ONE DOWN, TWO TO GO

We finished Life X 3 last night.

Endings are always difficult with theater. You work 6,8 or maybe 9 weeks with a cast, put up the show, ride the emotional roller coaster of audiences, reviews and wondering whether the heat will be on - then it's over. Just like that, it all seems to stop at once.

Usually you have a certain amount of downtime to reload and think of the future. In this case, we had scheduled auditions for Murdering Marlowe roughly two hours after Life ended. Luckily our strike only took 10 minutes (one of the perks with doing a Janus show).

The show stayed strong throughout the run, and the cast kept their focus, even with light audiences, fluctuating temperatures and hot and spicy cheez-its.

I felt fortunate to direct this group. They worked well with each other - onstage and off - which can be rare in theater; where moods change like the wind and people can get very strange very quickly. But this group did us proud for our first effort at the Elgin Art Showcase.

Now the challenge becomes growing our audience. It feels like we're starting from scratch.

Fortunately, we have two more "practice" productions to see how what we'll work best for us.

Yes, we're scheduled beyond the next two shows, but they are part of our "breaking-in" phase to see what works well in the space. So far so good, save for the fact that we need to find the secret to getting the ever illusive larger audience.

As the late (I'll call him great) theater producer Fred Solari (Athenaeum Theatre, Chicago) said to me a few years ago: "When you find out the secret, be sure to let me know."