Kathleen Rice Adams
I’ve begun to feel like a temperamental director dealing with a herd of malcontents and unrepentant hams.
“Augh! Cut! Cut!” I yell, tearing out my hair by double handfuls.
“What? What did we do?”
“That’s a good question. Exactly what is it you thought you were doing there?”
“Improvising.”
“Improvising? You do realize there’s a script, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s all wrong right here. Nobody behaves like that. It’s bogus.”
“Bogus?” I shake my head and sigh with weariness that knows no bounds. “See—this is part of the problem: You’re from the 19th Century; that word’s not in your vocabulary. Who gave you permission to take off on your own little tangent?”
Just about then, another character usually joins the fray. “You know, if I were the hero, I’d—”
“You’re not the hero!” I hiss, whirling on him. “If you’d spend as much time developing your own role as you do analyzing his, we’d all be the better for it.”
Depending on the character, at this point he’ll either sulk—meaning I have to expend valuable mental energy soothing his wounded feelings—or dive into a particularly vile tirade denouncing my writing ability. The latter does nothing to improve my relationship with a cast already doubting my fitness to be their leader.
Every once in a while, I find someone from a completely different project costuming himself or herself in the current project’s wardrobe and sneaking onto the set.
“You there! The Merry Man in the back. Aren’t you supposed to be on Stage 4 plotting with the rest of the gang in Last Train to Comanche Wells?”
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