Dreamer Luisa, caught up in romance, anywhere, everywhere, wanting “her bandit” (El Gallo) to whisk her away to see the world.
Luisa:
“It’s a far better thing that I do now
Than I have ever done before!”
Isn’t that beautiful? That man was beheaded.
El Gallo:
I’m not surprised.
(Sorry to ruin the moment, but my hair is freakin’ ridiculous. And my comma eyebrows. That’s Leo as El Gallo. He was so OLD, like, 25.)
El Gallo sings of visions of the larger world, seducing her with glories, glossing over horrors. Luisa eats it up.
I seem to see Venice
We’re on a lagoon
A gondolier’s crooning
A gondola tune
The air makes your hair billow blue in the moon
I could swoon!
You’re so blue in the moon!
El Gallo promises to run away with her. She asks for a kiss first and he kisses her on the eyes — her dream come true. (Sheesh, Luisa. Dream big, girl!)
El Gallo:
One word, Luisa, listen:
I want to tell you this –
I promise to remember too
That one particular kiss
… And now hurry; we have a lifetime for kisses.
Luisa:
You’ll wait here?
El Gallo:
I promise.
(Liar! LIAR! Yeah, he’s not there when she gets back so she can learn, you know, a thing or two about the real world. As an aside: I’d forgotten what a great face old man Leo had. And huge hands! Good Lord. Also, I hated that blouse with a white-hot hate. It just fit weird. In the privacy of my dorm room, I sobbed heartfelt odes to my vanity about having to wear it. Good times. Good times.)
I am dying!!!
First of all: YOUR eyebrows?? Check out HIS eyebrows in that first photo! It’s hysterical!
I love your expression in that second one, actually.
I can’t get enough of these play photos. They’re like crack. Not that I’ve done crack. But you know what I mean.
Hahahahaha! He has caterpillar eyebrows. How did I miss that?
Yeah, I’m partial to that second one, too.
The first one kinda cracks me up because we’re so opposite. I’m all, “Isn’t that beautiful … he was beheaded” and he’s just wry — “I’m not surprised.” At least I think that’s the approximate moment here.
I love Leo’s profile in that last one. The light is hitting him just right.
It’s weird. I don’t have photos like this of other shows I’ve done. To my great great sadness. And I wasn’t even supposed to have these — but the photographer who took them GAVE me a set.
Also: I loved his butt chin. I am probably staring at it in that last photo.
Thank you for pointing that out yourself, before I had to ask “what’s up with that BLOUSE?”
I would never have let you go onstage wearing that. It’s just wrong.
His butt chin! He’s almost like an adorable manly cartoon character. You’d absolutely trust someone with a chin like that.
Sal — Oh, Lord! This was the worst costume ever! So wrong and SO uncomfortable. I am a pale person and the blouse was an unflattering cream color. Hated the sleeves. Still hate the sleeves. Were the costume designers taking out hostilities on me? And — oh. That’s the only costume. There are no costumes changes for Luisa. Two hours+ a night in that.
WAHHH!
But back to something that makes me happy: Leo and his butt chin. He was absolutely the nicest guy, but I was totally intimidated by him or I might have fallen in mad “show love” with him. Plus, he was taken. (Drat her.) His features — taken separately — are almost odd, but together, they’re magnetic. I remember his huge melty smile and just how kind he was. A very soothing soul.
Cary Grant had a butt chin! It can be a wonderful feature.
I love that El Gallo was a soothing soul! Good for him.
I’m Assistant Directing The Fantasticks this Spring! Any advice from your personal exeperience?
I know the whole mouring your dignity thing about a costume. I played a haughty victorian Duchess in a show and the costumer put me in an enormous poorly fitting purple monstrosity that she thought was GORGEOUS. I looked like a big puffy purple potato. It was afwul. I cried a lot. When audience members saw me offstage and in my own clothes they exclaimed that they had assumed I was 50 pounds heavier and how it must be so hard to wear “all that padding” for the part. There was no padding. There WAS much drama and angst.
Great. Now you’ve got me designing in my head for a production that was 18 or so years ago…
Blue- that’s what you should have worn. A soft blue for the first act, very simple and generic Girl, then later in the second, a slightly deeper shade with a more mature style. Not matronly, but sadder-but-wiser. Not a silly girl any longer, but a woman.
Don’t quite remember how the scenes go in the second act, but there should be time for a change in there somewhere.
The hair? Perhaps soft rolls on the side, then gathered at the neck and loose from there. It’s beautiful hair, it just needs a little reining in.
Marisa- in my realm, actor comfort/happiness trumps my ‘vision’ most of the time, if possible. Sometimes it’s just not. But I know you’d be a good sport in that case and suffer for your art…
(Now, see, I think your hair is really pretty–must’ve taken a while to do.)
If blouse hatred is anything like hat hatred, I totally feel for you. Freshman year of college, I played Thomas More’s wife in excerpts from “A Man for All Seasons” for Homecoming. One of my dorm-mates played his daughter. We both had to wear horrendous hats–hers especially looked like a birdhouse, and mine really emphasized the roundness of my face (which was swollen from undiagnosed food allergies). It’s bad enough when your castmates laugh at you, but even worse at a small college where anybody could walk up to you at any moment and tell you what they thought of you.
Bless you, Sal! I don’t even mind being a bit physically uncomfortable, but working in a cumbersome dress that made it awkward to move and turned my character into a bizarre caricature no matter what I did… it was a bit trying.
Marisa — Well, you’re there to support the director, in my opinion, so do that as well as you can. You’ll take notes, manage things for him behind the scenes a bit, etc. If the director’s ill, you may be expected to step in and run rehearsals. I’d be sure I understood the overall vision that the director’s going for and not work at cross-purposes to that.
When I was in college — as part of the theatre major — you to AD at least one show. I AD’d “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” — not an easy show, really — alongside my favorite professor. About halfway or so through the rehearsal process, he became gravely ill, heart problems, etc., and he expected me to step in. I thought it was crazy — my kneejerk reaction was NO NO NO! — but he just called me from home and calmly told me what he expected. I was FREAKING out, to put it mildly, but he just acted as if he had complete faith in me. (And it probably WAS acting, hahaha, but it worked. I got more confident about fulfilling his expectations.)
You’ll be great, I have no doubt. You’re savvy. You’re intuitive. You’re a good communicator. I have no doubt you’ll be able to sense the vibe from your director and go with it.
That first picture is awesome!
LUISA – he’s so dreamy! We’ll run away together to Venice!
EL GALLO – but before I kill you, Mr. Bond…
I love your play posts, Tracey – more, please!
Kate P — Ha! I know exactly the kind of birdhouse hat you’re talking about! UGH. Whoever came up with those?
Sal — Yeah. Blue’s good. The skirt I wore did have a small blue-and-red floral pattern, but again, just sorta weird. My shoes were white and ugly Nurse Ratchett shoes and made me want to die.
And, you know, every production I’ve ever seen of The Fantasticks hasn’t used costume changes for the two main characters. Everything is always very sparse and pared down, traditionally. But, yeah, I think my hair needed some help. Even if I’d gotten a couple inches taken off and worn the same style, I think it would have been better — less wild. Hard to dance with that whipping around at times.
NF — Hahahaha! Yeah, Leo does look there like he could be in a James Bond movie.
I look mentally incompetent.
Thanks for the support, hon! I was actually more curious if you had anything you wanted to pass on about that particular show – as in, “You never realize it until you’re doing a full run, but the switch from this scene to this scene is really rapid fire and tricky for the actors.” etc. (of course we have the advantage of no real set changes in this show). I have more familiarity with the ADing process than with The Fantasticks – which I have actually never seen! But the director is a close friend and knows her stuff. I just feel a little guilty walking in “blind”.