actuallyscorched

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I AM VERY NORMAL ABOUT THIS

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Your Heart Sings.

I met R. on a climbing trip in West Virginia. We hooked up in my tent for the last two nights. Then it turned into a two-year romance, spread thin between my home in New York, his in Texas, and a bunch of dirtbag crags in between. And spread thin over not much communication in between. It wasn’t a typical romance but it was the kind I finally said would be okay, since waiting around for perfection left me coming up short every time.

The breakup came in April, about a week after my mom’s cancer was found. He carried it out as badly as I could have expected, over a clumsy text exchange wherein he revealed he was dating someone local. And had been for six months, including while we were together in Mexico for New Year’s. And that was that, or so I thought.

So I found myself at the hotel one night a week later, nursing wounds in a place I’d been wounded so many times before! And I was anxious because, well, a certain Boy Witch looks an awful lot like R., if R. had been healthier psychologically, as I knew, and wasn’t it going to be strange to spend a few hours chasing after someone who made me think of him like that?

But I stood in Manderley for happy hour and sipped my scotch like always and it was very nearly time to check in, and then the text came. He was coming to New York in three days, he said. For work. Would I want to meet up and talk? Oh of course, of course *now* he wants to talk. Couldn’t be moved for two years to put a name on whatever we were but yes, now, let’s talk now.

And then it was time to go inside, and all the effort I’d made to hold my stupid heart together the previous week was ruined. Of course he followed me in here, he found a way to break through the spell this place has up that keeps me out of painful reality.

And indeed, there was that particular Boy Witch, and I followed him dutifully through his loop, distracted by the occasional familiarity of his face. I dressed him, which is a scene I hate because it is stressful, and painful to see someone in such agony, but you have to be there to help him put himself back together. And I go to this scene because it leads to my favorite interaction on that loop, which comes next: he takes my hand and we race breathlessly down the stairs, until the last flight when he lets go and disappears around the corner, far enough ahead of me to surprise me and push me into the wall.

He holds me by the throat, leans in and kisses my face. He says “thank you.” All of this is familiar, it’s what I know is coming, and its comfort is why I am here. He turns to walk away, but then he stops. Turning slowly, he comes back to me and presses his hand into my chest. He lingers and stares. “Your heart sings,” he says. My broken heart sings.

Of course he didn’t know, he had no idea, how could he have? It was just chance, that this little deviation from the usual script would be so perfectly timed. I broke, I utterly broke. 

So, you know, if you wonder why I called that particular Boy Witch legendary, it has a lot to do with this. And I will never forget it. Thank you.

[actuallyscorched]

The Greatest.

There was a 1:1 that I to this day still consider the greatest one I ever had. At one point, I know the performer felt it was also, but it’s been almost eight years now so who’s to say now. We also both shared a laugh – and a groan – when we heard the rumors about what some people thought a “greatest” 1:1 might have involved. It was absolutely on script and no rules were broken. Just can't say the same about all the props. And of course none of this is going to read like it felt, and it was all contingent on who we were, what had happened in life, and in the hotel, over the preceding few months, and that context is both private and hard to talk about precisely, but I suppose is a part of the magic of the theater in any case. (Porter 1:1 spoilers)

I was surprised to see him in the hotel. He’d been away earlier that day, I had watched a stream of pictures coming back, with a degree of envy and jealousy and disappointment, figuring maybe it was a good thing he wouldn’t be there that night after all. But he was.

The only thing that was different at the start was that I rested my left hand on the desk, so that when the Porter sat down across from me, my hand was there in sight and so he took it, and held it. And we held the wig together in our hands as he put it on, and I ran my hand through his hair, and he ran his through mine, and we turned together to look into the mirror, like we were just so proud of each other. 

Then he remembered that this was all wrong, and he throws me against the door to clear the space and then absolutely destroys the room, everything on the desk is knocked over, a shelf is overturned, everything is a mess, and we’re both quaking and crying. And he tries to speak into my neck and finally we both say “thank you,” at the same time.

Then we step outside, and every few steps he turns back to look at me, and we slowly make our way down the hallway, stopping every few feet to turn and look back, until at last he has to run off to the reception desk, but as he does so he’s still looking back.

Later, in Manderley, we’re both stunned. What was that, what happened? How did we even...? Years later, when we share this scene, we both try to approximate that one night. It doesn’t quite work, though elements are there. But it’s what I think about, every time I’m there, every time I’m in the lobby, or in that office. 

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We WILL go back to Manderley again....to all of the residents and guests of The Mckittrick Hotel, please stay safe!

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Sad News

As I’m sure some of you have heard, there has been a swath of layoffs at Sleep No More. Cast, crew, and staff are all affected. 

Both the Tuesday and Sunday early shows have been cancelled from here forward. However, Gov. Cuomo just shut down Broadway as of tomorrow night, so I’d imagine that SNM will follow. 

I thought, in the interest of supporting people we care about, I am going to try and maintain a list of people who are looking for gig work, have started a Go Fund Me page, or are offering to work/be supported in other ways. 

So many people don’t have a safety net, and this crisis has come out of the blue. 

I’m going to get this list up and running later today.  If you know of any specific ways to support the McKittrick family, please let me know and I’ll add it to the list. 

All my best to everyone, Dee Anne

Edited to add: https://readwithjoy.tumblr.com/support

[actuallyscorched]

9th Anniversary

For the anniversary, and because I think coronavirus will shortly make such things very difficult, I did a double. My previous visit in February had felt so tired and worn out, so I wanted to see how the new casts are configured – and oh my god were they strong.

Early Show

- Ruby in the bar: “To what do we owe the honor? I don’t trust birthdays. If I start trusting birthdays I’ll have to count my own.” - Nate Boy Witch shot me dead. Pow. Nate’s new hair now makes him literally look like the beefier update of my ex in Texas, so there’s also that. - Finally got to see Brandon’s fabled Porter and it is so charming I wanted to scream. - We’ll call this combination Pretty Lobby, because they are oh so pretty, and since this appears to be a regular thing, *enjoy it everyone a lobby like this doesn’t happen every day* - Got Lost Luggage literally all to myself with Jack - Joy-Marie Thompson, new Bald, is fantastic - Thryn Saxon’s Danvers serves serious Elizabeth Behnke sternness (shout-out to all my fellow Babylon Berlin fans)

Late Show - I figured since the early show’s cast had been so phenomenal this one would inherently disappoint. Lol no, the hotel has other plans this cycle. - Zach Martens truly is one of the greatest Malcolms of the 9 years I’ve been stalking Malcolms - Paul Zivkovich has returned to Macbeth. Old Scorched readers will understand that I haven’t followed Macbeth for a full loop since Paul’s last show before The Drowned Man in 2013, so I had forgotten how some of it goes. And yet it was almost like no time had passed at all. - Issa and Jeff in the Lobby, with their extreme height difference, is wonderful. - For as much as I loved Brandon’s Porter, Jeff wins a medal for a 1:1 with bits of Will, bits of Paul, and something special and entirely his own.

Miscellany

I didn’t know the bar staff, but they had clearly gotten a memo about me? Knew my drink? Took great care of me? *Tipping heavily* And then it’s not clear to me what planet we’re on, since everything else this week had been pure Hell Dimension... but then these shows happened, and then this:

“You’re such a joy to watch in all your roles. Sorry that I two-loop you sometimes.” “Oh my god I don’t care, you’re lots of fun.” “Plus you’ve figured out which loops I like.” “Yeah, the gay ones. You like all the gay ones.” “After nine years I don’t come here to deal with straight people.”

I can’t believe it’s been nine years, and I can’t believe that it’s still such a wonderful place to be. I mean, that’s rhetorical, I can believe it. It takes a lot of work. I am so much richer for the people who’ve come and gone through my life under that roof, and I am so very grateful.

[actuallyscorched]

Oh god please never do this. I know I’m, umm, opinionated, but this is way over the line.

We are not directors

I just want to throw out something for the SNM fandom to chew on.  This is perhaps a controversial opinion, but I think it’s worth a mention.  

We are not directors. This means that giving performers suggestions on how they should or should not perform a role is not our job. They have people with that job. 

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be saying things like, “This thing you did was awesome, I’ve never seen someone do it this way. I loved it!” That’s great! Be encouraging. Get excited about the various nuances of performances. 

But telling a performer to their face that they are doing something wrong, or that they aren’t playing a character correctly is SUPER inappropriate. Are there performers who make choices I don’t like? Of course there are. I talk about those in private with friends. Not directly to the performer in question. 

I can’t even imagine someone going up to a performer and saying something like, “You are doing X thing with your character. It’s wrong and you need to stop. You should be doing Y thing instead.” This is called giving notes on a performance. Please don’t do this! I’m not sure how it works elsewhere, but in the UK and American theater scenes…this is very very rude. Giving notes is  something that rehearsal directors are paid to do. It is not the role of the audience, unless we are specifically asked for an honest critique by the performer in question.

Over the years I’ve heard of this happening from time to time. It’s not a good look for us. If you don’t like the way a performer plays a role, then just don’t follow that performer.

As always, this is just my opinion, do with it what you will.

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Nate Porter would literally kill me so please make it happen!

With cast change coming up are there any current residents that you would like to see take on new roles?

Here are a few off the top of my head…

Ingrid Kapteyn - I know she plays a ton of roles, I’d just like to see her in more of them. I’m hoping to see her in a few more this contract cycle.

Nate Carter - Porter. Please, please McKittrick gods.

Camara McLaughlin - I think Camara would be fascinating in a red dress!

Ernesto Breton - I’d love to see Ernesto tackle the role of Porter. I think he’d be amazing in it. 

Jeffrey Docimo - I know it’s not a big dance role, but I feel like Jeff would do something insanely awesome with the Taxidermist.

Evan Fisk - Why Evan doesn’t play Boy Witch and Porter, I’ll never understand.

Jamal Abrams - I’ve only seen Jamal as Speakeasy, and I loved his performance. I’d really like to see what he does with other roles. 

Umi Akiyoshi - Umi is brilliant, and I’d love to see her version of all of the roles she doesn’t currently play.

[actuallyscorched]

Visual privacy of some kind, and mask off, are surely the key ingredients – and I’d still count the Boy Witch one because the privacy is intended, and if an audience member were to ruin it (has anyone ever seen this happen?) it surely wouldn’t have been the intended unfolding of events.

Main reason I counted the Boy Witch “1:1″ as such is because Jordan Morley described it to me that way. Similarly, Speakeasy Barman’s various interactions weren’t 1:1s until his scene in the backroom was created and a performer referred to it as such (reference also when the Danvers 1:1 was added, performers were also using that terminology to describe the scene).

I wouldn’t count, say, my favorite Boy Witch interaction, which is: after going down the stairs from the shower with him, he shoves you against the wall and whispers something in your ear. It’s for all to see and your mask is on, so it’s not a 1:1 per se, though generally no one else can hear what he says (it’s usually just “thank you” but sometimes not: cf. the “your heart sings” incident).

Finally, sometimes shit happens – at May Fair 2, Will Seefried took me back to do the Porter 1:1 and couldn’t get the door to open, so instead he closed the gate, put my back against it, and ad libbed a completely different 1:1 with his own monologue. Audience could see some of it obviously, but I count it as a 1:1 in my records because *what was supposed to be happening then* was the regularly scheduled scene in the Porter’s office. He did lift my mask up for it, since the rest of the audience could only see my back against the gate.

But again this isn’t strict religion so however folks like to count these things is fine! 

***

Adding one other fun note. After seeing Linked Dance Theater’s “Remembrance” this fall, they did a talkback with the audience who had stayed through the whole performance. I had asked a question about their structure (the 1:1s and 2:1s etc were in the ‘premium’ content in the third loop of the show) and Kendra Slack asked me to pause and explain the terminology for some of the other audience at the talkback, since it’s common parlance in the immersive world but not necessarily understood outside that. The baseline was simply “some amount of privacy for a scene expressly understood as between a single performer and a single audience member.” 

Definition question

I’m curious—how many of you consider something a 1:1 only if it happens behind a closed door? I definitely don’t. The first time I was given Boy Witch’s 1:1, it happened in the hallway between the Lobby and the Ship Stairs down to the Ballroom. I still consider it a 1:1. I also think of Hecate’s interaction with an audience member that includes the ring and “Is That All There Is” to be a 1:1 as well. 

In my personal opinion, any time a performer singles out an audience member for a sustained interaction, that’s a 1:1. Some are closed door 1:1s, some are not. 

As always, I am not the determiner of the rules. I’m curious what others think about this!

[actuallyscorched]

I know that I complain a lot, and I invoke memories of the golden bygone years far too often, but:

There are a handful of people at Sleep No More who consistently make me so, so happy, they do such extraordinary work, and they have, by now, seemed to become aware of just which little moments mean so much to me, and they somehow know how to maximize the impact of those brief little encounters that we share.

I hope that I’ve been able, by dropping hints and plunking stones of good fortune into the pool, to send some gratitude back to them. I really hope they know that it’s a tall order to make a jaded old codger like me still feel fresh wonder in a nine year old production, and that they are doing just that, and have my thanks.

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Elwes, asked which role he has enjoyed the most, said he enjoys them all and that’s why he does them.“But I have to say the one that is probably going to stay with me for the rest of my life is ‘The Princess Bride.’ It will say ‘as you wish’ on my tombstone. Billy Crystal said the other side of the tombstone should say ‘mostly dead.’ ”

CARY ELWES as Westley in The Princess Bride (1987) 

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Wednesday Night

-Great cast all around

-Terrible audience

-Really full

-Fire alarm

-Two hours of alarm strobes

-My newbie friend thought it was part of the show

-In some places the Black Lodge effect was cool

-Mostly it was nauseating

-No interrogation

-No hanging, just a strangling

-Hope it worked out for the house staff in the end :-(

and also, Jesus Christ Nate Carter.

[actuallyscorched]

My income has increased considerably since 2011, like, by a truly ridiculous amount, but now I too feel priced out of Sleep No More.

What the actual fuck, guys?

[actuallyscorched]

I enjoyed this casting tremendously, glad I stuck around for this show after the early one.

SNM 09.20.2019 late

Macbeth: Evan Fisk

Lady Macbeth: Jenna Saccurato

Duncan: Audrey Tchoukoua

Malcolm: Alec Funiciello

Banquo: Jason Cianciulli

Macduff: David Lee Parker

Lady Macduff: Kristen Stuart

Hecate: Virginia Logan

Bald: Marissa Maislen

Sexy: Kelly Todd

Boy: Austin Dale Tyson

Porter: Jeff Docimo.

Danvers: Evelyn Chen.

Speakeasy: Jamal Abrams

Taxi: John William Watkins

Fulton: Pil Jeong

Agnes: Stephanie Jean Lane

Matron: Mia Mountain?

Nurse: Aliza Russell

6: Kerri Sohn

MIB: Andy Talen

WIB: Ginger Kearns

Fortune Teller: Anna Schnaitter

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Speakeasy Negativity?

I didn’t see whatever the origin of this was, but let me just put out into the universe that there’s someone presently playing Speakeasy - you’ll surely guess who I mean - who can be 100% pure jerk and I just want to be absolutely clear that I *love* that. He has literally thrown a drink in my face. The role is great because it exists to reset props but can actually give some texture to the emotional range of the show. He’s a thorn and that makes it all more fun.

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Some of the newer cast members are immune to the Scorched effect and *it’s awesome actually*

Possible Reasons Why You Didn’t Get the One on One

1. Cast member recognized you. 2. Cast member didn’t recognize you. 3. You followed the character for the whole loop. 4. You didn’t follow the character for the whole loop. 5. Cast member only picking audience members that they find attractive tonight. 6. Cast member’s friend was at the show, so cast member picked their friend. 7. You stand too close. 8. You don’t stand close enough. 9. You want it too badly. 10. You don’t want it enough. 11. You’re clearly angling for it. 12. Other audience member wore an eye-catching hat. 13. That dumb shirt you wore. 14. Wearing mask on the top of your brow. 15. Cast member would like to give the one on one to an audience member who doesn’t know what one on ones are, because those experiences tend to be the most mind-blowing to an audience member instead of, like, you getting to hear Pagoda Woman tell you a story for the 12th time. 16. Scorched the Snake went to the show that night and got all the one on ones instead of you. 17. Cast member knows you do a Sleep No More tumblr and doesn’t want you writing about the one on one. 18. Cast member took someone that they know does a Sleep No More tumblr in the hopes that the person would write about the one on one. 19. You are putting out bad vibes. 20. You went to the show in costume. 21. You didn’t go to the show in costume. 22. Other audience member was wearing t-shirt of cast member’s favorite band. 23. Cast member only picking audience members of a particular gender. 24. Seriously, you wore that to the show? What is this, a barn? HOPE THAT HELPED!

[actuallyscorched]

What night of the week will be my regular McKittrick haunt this contract? Will it still be the Friday show?