Well, it’s over. Our beautiful Andalusian world has been dismantled.
The final step in The Christmas Revels is taking down the set and moving all of our things out of the theater that we’d occupied for the last two weeks.
The entire cast helps out with strike. The actual set was mostly taken apart by professionals wielding power tools. The main task for the rest of us is carrying things. Props, pieces of flooring, bundles of costumes tied up in sheets. When the truck was full, anyone who was available drove to the Revels office in Silver Spring to move everything back off the truck. I’m not usually one for volunteering for extra heavy lifting, but I know it goes better with more people, and I didn’t have to get up early in the morning.
We formed bucket brigades passing merchandise up to the mezzanine, programs to the mezzanine, programs back down from the mezzanine (there was indecision about the programs), props into the rehearsal room to await sorting, hair and makeup supplies down to the basement, and programs to their final location, stacked on a landing halfway to the basement. It was midnight when I left the office.
The enchantment has ended. The magnificent treasure room has somehow turned back into two-by-fours and piles of elderly sofa cushions. And those of us in the chorus go back to our regularly scheduled lives as lawyers and teachers and speechwriters and science writers–taking the memory of Al-Andalus forward into the world.
What will happen to the tarasque?!
I haven’t heard!
Mary Gene was thinking we should hang him in the Revels lobby….
Seems like it must become a new parade participant!