I usually fret that I'm forgetting something

Whenever I have this feel, regardless of the fucks in my pocket, I just remind myself that they have stores where I'm going. Doesn't resolve all problems, but most of them.

Ugh, after the super gung ho email from the Bros, we got a complete about face message from them the next day.

Our licensing guy thinks their legal has questions, probably about the patent.

This is going to going to drag on, I'm afraid.

Augh.

So, I went to see The Christmas Show 2016 Deserves last night.

TW for shallow discussion of pretty much any disturbing thing you can think of.

The actors were finishing up rehearsal as we arrived. We were not significantly early.

The show started late. Now, this is a thing that happens, but, when your show is 3 hours long, it becomes much less forgivable. The director let us know that the intermission would be about ¾ of the way through the show, not at the halfway point, because plot...I guess…

There was not a scene that was not 300% longer than it needed to be. I mean, assuming that you can figure out why a scene needed to be there in the first place, which was often a challenge. The first act was basically "here are our two main characters. Let them narrate (with voice over and projections for added technical difficulties*) all the Horrible Shit that has happened in their lives." What we were told by the characters (e.g.--"I'm such a privileged person, I have no right to feel this bad") was completely undercut by showing us how EVERYONE SHE HAS EVER CARED ABOUT (except her brother) has died. Also, you cannot name-check psychological conditions and then fail to show them with any accuracy, at least, not without making people in your audience angry. There were a number of places where the author had just enough knowledge to use some terminology, but not a deep enough understanding of...pretty much anything, to really think through the implications.

Also, despite what we were told, the play was clearly NOT written for the actors available. A)There were roles that were uncast as of last week and B)The male lead is a great guy, but I don't think anyone would find him a credible quarter-native** ex-special-ops tough guy.

So, we end Act 1 with the play appearing to endorse the suicide of one character, which is, I'm sure, what the theatre board meant when they said that she could write a play about suicide***, as long as it had a happy ending…

Then, the entirety of Act 2 was "look, everything's okay now!" Like an entire hour of "I'm feeling much better" and "I'm connecting with my family" and "oh look, a boyfriend" (culminating with a nearly-inaudible and WAY THE FUCK TOO LONG and completely unnecessary 40 year time skip with entirely different actors).

Basically, editing! It's a thing for a reason! Beyond that, if a person is going to write a semi-autobiographical play, and said person has little to no theatrical experience, it would probably be better if that person didn't also direct the play (also, if there were more than a 2 month process of writing and staging the play). Someone needs to be involved who will advocate for the audience and who doesn't inherently care about the characters. Like, bless the actors, they worked SO HARD, but they deserved a much better show than this.

However, there needs to be a rule that you don't get to cast pre-pubescent kids in roles where there is the implication of a sexual relationship (e.g. the girlfriend of a character played by an actor in his late 20s), unless you are trying to make the audience feel dirty on the inside. There were plenty of places where the play was trying to make the audience feel dirty on the inside (again, for no discernible reason), but having the random implication (in visual only. The character who was verbally describing this girl [because telling is much more fun than showing, am I right?] did not include any implication that she was not age-appropriate. And it's not like there weren't adult women in the cast hanging out backstage at this point with nothing to do.) of skeevy shit was really odd.

In summary, the show was bad enough to make me angry, but not so bad as to circle back around to "enjoyable" with the exception of watching the intelligent lights (the ones you can program where they aim) dance (sometimes when they weren't even on, but more often when they turned on (continued...)

( continues...) before aiming where they were supposed to).

• I don't think the blue screen, random flashes of other images, and little HDMI icon in the corner were design choices. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm also pretty sure that we weren't supposed to get a soundtrack of heavy actor breathing between scenes. I mean, I like the tech guy. The tech guy very nearly had a nervous breakdown because of this play. You cannot undertake a technically complex play with 3 rehearsals in a performance space (note: may have bee 2 rehearsal). Also, think hard before deciding that a fog machine is the answer to any problem.

• *Let's not even BEGIN to get into the horrifying racism of that whole backstory decision

• **The play was not about suicide. I'm not sure what the play WAS about, but, yeah, not about suicide.

Holy crap, Debet.

Yeah, items 1-20 on the reaction list were variations on "What the fuck?"

It appears that bad theatre killed the thread. Sorry.

In my mind, I see you watching it like Lorelai watching the Stars Hollow musical. Clipboards and clipboards of notes and painful crying.

I didn't want to have a paper trail that people might try to look at in the theatre. Otherwise, yeah, probably would have.