Incident #1: The Monday after our first week of rehearsals I was sitting at my computer and noticed that something on the back of my leg was itching rather persistently and when I stood up to look at what it actually was this is what I found....
(this picture was taken Tuesday after rehearsal)
Roughly 25 bites that were swollen to the size of dimes. If you look really closely you'll notice that there are two bites on the arch of my right foot - those and the two bites in the exact same place on my left foot were by far the most painful and swelled at their peach to the size/thickness of half your average grape. YUCK! I spent all of Monday terrified that my room had somehow become infested with bed bugs. I washed all of my bedding and towels, vacuumed the floor and my mattress, clorox wiped all the hard surfaces I could reach and put all of my pillows into plastic bags and put them on the porch so they would heat up and boil and living critter that might have thought to make their home in the comfort of my pillows. After much research I concluded that it was likely not bed bugs but either chiggers from the beach or fleas from sitting on a neighbors porch who has cats. When I got to rehearsal Tuesday both Jenny and Deb were pretty sure I should go see a doctor but what I had read told me that you really can't determine what bug bit you from the bite. Unless you have the actual bug you may never know what decided to have a few bites. We compromised - I allowed them to take a picture of the back of my legs so we could monitor the bites - both size and number to make sure I wasn't continually being bit. I am happy to report that I have had no more bites and the evidence of being bit in the first place is mostly gone.
Incident #2: At rehearsal sometime during the week that I was recovering from unknown bug bites we were running through a scene and all of the sudden it smelled like ammonia or some other chemicle was being run through our air system. We left the rehearsal space and settled in the lobby for the rest of rehearsal. After much searching and talking with operations we learned that a man had been working on the roof and had been stung by a bee. His reaction was to go get wasp spray and spary. The only problem was he decided to do this right next to the air in-take of the air conditioning system that fed directly into our rehearsal space. It smelled awful and Sarah being pregnant was enough of an excuse to avoid breathing toxic chemicals for the rest of the day so we moved rehearsal to the lobby for the rest of the day.
Incident #3: One of our actors - who shall remain unnamed - had a bit of a diva moment when we placed a hat on a table during blocking. They believed that hats on tables were unlucky and a sign of death. We were pretty sure they were wrong and went so far as to do the research during rehearsal and found that this is true of hats on beds but really had nothing to do with hats on tables; needless to say, so as not to distract said actor changed they blocking anyway and we never placed another hat on a table during the rest of the process.
Incident #4: Our master electrician - who hired me to work next week - was helping fix a light before one of our preview shows and tripped. She fell face first into the ground row - basically a a piece of wood that is erected to hide lights that are set on the floor. Our ground row was cut to a shape to resemble the uneven silhouette a wheat field would look like semi jagged edges. Any how the ground row basically went through her lip and she ended up very bloody and with 7 stitches in her mouth. She is pretty tough and was back at work not the next day but the day after. We wondered if hats on tables are bad luck what does it mean when there is blood shed on your stage . . .??
Incident #5: One of the effects that happened in the show was a bunch of papers being blown off a desk by the "wind." You would not believe how difficult it is to make this happen consistently. We struggled with this every show - flat new pieces of paper are too heavy to fly and over-handled pages seem to have the same problem. We would think we had it figured out and then only two pieces would move during a show. Flying paper is hard to do.
Incident #6: The sound check was often being executed as I would mop the stage. I got really good at dancing with a mop :)
Incident #7: I particularly enjoyed watching patrons search our faces (Jenny, Deb and me) to see if we were actors as we left the theatre. There was a good number of famous faces around as many from Sarah's cast on Suits showed up to see her in the show. I met many of them backstage and they were all quite lovely.
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