Spinning the straw into gold...

I started writing the following entry last night. 

Things are looking awfully crowded at the GRIMM halfway house, also known as Olivia and Mike’s apartment. All week, it’s been stuffed to capacity with fabrics, set pieces, and human bodies. 

“Where does everyone sleep?” you ask.

Oh, we have our system. Conveniently, Taylor has been staying up all night putting costumes together so when I leave for work at 7:15, he can take my spot in the bed. There’s also a permanent space on the floor reserved for a sleeping bag. You just have to step over three bags of costumes and a plastic pumpkin head first.

Right now, it’s going on midnight. Mike is painting a soft flat in his room, Olivia is on the floor beside him, typing her notes to the cast from this afternoon’s rehearsal, Nicole is sewing Gretel’s costume, and Taylor is bouncing around from room to room, working on the final costume piece of the show: his own. Fittingly, he wears his jester hat from Grimm 1.0. The vest he wears has about forty hand-sewn buttons. 

There are two bags of chips on the couch, right beside a sewing kit and purple-studded scissors. A frozen pizza cooks in the oven. Disney Pandora plays in one room, a podcast on The Three Musketeers plays in the other. 

Tomorrow is our opening. It’s been one heck of a process, one hell of a week. The carefree days of dance diamonds and music reviews have given way to long nights of re-staging -- swapping out One Direction for new directions and new discoveries. We’ve had our share of obstacles: I’ll be honest and vulnerable for a moment -- after running on five hours of sleep all week, gritting my teeth in the midst of some frustrations, I had a moment at work the other day when I finally reached my breaking point, mentally and physically drained; luckily the student I was working with was late so I had some time to pull myself together -- enough, at least, to successfully comment on his Yoda shirt without sobbing. That night I silenced my phone and went to bed at nine forty-five. 

It will be wonderful to finally see the fruits of all our efforts, the good, the bad, the what-in-the-name-of-Grimm-was-that. Already tomorrow looks to be our biggest show yet with 64 out of a possible 91 tickets already purchased.

And that’s how far I got.

That night, for the next five hours, I gathered the rewards for our Kickstarter donors for distribution at the box office, helped Olivia hot-glue candy (i.e. paper cupcake bottoms and multi-colored frisbees) to the candy house (i.e. a big, green soft flat that was taking up a third of her bedroom), stuffed the playbills with Fringe ballots, burned and battered Rumplestiltskin’s “contract,” and organized the apartment so that putting down the scissors or a needle and thread for a moment didn’t mean you would lose them for a half hour.

Then I napped for two hours. 

This must be what getting married is like, I remember thinking. Final preparations had to be made, and staying up all or most of the night was the only way to get them done. It was like the Little Theatre all over again. Except finally, in the midst of everything, we didn’t have to worry about that damn psychology final the next day.

When my alarm went off at seven fifteen, Taylor was sitting on the floor, silently sewing mic belts together. Olivia was curled up on the couch. Exhausted as we all were, however, we continued to GRIMM it up until the last possible minute, breaking only for Dunkin and occasional trips to the bathroom. 

At nine-thirty, we lugged everything down the steps and packed my car with the costumes and set pieces. Now this process had become a science the past week: all vertical elements (golf clubs, lamp stands, the disassembled garment rack) go in the trunk, the wooden chest and costume luggage stacked in the backseat, the barrel and the globe riding shotgun. I always got a secret kick out of everyone who happened to walk by during this process. Stuffing a mechanical arm and prop ax into the trunk, Mike suggested we mutter things like “that’ll teach him...”

GRIMM: it fits into a Mazda 3. I’m not sure yet, however, if it’s Grimm or Mazda that we’d be advertising.

Surveying my overstuffed car, I finally understood how the drivers of armored cars or ice-cream trucks must feel, transporting such precious cargo.

“You feel comfortable driving in Manhattan?”

“Hell no.”

“You know you can’t see out of your rearview mirror...”

“Uh-huh. See you in a half hour.” And, despite the fact that it was far too hot and humid out to enjoy, I sipped my large Dunkin coffee (little cream no sugar. They know me) and pulled away from the curb.

I made it to our venue, the HERE Mainstage, with time to spare. Members of the cast were already gathered at the little park across the street, trying on costume pieces or warming up their voices. After our venue director gave the okay, the cast, being the great roadie crew that they are, helped unload my car (good training, I thought, for the day GRIMM gets noticed by Gene Simmons), and then disappeared into the dark of the theater. 

I parked, gathered together my ACR bag, and, heart pounding, Fringe lanyard swaying around my neck, took my place in the theater lobby. 

For the next forty minutes, I greeted people as they came in. Most of them had already purchased tickets so it was a simple matter of waiting for the house to open. I also answered questions about the show (“How long has it been in production?” or “Is this like, the poor man’s version of Into the Woods?”), helped direct patrons to the box office, the cafe, or the restrooms, and, once the house was opened, checked tickets and handed out playbills. 

At twelve o’clock on the dot, our venue director closed the doors.

On the other side, the show was about to begin. This was it. But like Olivia told the cast earlier: once they go out there, every decision they make is right as long as they support each other and enjoy themselves. 

Indeed this cast, who had been working so hard, adapting, growing, and, most importantly, having fun, was about to do what they do best in front of dozens of people who didn’t know that most of the production team was running on two hours of sleep, that Olivia had burned her fingers three times gluing that candy house, that the last time any of us had done Grimm, we were between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one and still in college.

The audience will never know.

The box office manager tallied up the totals and informed me that we had ninety-one people in attendance. The theater holds ninety-nine. Fortunately, I was able to sneak in and watch the last half hour of the performance. The cast did a brilliant job, and it was wonderfully satisfying to finally hear the reactions of an audience -- of kids who didn’t know any better than to voice their questions and revelations aloud, of their parents who couldn’t help but giggle at Gretel’s over-the-top emotional breakdown or Emeline’s cockney accent and use of the word “bloody.” It was wonderfully satisfying. Period.

As I finish typing this now, Olivia and Taylor are still fast asleep in the other room, the remnants of our Burger King salads on the lint-littered, glitter-soaked carpet (because ordering anything else from the menu for the third day in a row might be frowned upon). 

This show, especially the past week, has taken a lot out of us. But I can say with assurance that we’re finally prepared to take just as much back.

Four more shows to go. Bring it on, Fringe.