Please, Silence Your Cell Phones

It’s getting to be pretty standard that there’s always one person who doesn’t pay attention to the “silence your cell phone” speech that is given before every performance at every theater. It never fails that during a dramatic moment of any play, someone’s phone rings. I can think of at least two occasions where someone answered their phone and held a conversation in the theatre, while the actors (attempted to) continue acting. When you’re doing a play about cell phone etiquette, these interruptions are still funny and rude, but also rather ironic.

On our opening night on June 10^th, Howard Shalwitz gave our preshow speech and ended with “In a show about cell phones, I feel like I don’t even have to say it… in fact I won’t say it.” The next day, our Communications Director received this email from a patron:

I don't make this stuff up.

So about 20 minutes into Act I, I hear a cell phone ring... and it is not coming from the speakers where the sound cue cell phone rings are. And someone in the audience answers the phone. Another person in the row behind me says, "I'm over here, Seymour" and waves. And Seymour says, just as if he were in his living room, "I see you." He starts saying "excuse me," in his outdoor voice, as he nudges his way through the crowds. Most of us in the neighborhood were contemplating re-naming the evening Dead Man: Cell Phone.

So, don’t forget to turn off your cell phone! If you haven't seen Dead Man's Cell Phone yet, you're not too late! We've just extended (twice) through July 14th.

Friday was Club Woolly night for Woolly’s smash hit, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, as well as our press night. It was a great performance with a lot of energy and the reception was a lot of fun, too! We decked out our reception room with some lost props – things that were created for the production but weren’t used for various reasons. Howard spoke a bit about the process of creating the show and why the larger than life portrait of Rick Foucheux didn’t make it on stage. After that, cast and crew mingled with our Club Woolly members and enjoyed some wonderful food and drink. Strangely, no one attempted to eat the prop suckling pig that was our centerpiece, though one Club Woolly member did mention that he was going to a pig roast this weekend. Unfortunately, he’s a vegetarian and won’t be able to partake in the pig.

All in all, it was a fun time with some excellent food. I hope we can see you at the next one! And if you want to see what the press has to say, check out today's review in the Washington Post!

(Pictured: Naomi Jacobson, Polly Noonan & Sarah Marshall. Photo by Stan Barouh)

Recovering from Loss

No, this isn’t an entry about our show Vigils which played during the month of February to great success. That show was about a Widow who was learning to grieve from her husband’s death and trying to move on, while keeping his soul locked in a box. It was a wonderful show and it’s appropriate that it was the last show for our former Managing Director Kevin Moore before he moved on to run the Cleveland Playhouse. We miss you, Kevin!

While news of this move has been common knowledge for a while, I’ve found that many people are unaware of what Kevin did and the tremendous impact he had on our theater. Howard is the face of Woolly Mammoth and one that our subscribers have come to know and love. Howard built Woolly from the ground up and the theatre won’t be the same without him when he retires (hopefully a day in the far, far future). But while Howard made the artistic choices that put us on the map, Kevin was the one who kept the theater moving. From getting sure everyone got their paychecks on time to being the leader of our multi-million dollar campaign to land us in our beautiful new space, Kevin did it all.

We’re in the midst of interviewing candidates for Kevin’s replacement and it’s an exciting time… we don’t know who we’ll get or how they’ll shape Woolly Mammoth in years to come, but we’re sure they’ll be wonderfully woolly! And hopefully, we’ll still get paid on a regular basis.

By the way, tomorrow is Club Woolly night for Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. Don't miss this heartwarming and lyrical world premiere by the author of The Clean House!