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Goodbye to Andalusia

Chorus member Charles Blue carries a piece of the gorgeous flooring from the stage. Photo: Helen Fields

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.

A box of programs makes the trip back down from the mezzanine. Photo: Helen Fields

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.

The tarasque returns to its basement lair at the Revels office. Photo: Helen Fields

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You Can’t Revel Without an Audience

A 2007 Christmas Revels audience fills the lower lobby for "Lord of the Dance." Photo: Erin Sutherland

Last night I went to a play at the Shakespeare Theatre. After the performance, some of the actors came back out on stage to answer questions. Someone asked what part the audience plays in a performance. One of the actors said that audiences have different personalities; one night everything will be hilarious and the next night you’ll have an audience who never laughs at anything.

This sounded very familiar to me. The audience is the last part of The Christmas Revels to fall into place, and every audience is different. The audience is so important that, for our final dress rehearsal, we bring in several hundred people who wouldn’t otherwise get to see the show to help us practice. In most stage productions, the audience pretty much has two roles: laugh at the jokes and clap at the good parts. Revels goes a step beyond, into the realm of audience participation.

Audience participation is scary. It makes people think of being dragged on stage and humiliated by a hypnotist. Revels isn’t like that. Yes, we are going to bring one person on stage, but it will be someone who wants to do it, and they don’t have to hop on one foot or quack like a duck or anything. For everyone else, there are opportunities to sing along – lyrics and music are printed in the program.

Some people only come to the show for one reason: to join hands and dance down the aisles in “Lord of the Dance.” At most performances, there are traffic jams in the aisles. This moment belongs to the audience – they even sing different lyrics from us. It wasn’t until I joined the cast that I learned that the refrain starts with the words “Dance, then.” The audience sings “Dance, dance” and that is ok. Not everyone wants to dance. We’re directed to offer a hand to audience members along the aisle, but if they’re not interested, you just smile and move on. Maybe next year they’ll change their mind. One of my best friends comes to see the show every year, but always sits firmly in the middle of a row so there’s no risk of getting dragged into the dance.

At the Shakespeare Theatre last night, the actor Ted van Griethuysen said he’d once been told something like “an audience is a group of people who are together for one moment  in their lives.” I love this. We put on The Christmas Revels nine times – one dress rehearsal and eight performances – for nine different assemblages of people. Every time, we’re joining them for an authentic, joyful celebration and every time is different. You never know if an audience will applaud in a solemn moment or wait, breathless. Some audiences sing out, while others hold back. And on some special nights, in the silent moment of the poem “The Shortest Day,” when we’re listening for the sounds of our ancestors, a baby cries. I’m sure the baby’s parents are mortified, but I love it. That’s exactly the sound of our ancestors, isn’t it?

Learn more about the 2011 Christmas Revels: Andalusian Treasures
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Opening Day

Helen Fields and stage husband Bobby Gravitz. Photo: Erin Sutherland

It’s finally here! We auditioned in May, we started rehearsing in September, and we’ve been at Lisner Auditorium every night this week. Last night, we had a rehearsal with a practice audience. This afternoon is our opening night. (Yeah, I know. But “opening matinee” sounds silly.)

In case you’re reading this and don’t already know what I look like, I thought I’d help you out. Friends who’ve known me for years have trouble finding me on stage with no glasses and with my hair covered. Plus there are something like 80 people on the stage.

So, look for the one in white and come say hi to me after the show. Actually, there are at least two of us in white, but you can say hi to anybody you want.

Learn more about the 2011 Christmas Revels: Andalusian Treasures
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In the Makeup Room

The makeup room backstage at Lisner Auditorium. Photo: Helen Fields

There are a lot of things I like about Revels. The community. The singing. The costumes. The ribbon sticks. Here’s something I don’t like: makeup. My goodness, stage makeup does not feel nice. And it doesn’t look so nice, either, up close.

That’s ok, because stage makeup isn’t meant to be seen up close. It has to be so heavy because of the bright stage lights. They cut right through the top layer of skin, I am told, and leave you looking like a ghost. That’s why the foundation has to be super-thick, so the light will bounce off of the makeup and go back to the audience’s eyes. Basically, so we’ll look human.

Stage makeup probably doesn’t look so bad if it’s put on by an expert. But the person who puts on my stage makeup is, for the most part, me. And I am most emphatically not a makeup expert. Fortunately, Revels is prepared for people like me. Signs are posted with the steps in makeup application, from face-washing to blush. Volunteers are on hand to do eyes and anything else we can’t figure out on our own, and middle-school-aged girls apply powder.

Also, I am not that chalky in real life. Photo: Helen Fields

This year there’s a new addition to my makeup kit: False eyelashes. Yipe. I have actually worn false eyelashes once before, for the only show I ever did in college. (I was a Hot Box Doll in Guys & Dolls, and no, I will not be sharing photographs.) I think I must have put the eyelashes on myself then, but last night I just could not figure out how to do it. So a volunteer agreed to glue them on, reluctantly – she’d never put on false eyelashes before. I said I was ok with being at the bottom end of her learning curve.

The result: the false eyelashes landed way above my real eyelash line, like emaciated caterpillars who had lost their way, and my upper eyelids were glued partway open. The volunteer and I got sort of a collective case of the giggles. She wiped off the excess glue and sent me to rehearsal with functional, if slightly goofy, eyelids. Practice makes perfect, right?

Learn more about the 2011 Christmas Revels: Andalusian Treasures
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Secret Hiding Places for Running Orders

Monday night was our first night at Lisner Auditorium. We were all in costume to work on the first part of the show. This was our first time seeing the set (wow) and finding out what it’s like to do this show on that stage.

Most of us carry a paper copy of the running order on stage to remind us what’s coming up next. The running orders are covered in notes about where to go and what to do. By the first performance, on Saturday, we’ll know the show well enough to banish most running orders. But for now, the rule is that the director shouldn’t be able to see them.

Now, here’s the challenge: Our costumes have no pockets.

Running order peeking out of a lovely purse. Photo: Helen Fields

 

Why, hello, running order. I see you there in that waistband. Photo: Helen Fields

 

I do believe that is a running order in a learned man's book. Photo: Helen Fields

 

A running order makes an escape up a sleeve. Photo: Helen Fields

 

Jody Frye points at his running order. I thought he meant it's in that red fabric somewhere, but no, it's in his head. Oh, you teenagers with your flexible brains. Photo: Helen Fields

 

This is NOT what I expected when I asked this chorus member where he hides his running order. (He wears swimming trunks under his costume, for the pockets.) Photo: Helen Fields

 

If it's in my hat, it'll soak into my brain faster. That's how it works, right? Photo: Helen Fields

 

Learn more about the 2011 Christmas Revels: Andalusian Treasures
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Revels Across the Country

Intermission at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, 2009. Photo: Helen Fields

The Christmas Revels you get here in Washington is wonderful and unique, but it’s not the only Christmas Revels. We’re one of 10 Revels cities across the U.S. We’re all under a national Revels organization based in Cambridge, Mass. In addition to D.C. and Massachusetts, you can see The Christmas Revels in New Hampshire; New York; Houston; Boulder, Colo.; Tacoma, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; Oakland, Calif.; and Santa Barbara.

The Revels cities share scripts and major prop pieces. In 2008, someone drove a van up to Cambridge to get the flying canoe for our French Canadian production. Our show this year, Andalusian Treasures, is based on the show that Portland did last year. This year, Portland is visiting medieval England with “The King and the Fool,” which we last did in 2004.

I’ve been lucky enough to see productions in two other Revels cities. Washington’s performances are among the earliest, so it’s possible to sing in eight performances here, then travel to other cities and celebrate with them. In 2009, I went to Boston with my parents to see a version of the American show we did in 2006. It was fascinating to see another city’s take on a show I knew so well.

The lobby in Oakland, 2010. Photo: Helen Fields

I particularly envied their performance space. The Cambridge production is in Sanders Theatre, this absolutely gorgeous wood-paneled hall at Harvard University. They don’t have the things you would expect in a theater, like a curtain, and it does not matter at all. Then when the audience joins hands and dances out of the theater at the end of the first half, for “Lord of the Dance,” they end up winding back and forth in this lobby with extremely high ceilings and, generally, an enchanted historical feel. The California Revels, in Oakland, has a similarly gorgeous hall, the Oakland Scottish Rite Center.

Lisner Auditorium, our Christmas Revels home since 1983, is more cavernous than intimate. The lobby doesn’t have that warm, cozy, Revels-y ambience I felt in Cambridge and Oakland. Also, we have to worry about electric shocks from feet shuffling along the carpet during “Lord of the Dance.” (Tip: Pick up your feet.) But it’s been a wonderful home, and I’m excited to be moving in there tonight for my seventh Christmas Revels tech week.

Learn more about the 2011 Christmas Revels: Andalusian Treasures
View the Schedule of Performances and Purchase Tickets