Hello. I am Inigo Montoya. · 4:02am Oct 24th, 2013
In two days, our local production of The Princess Bride opens.
As with every play, we need another week of rehearsal. I just spent an hour and a half practicing the Westley/Inigo fight under the watchful eye of the choreographer . . . who said things like: "Your distance is wrong. You're starting from the wrong side. Oh God, why?" and so on.
The fact is, I'm not as up on the choreography as I should be, and our Westley has never done stage combat before, so he's not real good at faking it. We miss cues, we're in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . and that's with shouted instructions.
I should probably be panicking, but there just isn't enough time.
Since I'm the understudy, I only have to perform one night--which is good. Every other night, I'll just be able to fade into obscurity; one of the thugs and townsponies townspeople that nobody will remember. And, I guess the good news is I've got experience with shows gone wrong: hit in the head with a quarterstaff, broke the stage, performed with a fever high enough I was hallucinating that morning, fell down on a wet stage in the middle of a fight, fell asleep in the catwalks, repatched the board wrong, etc. That's to say nothing of missed cues, missed lines, missing props, torn costumes, drunk actors, and drunk audience members. Oh, and did I mention black powder pistol misfires?
Anyway . . . work on all fanfics has come to a halt for now. I should be back in the saddle (so to speak) Sunday . . . or else I'll be curled in the fetal position, crying my eyes out.
Wish I could come see this.
Break a leg, then!
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One of our set crew broke a rib on Monday . . . during the run-through.
I love show biz.
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Or rather not. Just uhm.. good luck.
This finally caused me to look up the meaning of the word ”understudy”. Since I am not very familiar with English theater-terms, I had been under the impression that an understudy (in this case to Inigo) was a separate character. This explains a few things
I wonder, are there any recordings of you performing/fighting and would you be willing to share one or two?
I haven’t been very active in the comments before, but I have been reading your blog posts. In case you are considering not to continue doing so, I figured I should let you know that I for one appreciate that you share some of the things you experience which are not directly related to your writing. To read about someone whose life is very different from ones own can be both interesting and inspiring. It also allows us as readers to know you as someone more than a supplier of good fiction. The ”Notes for Here I am”-post in particular was very powerful emotionally and had me thinking about how I have lived my life up to this point.
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There are very few of them available to me on the internet, I'm sorry to say. I'm sure that audiences have recorded some of our shows and uploaded them to YouTube, but finding them is a different matter . . . most of the recordings I have are not online, and I'll honestly admit my ignorance when it comes to uploading such things to YouTube or whatever. I'll try to pressure one of the directors to get some of that stuff up--for the connected internet age we live in, there's no excuse for how poorly we're represented online.
I do intend to continue blog posts for every chapter and every story. Not only does it give me a chance to offer my research to my readers--some of who may become writers, too (or already are)--but it gives me and my readers a chance to connect which we would never have in a traditional publishing setting.