19-22 March

Final week of the show. Thursday saw a fairly dismal (i.e. almost nonexistent) audience, but Friday's and saturday's were excellent. Saturday's performance was also probably the best we've ever had. The traditional final night gags were there, but they were particularly classy. Some are cited in the list of Winter's Tale running jokes. The others:

• Stage manager Shreyas Cholia showed up in the Cleomenes and Dion scene in costume as a bearer of the oracle's scroll. He also took the line "Go: fresh horses."
• Normally, the Clown's line "...nor is the bear half dined on the gentleman; he's at it even now" would be punctuated by a roar and a scream from the outer commons. Saturday, Antigonus came tearing across from the outer commons to the library with the bear hot on his heels. One audience member later told me that she would have never guessed it for a prank if she hadn't seen the expressions on the Shepherd's and Clown's faces. Vijay wins points for fixing his blocking and exiting library side at the end of the scene.
• Insted of the soft wide-brimmed blue velvet hat he had been wearing as the Peddler, Autolycus appeared instead in Greg Marshall's Santa-hat-with-dreadlocks-attached. This led to some amusing saves on Camillo's part: a line about "you shall take up your sweetheart's dreadlocks" (lost, perhaps for the better, under the audience's cracking up at Autolycus' and Florizel's boxer shorts), and "Nay, you shall have no hair."

Somehow, even the gags contributed to the tremendous energy of the show, and it just sparkled in a way that it never had before. Truly extraordinary...and it is a wonderful thing that it was captured on videotape.

This is my last real entry for the BakerShake production diary, and I suppose it's time to drop my pose of the observer and say something for real. Our revels now are ended, and all that.

This has probably been one of the best shows I've ever worked on. The last time I saw this tight an ensemble cast was when Rice Players did A Company of Wayward Saints, which was also the last time I saw as much dedication and stellar work from a crew. A public thank you goes to the cast and crew for putting their hearts and souls into this work. It more than paid off. It's for this that we do theatre, and the final resutls have reminded me of that.

It has also been a tremendous learning experience for me. I was, I have to admit, a little disappointed when I did not get the directorship of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but now I have to admit that this was the best way things could have turned out. It's quite clear to me now that, had I directed Midsummer this year, I really would have had only the vaguest idea of what I was doing. Another public thank you goes to Chepe for being such an outstanding teacher.

All right, already, enough of the mushy stuff. I'm a bit sorry that it's all over, but at the same time I'm looking forward to finally getting enough SLEEP.

Here's to y'all, guys. See you next year.