so i blogged a couple of weeks ago about seeing Happy Days at Cal Shakes. Happy Days is the Beckett play in which the main character, Winnie, is buried in dirt up to her waist for the entire play. the text of the play is mostly a circular, spinning monologue of post-apocalyptic despair. the set pretty much just a big mound of dirt, and Winnie is dug into the dirt about half way up the mound. Cal Shakes’s outdoor amphitheater is set in the hills in Orinda, outside of Berkeley, CA. (whew! enough setup for what is a small news item)

so anyway, i heard through the theatre grapevine that last week there was a rattlesnake that got into the dirt mound during the first act play. the actress saw the snake coiled out of the corner of her eye, and then heard the rattle of its tail and knew what it was. in the end, the actress escaped injury (tho i’m afraid the snake did not survive the evening). but i can’t think of something more like an actor’s nightmare: she’s buried up to her waist in dirt, delivering a meandering, circular monologue characterized by a desperation bordering on panic. had she screamed, ‘oh god, a rattlesnake, i’m trapped,’ i don’t know if any audience member would have had any idea that she had deviated from the text! can you imagine screaming for help and having everyone calmly watching you, munching on their picnic dinners and shifting in their lawn chairs? to illustrate my point, at one point in the play, per the script, the umbrella she’s holding catches fire.* well, that happened and no one jumped up to save the day, we sat quietly and politely and watched to see what she’d do next.

these are the things we do in the name of outdoor theare.

* how to make an umbrella spontaneously catch fire, by the way? garage door opener, model rocket igniter, flash paper. boom.