As I write this, I’ve just finished the opening weekend of The Hollow: Three performances down, ten to go.
For those of you unfamiliar with theater, the week before opening is typically known as tech week: This is when the technical elements of the show — the lights, the music, the sound effects, and so forth — are added. Obviously, this can also become an incredibly stressful time.
Fortunately, this was one of the good tech weeks: Everything was well-organized and ran smoothly.
Particularly fortunate, in fact, because I was rapidly falling apart at the seams.
On Tuesday I went to bed with a slight tickle at the back of my throat. When I woke up on Wednesday, this had become a painful sore throat. I immediately began treating it with cough syrup and spent the day in bed, but by the time I went in to rehearsal that night my muscles were aching and any hope that this was just going to be a 24 hour bug were rapidly fading.
By the time rehearsal ended on Wednesday, my voice was beginning to show signs of strain. This was bad news: An actor without his voice is just a mime. And nobody likes mimes.
But when Thursday dawned I was pretty hopeful: I was still sick, but I felt much better than I had the day before and my voice felt fine. Opening night was on Friday, so if I showed as much improvement over I’d be feeling close to 100%.
Thursday evening, however, became catastrophic. When I left home to go to rehearsal I was fine. By the time I got to rehearsal 20 minutes later, my voice was almost completely gone — the only thing I had left was a sickly croak.
Now people were beginning to get worried looks on their faces whenever they heard me say anything. But I was still hopeful: Even if my voice had decided to take a vacation, I was still feeling much better. I had my fingers crossed that this was just the tail end of the illness and that I would wake up on the morrow completely rejuvenated.
… no such luck. When I woke up on Friday, my voice was only slightly improved. I spent the day dousing it with every medicine and home remedy I could think of, but by the time I was called for the show things were still not looking good. I had managed to resuscitate my voice, but it was pretty clear that it could collapse at any time.
And the real problem was the huge span of time in the middle of Act 2 when I don’t leave the stage: I’m the Inspector in an Agatha Christie mystery. I’m the main character. I stay on stage and continue asking questions as other people cycle on and off the stage. All I do is talk. If my voice decides to become frog-like, not only am I screwed — the entire production is screwed.
And, being opening night, the reviewers are of course in the house. So if things go down the drain, not only have I screwed up this performance — I’ve potentially screwed us for the entire run of the show.
No pressure or anything, though!
By mid-afternoon I was hatching emergency plans: There was a drinks table onstage as part of the show. I contacted the stage manager and asked her to make sure there was extra water on the table so that I could improvise crossing to the drinks table and pouring myself a drink if I needed it.
Next up, I packed myself a voice-saving kit: I had cough drops. Bottled water. Cough syrup. Vitamin-C doses. I also pulled out a bottle of brandy and asked my girlfriend to pick me up a bottle of honey.
But I was absolutely terrified: There was simply no guarantee that any of this was going to work.
I arrived at the theater, checked in with Lydia, my wonderful stage manager. Touched base with the other actors who might be thrown or need to make minor adjustments to their own blocking to accommodate my crosses to the drinks table (although I had taken the trouble to identify specific moments when I could do this with minimal disruption). The rest of the cast — bless them — rallied around me with many good wishes (although I could still see the worry behind their eyes).
The thing that made the final difference, I think, is the warm brandy and honey. This is not healthy for your voice in the long-run, but in the short-term it will completely blast open your sinuses; warm your throat; and loosen your vocal cords. I dosed myself with a fresh shot before every entrance, and then — during my long sequence of scenes — I made two pit-stops by the drinks table to pick up a glass of water (and two more stops later in the play).
As plans go, this was not ideal. Opening night is not a good time to be losing your voice and improvising your lines while drunk.
But it worked.
There were a couple of times when I felt my voice right on the verge of breaking, but it never did. The next night I was able to pull it back to a single shot of brandy-and-honey and a single visit to the drinks table. On Sunday I brought the brandy just in case, but was able to skip it and make it through the show with just a single visit to the drinks table.
People who saw the show said they loved it, and those who didn’t know about the catastrophe that was always one strained vocal cord away from sweeping us all away were shocked to hear me croaking in the lobby after the show.
And it was only after it was all done that I realized how desperately terrified I had been.
Fridays – Saturdays at 7:30pm
Sunday Matinees at 2:00pm
Pay What You Can Night – Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 7:30pm
Audio Described Performance – Sunday, May 18th at 2:00pm
