

Meeting the folks from the other shows is always a joy; with some, it’s the start of a friendship will go the distance (I still see & talk to people I met the first time we came in 2008). We started putting names and faces to titles of shows, and tried to figure out how to see all of them, and talked about touring, and NYC & Edinburgh Fringe, and getting from places like LA to Dublin.

The volunteers were there in force. This is a DIY festival, completely volunteer-run and administered. And every year, you see someone get hit hard with the “I must be in theater” stick, and if you keep coming back, you can see them become working theater pros: writers, directors, actors, stage managers. I got into a conversation with one guy who was over the moon with the realization that HE was part of this, and that it was important for there to be gay theatre. And he could help it keep going on, AND he had a heritage to learn about. He was grinning from ear to ear and talking about all the shows he had to see, and the people he needed to know about, and I told him to friend Robert Patrick on Facebook for a start.

And it was long past the last tram, so we hopped in a taxi, and fell into bed after what felt like 2 or 3 long days instead of one.

We began again the next day, and I felt myself falling into the routine that guides me when I’m here, except that I no longer pack my bag, enjoy a hotel breakfast, and move on to the next one. In the previous professional iteration, I used to have to get to the next night’s lodging, unpack and get resettled, and set up the computer to do the morning’s work: whether it’s something for the dayjob, or another project, or publicity for this one.

In the Spencer Dock apartment, we worked out who was going to keep the keys, and who was going out and who was coming back, and I set out late morning on various efforts. The apartment might be too far out for getting to the theater easily, but it is in a neighborhood I’ve never explored. The actors have been out & about, running and looking at things, and joining the gym, and I have been the curled over the computer screen drone, because that’s my job here (and well, because I’m just like that). I used to get fussy about not being able to go out and about, but a few epiphanies ago, I realized that I’m here to work, not visit, and if I get some time in outside the room, the apartment, the laptop, then I enjoy it…but I need to keep TCB, to quote Elvis and Bachman Turner Overdrive.

So I walked down to the Google office across the gorgeous Samuel Beckett Bridge, and through a neighborhood that isn’t touristy at all, but turning from industrial (along with little houses cheek-by-jowl), sticking out amid the shiny glass buildings along the river. And when you’re in the middle of the bridge, you can look out and see the huge ocean tankers outside the mouth of the river, and maybe hear a blast of their horn.

A few minutes later, I went back to the familiar, by flashing my company ID at a turnstile, and introducing myself to a colleague I’d never met, and walking down to the cafeteria where, just as at the home office, people lined up in an eye-catching space and loaded their trays with good, healthy food (and other stuff). There were homemade chocolate chip doughnuts!

I joined a couple of women finishing up their lunch, and chatted with them. Handed out postcards of course. That goes without saying that everyone I meet in Dublin gets a postcard. The clerks in the stores, the bartenders, the guy who rented us the apartment. One hopes it will pay off.

After that, I had a massage; I always have a massage when I travel, because there’s nothing better for the bodyache and tension, not even beer. The touch pulls the bad stuff out and leaves just the resting sinews and bone and soul, and it’s easy to relax when everything is warm and soft and smooth, and even the pressure on spasmed muscles gives way to relief.  

I asked how to get up to Parnell St., and there was a bus right outside that would take me there. I climbed up top, and we rode through neighborhoods South of the Liffey, some I’d seen before, some of which were new.

In the spell of relaxation and panorama of Dublin from above, I realized that some of my favorite moments traveling, anywhere, have been when I’m on a bus or a train or a tram, and I’m looking out the window and seeing the people just living and doing their business, and I’m on my way somewhere to do something good.

Similar moments in Las Vegas, and Hamburg and San Diego and Brisbane, and Paris, and Venice, and London flashed into my head. For a homebody who spends too much time at the computer, I sure like getting around.

The bus dropped me in front of the theatre, and it was time for Tech III: Getting It Done. The actors were backstage rehearsing, and David and I and Liane, our admirable tech director, got down to it. We pulled the set pieces in, and Liane worked with David on what lights were where, the technical complexities of the lightboard (subcues, masters, and various other quasi-BDSM sounding terms). She brought in some pink gels. We pulled Danielle & J. in to see if we could see them.

David in the booth.

I’m not a tech person, not a director, not a stage manager. The realization, rather than being depressing or causing anxiety (as it had the day before) was suddenly freeing. I do not know what I am doing, therefore, all I can do is keep it on a simple yes/no binary. Can you see the actors? Yes. But not there. So change the light so you can see him there. Don’t ask them to find their light. Give them light. And a pink gel.

There is no real subtlety in the new lighting plot. But you can tell when there’s a transition, and you can see their faces and their bodies, and what they have in their hands, and they do not disappear into shadow.

The rest is for the professionals in that field.

After tech, I went shopping to restock the fridge, and got on the tram with milk and bread (just like for a blizzard!) and jam and fruit and yogurt, and the kind of things you like to find when you stumble out of bed and see what’s easy to make. Then dashed right back to the theatre to hang posters and make sure there were enough programs, and pick up the ice tea and juice-that-can-pass-for-wine, and deliver them backstage, and wait for the first show to come down.

On the well, lit stage starting at half-eight(ish), they gave a very strong performance. There were Americans in the audience who got the regionalisms and even laughed at the recurring Walmart reference.

Afterward, we trotted down to the Front Lounge (and were the first arrivals), and watched drag karaoke for awhile, and the eye candy (of the male variety), and had a beer and greeted our fellow festies as they straggled in.

We caught the last LUAS back in a sprinkle of Dublin rain, and finished another post-midnight day, and retired to our chambers. For me, it was another fitful night…filled with the sort of almost-conscious, almost-lucid dreams that replay the day or whatever else you’re worried about in hideous, nonsensical surreal ways. I can’t imagine that’s very deep sleep. And it comes and goes…sometimes here sometimes at home, there’s just times like that.

But today beckons, and I should get dressed and eat some toast & jam, and go out into the sprinkle and sunshine, and keep scheming and dreaming and planning on how to do this right one of these years.