Wash Out

Ah, the weather - we can't control it, but we'd sure like to.

So, yeah, this past Thursday, we got rained out. All last fall, for the West Village Fragments, we'd avoided the rain, but we kinda knew that, in June especially, we probably wouldn't get so lucky. When you're doing a 'normal' play outdoors, everyone runs to grab things and cover up things and take cover themselves, which I imagine happens fairly quickly and all in a group. With a performance like this, though, with over 80 performers on the street, spread out over a 10 block radius, the logistics are a bit more complicated. Ralph had just gotten all of the set pieces distributed to their locations, and the third tour was less than 15 minutes underway when the storm hit. Light rain at first - we can deal with that - then came the thunder, lightning and a gullywasher. Tour 1 was at A Corner of A Morning/Balls - the 2 pieces on East 9th Street. The balls sagged to the ground, grazing the parked cars, and the cast and audience members took cover underneath the inflatable mattress that is the main set piece for Corner (see pix above by Liche Ariza), actually in and around the entry to the basement shop that was the original La MaMa. Tour 2 was at St. Mark's Church, where, for a bit, the actors in either The Hawk or Rock Garden (someone clarify this for me?) continued to perform under umbrellas in the downpour - and folks on that tour were actually disappointed when we called the show! (Gluttons for art.) Tour 3 just scattered. I'm in Why Hanna's Skirt Won't Stay Down, which hadn't even gone out yet, so I didn't get a drop on me, but some folks were soaked. Kind of a bummer, but exciting. We called all the audience members and offered them times on other shows - there were still enough open slots to do that - so we didn't add a Sunday 'rain date' show this week.

They're predicting rain on Thursday...