. . . but I do miss curtain calls.
You know what a curtain call is, right?
It's at the end when all the actors come on and take a bow.
That's usually the best part.
Because now you know you won't have to sit through another rehash of Tennessee Williams or Anton Chekhov.
You're anticipating being free to walk to your car, and floor it to beat the rest of the audience to get on the drive-thru line for Fourth Meal at Taco Bell.
Ah, a night of culture.
But I wish more productions would have fun with the staging of curtain calls.
Like if it's a production of David Mamet's Oleanna have the professor come out, start waving cheerfully at the audience, and then the student can sneak up from behind and clobber his ass with one of those breakable chairs like a Wild West saloon brawl.
If you're doing Bertolt Brecht, have the cast of Up With People do an encore.
If you're doing Up With People, just have Mother Courage enter, solus, and stare down the audience for a half hour.
Doing King Lear? Have 'em all jump into Audrey II's gullet. And for the topper, Lear can pitch Cordelia down the hatch, strip off, and twerk up a storm, while the Fool freestyles a topical spoken word bit about the benefits of weatherizing your home.
For Oklahoma you have all the cowboys come dancing . . . only to be gunned down by the cast of The Wild Bunch. See, that one's a theater/cinema mash-up. And mash-ups are popular with young folk on the Internet.
Oh, the fun you can have with curtain calls!
