Unbelievably it is already a week since the last performance of Urinetown! It has gone by in a complete blur, mainly due to sheer exhaustion – but also because when you have worked for months on a show and had the adrenaline fuelled highs of an epic show week, the days that follow are always a complete anticlimax!
We ended show week with a fantastic after show party, at which we also celebrated Ms Gediking’s milestone birthday. After our silly and sensible awards I stayed for a bit of a boogie but then sloped off as it was already 3am (we didn’t get started until after the get out at the Theatre) as I had work the next day. I have it on good authority that some of our more youthful/hard core members were up until 6am!
As fun as my job is, it was a real struggle last Sunday to put one foot in front of the other and convince my team that I was functioning on an acceptable level and could hold it together for 8 hours! It is also quite weird suddenly having your evenings free and not constantly thinking about the last bits of costume, props, make up that you need to find, or lines that you need to learn. However the biggest part of ‘post show blues’ is caused by missing all of those grubby (in the case of this show) faces that you have seen at least twice a week for the past 4 months.
I know it gets thrown out there a lot, but there really is a ‘family feel’ to SMP, there might be an occasional hiccup, but on the whole we would support any of our group no matter what they are going through and defend them to the end. You may think that such feelings of closeness would make us an insular group, but the enthusiasm and warmth with which we always welcome new members and our retention rate tells me otherwise. Our newest recruits for Urinetown were fantastic, both on and off stage and are now well loved members of the group – we hope they will stay for panto or return next Summer.
That moves me on nicely! Luckily for those of us missing everyone we were due to hand our costumes back on Wednesday and vote on what our next Summer show would be. It was lovely to see company members from Urinetown and other members of the SMP family turnout for a catch up and the all important vote. As much as I would love the ability to tell you what has been decided for Summer 2017, you will have to keep your eyes open for a future post to find out!
Finally, without going too deep into the world of politics, It has also been interesting these past few days to see the essence of Urinetown being acted out in the Britsh political arena. I just hope that being given the power to decide our own destiny, and democracy therefore causing the country to go against the status quo, that it isn’t our undoing as it was for the residents of Urinetown!
