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It went well, Opening Night. Our crowd was friendly on Friday, salutory on Saturday and sleepy on Sunday. Still, I am gaining valuable information from watching the crowd.
The composer/music director/keyboardist watched me in the audience on Sunday, mumbling into the headset "She ain't watchin' the show...she's watchin' the audience... what the hell is she doin'?" (He's from TEXAS, and it shows.) Post show, I explained that I was looking for audience response and taking notes, to improve the show for next time around. "That's a GOOD idea," he gushed. I do have them, now and again.
Baltimore audiences are not as politically savvy as DC crowds, so there were some bits that were definate "in jokes" and totally missed the uneducated, or the underaged. Those under thirty have little to no interest in Watergate, and little to no knowledge of its impact. A quick summation, though, is that the net result of the Watergate scandal is that it made our media harder on presidents...and easier on war. We aren't seeing the bloody atrocities committed in Iraq, the carnage and destruction, the way we did with the Vietnam war, when journalists, with their newfound television technology, had the means to show everything, and did so with reckless abandon. Before Nixon and Watergate, JFK somehow avoided media censure with deeds much worse than those of Bill Clinton, who was skewered by the press and the justice department for the not-uncommon failure to keep his trousers zipped.
But back to Watergate! the Musical. The young people tend to get glassy-eyed during the historical bits, but everyone loves the music. Older folks are impressed with the level of detail, the text/subtext, and the overall theme of the thing. All agree that the actor playing Nixon is EXCELLENT. And my Cubans (totally fictionalized) are universally loved.
Anyway, it went well, and is playing for one more weekend, at the Chesapeake Arts Center in Baltimore, Maryland: see www.ChesapeakeArts.org for details. Thank you all for your support and good wishes...I appreciate them.
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Butterflies again
