Heat 'n Deet

What to say about doing the pageant when the heat index is 102 at intermission?

It really sucks, that what we say. But we do it. It just becomes this endurance test.

We were on Heat Protocol 2 this evening. All hats, coats, capes, gloves, furs, extra petticoats, etc. were cut. It gives the company this half-dressed look.

It is an endurance test for the audience as well. The mosquitoes were on Feasting Mode.  Clouds of Deet-based insect repellent drifted through the house as well as back stage.

I remember in the years I played Old Tom, before they ripped the theater apart to put in the stadium seating (1998), when there was a decades old shrub between the Queen’s Stage and the audience with a carefully maintained hole in it that the audience couldn’t see. At the end of the Tavern scene Old Tom would jump into the hole and lie there all through Queen’s Garden and Crossover; so long, in fact, that the audience would forget he was in there and be surprised when he jumped up at the second volley of fireworks.

I would lie in those bushes for the twenty or so minutes of the scenes and listen to what the audience (just about three feet away) were saying about the show.

On high heat nights like tonight their talk was al about the heat and how it was affecting the actors.

“Oh, look at the sweat dripping off the Queen’s nose,” they would say.

“I don’t know how they stand it.”

“I bet they’re about to pass out.”

Etc.

See, they’re not watching the show, they’re watching the endurance test.

I also remember when the house staff would pass out “Lost Colony Air Conditioners” to the audience. These were little white cardboard fans on a popsicle stick with the Swirly Girl logo on them. On hot nights when you looked out at the audience you would see hundreds of them fluttering. Hundreds, say we? Nay, thousands!

I’ve lost a solid 10 pounds this summer. Hooray for me! But on nights like this one I lose more. Every evening before I go to work I weigh myself naked (just picture it!) and I weigh 162. Every night when I come home from the show I weigh myself again and I am consistently 159.

Tonight I was 157.