The Show Must Go On (Part 1)

You might think the title of today’s musings is a general reference to our current state of affairs, but I’ve chosen instead to go in the direction of something a little more specific, and hopefully humorous, because I think we all need a little levity right now. It is virus-related, but not COVID-19.

This post is about Western Oklahoma Ballet Theatre’s Nutcracker 2005, or as those of us involved refer to it, Stomach Bug Nut. Some background: WOBT was a pre-professional ballet company that I directed for many years, and we presented three performances of the full-length Nutcracker each December. The majority of the performers were students, ages three to adolescent; there were a few adults in our party scene, and we hired a professional couple to perform both the Snow and Sugar Plum pas de deux.

The story begins at our one and only tech/dress rehearsal in the theater space, the Fine Arts Center of Southwestern Oklahoma State University, on Friday night of Nutcracker weekend. My youngest students, the three-year-olds, were cast as Baby Mice. Their job was to carry the extra-long tail of the King Rat during his grand entrance, and then chase the Owl across the stage two times. They wore tiny gray unitards with mouse tails attached, and cute gray ears, and were adorable. They had just been brought backstage by our mom volunteers, and were sitting in a circle for a few minutes before their first entrance when all of a sudden one of them vomits right into the center of the circle. The moms handled it quickly, cleaning up the mess, bundling the sick child away to go home, and calming down the other kids so they could get on stage. Dress rehearsal continued, and by the end of the night, the sick child was just a small blip amidst all the other rehearsal happenings.

The Saturday of Nutcracker weekend was spent addressing all the production notes from the previous night’s rehearsal – costume, prop, and scenery fixes, lighting cues updated, etc. – in time for the opening performance at 8 pm. Late that afternoon, I received a couple of messages: the first, that the child that had been sick the night before was feeling better, but not ready to be on stage; the second, that another of the Baby Mice was sick and would not make it to the performance either. So, we headed into the performance with only six Baby Mice, instead of eight…no problem. Act I proceeds as rehearsed, and we’re halfway there.

The three-year-olds, in addition to being Baby Mice, were also cast as Gumdrops with the four-year-olds. In my production, Gumdrops appeared in the opening of Act II, to welcome Clara to the Kingdom of the Sweets. As Clara relayed in pantomime the story of how she came to the Kingdom with the Nutcracker Prince, the Gumdrops were seated in three small groups – one near each downstage wing, and one upstage center by the throne. As Clara was finishing her tale with a dramatic demonstration of how the Prince stabbed the King Rat, one of the Gumdrops near the downstage right wing began to throw up…on stage.

I stage managed the production, and that was the wing I stood in to do so. When I realized what was happening – because, let’s face it, once the Gumdrops were safely sitting down, my attention went elsewhere – I ushered the little group (one crying and four grossed out Gumdrops) off stage. “We have vomit ON STAGE, down right, we need a mop right now!” I called into the headset, and then I manically gestured to the dancers on stage beginning to exit “Use the second wing, second wing!” so that they wouldn’t run through the puke.

One of the university crew members finally appeared with a yellow plastic bucket of water and a mop, and tried to give it to me. Here is how our conversation went:

Penny: “Um, no, I’m managing a show here, you have to do it.”

Crew Member: “What? How?”

Penny (looking aggravated, I’m sure): “You are just going to have to mop up the vomit as discreetly as possible from the wing. Now.”

I moved into the second wing, because there was actually still a ballet happening on stage, so what happened next has been described to me by others:

I didn’t even realize anything had happened, and then all of a sudden, a mop comes from the wing, plop!, onto the floor, and is slowly dragged back off-stage. Then again, plop! and drag…plop! and drag. All the way through the Arabian dance.

Several audience members

About halfway through Arabian, I picked Carol up over my shoulder, and began walking backward on the diagonal. That’s the first time we really faced stage right in the dance…and that’s when I saw the mop, coming on stage and then getting pulled off, over and over.

Charles Martin, dancer

We made it through the rest of the show with no more incidents..but the weekend had just begun. Part 2 coming soon.