It all came to this.

Two weeks of auditions.  Six weeks of rehearsals.  Days spent on building the set, securing props, publicity, promotion, and phone calls and texts and E-mails to cover every miscellaneous detail you can think of and probably a few more.  All for this.

One moment.

Opening night for Rumors.

Needless to say, the week that brought us to that moment has seen enough activity to match the previous eight, with much of our time and energy focused on building and perfecting the set.  And needless to say, our cast and crew brought the same commitment to picking up their tools as they did to picking up their scripts.  If rehearsals hadn’t brought us together already, bringing Chadd’s design to life certainly would have.  And as you can see, the result was seriously worth it:

Trying to reach that result also brought more people into the Rumors family, as so many stepped up to help us with the set and props.  It was so incredibly gratifying to see individuals and organizations, from within our creative community and from without, come forward to support us.  I’ll be posting the full list once this is over – until then, if you’re part of that company, I want to thank you for being a part of our production.  Our success is yours.

So, with everything in place at last, came That Moment.  I’ll admit it, I spent the first part of yesterday in a bit of a nervous haze.  Granted, I’m not up there on stage (yet…), but I still had my role to play last night.  And I knew that what I did backstage would directly impact what the actors could do onstage.  So I’d put quite a bit of pressure on myself.

Nonetheless, The Show Must Go On.  And so I arrived at the theater ready to go.  Ready to set props in place for the actors.  Ready to help our tech crew (including Stephen Villela, Rick Clyde, and John Martin Fitzhugh) make sure sounds and lights ran smoothly.  Ready to make sure Angela had all she needed backstage.  ready to make sure Paul had a ready supply of promotional wooden nickels (one of Alex’s many contributions to the production).  Ready to do whatever needed doing, whenever it was needed.

Finally, just after 8:00, Chadd welcomed the audience, the lights went down, the actors took their places, and the play began.

As I write this, I’m still trying to find the words for the experience of my first opening night as a crew member.  It’s easy enough to talk about what a great job the cast did.  From beginning to end, they made the most of every line, every gesture, every gag.  But seeing it as it was meant to be seen, with the set and light and sound and the energy of the audience, was new.  It was new because I was a part of making As It Was Meant To Be Seen possible.  And that’s where my vocabulary gets a little uncertain.

Which is to say, it was an amazing moment.  And it’s not over yet – as I write this, we’ve just wrapped up our third performance, with six more to go.  Along the way, we’ll have a few special guests in cameos, including Survivor‘s Rita Verreos, Great Day SA‘s Cassandra Lazenby, radio personality Chris Duel, comedian Roman Garcia, and Jade Esteban Estrada (who hit it out of the park on Friday).  And it’s also possible that a certain individual may finally see her persistence pay off, and my Inevitable Fate may come to pass…

We’ll be at the Little Carver Civic Center until August 1, with an 8PM curtain time on Fridays and Saturdays, and a 4PM start time on Sundays.  For more info about the play and how to reserve your tickets, please visit The Renaissance Guild’s website.

With that, I’ll let you go.  Once again, to those who have already come out to support us, thank you.  To those who have yet to join us, I hope you will.  And to the rest of our cast and crew, here’s to a job well done, and a job to do well again.

Thanks as always for having me along.  Until the next turn, “be seeing you…”