Army Ants

I walked into our bedroom yesterday and army ants were swarming into the room through the open back door. This phenomena is well known here.

The ants come by the millions in a long, wide column. They enter the house, eat everything available including ALL other insects, and they leave.

It takes a few hours. Some say, leave the house and come back when they are gone. Others say, open the other door and let them through.

We put down some dastardly compound in front of the door, swept the ants out the door and they went on their way.

The rehearsals for the Broadway Review are in the final week, meaning every day. I have seen some of the acts and they are going to be good, some spectacular. Mine, of course, will be marginal.

That chafes a little. Oh well, you can't win them all.

What has struck me is how orderly the stage show looks from the audience and how chaotic, messing and cramped it is behind the scenes.

There is almost no room behind the curtains and what little room there is, is full of crap...sets, signs, people waiting to get on, a band, stage managers and assistants.

You, of course, see none of this from the audience.

We tried to run Act 2 on Tuesday with full sets and it was so bad we quit. We couldn't get through it.

So we met today to clear out behind the stage. All the previous play sets were jammed back stage, like any of this crap is worth saving. We piled it all out back to make room for our crap. That took a couple of hours.

We also went through the set changes. You see, the stage hands are US! They didn't tell me that earlier, I just found out Tuesday.

By us I mean the men in the play. So you get to do your thing on stage and then you get to shlep the set around for the other scenes.

We did make some headway. And we will re-do Act 2 this afternoon. We will see if anything got straightened out.