Zero Regrets
(November 2017)
33: Places, People!
November 6 and 7, a Monday and Tuesday, were set aside for two full-dress rehearsals of Avenue Q. The Friday before that, Dr. Mayberry had given notes to the assembled cast. They were mostly positive—Christmas Eve had to pick up cues a little more quickly, Drew, who was Trekkie Monster's right hand—it was a complicated puppet and took two people to manipulate it, one voicing and being the left hand and the mouth, the other being the right hand—had a habit of standing a little too far upstage and was cautioned to hit his mark so the puppet would be properly oriented to the audience.
But the rest, for the most part, was positive. "You've put in a lot of hard work, and we've got a good, tight, funny show. Now, we're full-dress for Monday and Tuesday. I want us to have at least a token audience both nights. Cast and crew, line up and count off by twos. Mabel, start us."
Mabel, standing far stage right, yelled, "One!"
Drew, next to her, said, "Two!"
And so on down the line. Counting actors and crew members, they had thirty-four people. "Here's your assignment for Monday," Dr. Mayberry said. "I want all you ones to invite four guests to come on Monday for free. You twos, same thing for Tuesday night. If any of you have six friends you'd like to invite, that's fine. That will give us a respectable, though small, audience for both nights. OK, when you've got an audience, they're going to laugh. I want us to hold for laughter. When you sense it's waning, then take up the next line, but don't kill the laugh by coming in too soon."
Mabel, of course, invited Dipper and Wendy, Eloise, two students from her classes that she liked—Kurt Rettlen and Beth Wilgard. She also asked Eloise if she'd like to bring a guy, and Eloise said she had someone in mind and would let her know by Monday afternoon. "No tickets," she said. "Just tell 'em at the door that you're Mabel Pines's guest. Cable Theater, be there at 7:15, show starts at 7:30."
That weekend, Mabel constantly sang her songs to Dipper, Wendy, and Tripper. She briefly considered having Dipper and Wendy sneak Tripper into the theater—"He's a smart dog, he deserves some culture"—but when Dipper looked at her student handbook and discovered that no animals other than certified service dogs were allowed on campus.
"That's OK," Wendy said. "He'll be able to stay and guard the house while we're all out."
Eloise did make a date with Clint Ansen, who was in one of her classes and who confessed he'd been a huge fan of Sesame Street when he was a kid—and that he had a set of DVDs of that show that he still enjoyed watching. Dipper and Wendy arranged to pick them up at the WAU campus and drive them over to Olmsted for the performance.
They actually met them early and had a light dinner at the Chart Room, a local restaurant that offered a varied menu. Then on to Olmsted.
Cable Hall was a roomy building, obviously a theater. They entered through an archway beneath sculpted representations of the masks of Comedy and Tragedy. A broad lobby had corridors off to the left and right leading to teachers' offices and classrooms, but a second archway straight ahead led to the entrances to the actual theater. Curtained doorways to the left and right led into the auditorium, and a couple of theater students stood at each one to greet the audience and give them programs.
"Sit anywhere," the young lady told Dipper, Wendy, Eloise, and Clint. "We encourage you to sit down front, just pick out good seats."
They found good ones three rows back from the stage on the center aisle, stage left. More people came in, a total of sixty or seventy—about a quarter of what the theater could hold. The people chatted in a constant murmur for about a quarter of an hour, and then the house lights dimmed, a spotlight shone on the red curtain, and Dr. Mayberry came out with a cordless microphone.
"Good evening!" she said. Silence.
"Come on, be polite! Try it again. Good evening!"
This time the audience called out "Good evening!" in response.
"Much better! Welcome to our first full-dress rehearsal. My name is Jean Mayberry, I'm a drama professor here at Olmsted, and I've had the fun of directing this production of Avenue Q. We'll be running straight through, just like at a full performance. Normally we'll have one twenty-minute intermission between acts, but tonight since the bathrooms won't be crowded, we'll cut that down to ten minutes. Don't be afraid to laugh, to applaud, and please enjoy this unique musical. Thank you!"
She left the stage, the lights went fully down, and then the curtain rose and a projection screen showed a cartoony smiling sun. The musicians struck up, the first song began, and the show was on.
Wendy and Dipper held hands. By then, they knew a lot about the show by Mabel osmosis, but they both enjoyed it. The intro music led into the entrance of Princeton, spotlighted on stage left, a puppet representing a young man wearing a graduation robe and mortarboard cap and clutching a rolled-up diploma. His song plaintively asked, "What can you do with a B.A. in English?" He felt he was underequipped with a useless degree, but still expressed his determination to make a difference to the human race.
That led to a blackout, and then the stage lights came up on the set, representing a group of dilapidated buildings on Avenue Q, in an outer-outer borough of New York City.
"Good job on the set," Wendy murmured.
"There's Mabel!"
Kate Monster, a cute, pert puppet, met the human character Brian, an aspiring—but so far failing—stand-up comedian. He lamented the sorry state of his life in "It Sucks to Be Me," Kate challenged that with her own sucky life, Mabel enthusiastically dropped an F-bomb that could have wiped out a major city, and soon the other puppets appeared—Nicky and Rod, the two roommates, Nicky goofy and easy-going, Rod serious and uptight, complaining about each other. Then Brian's live-in girlfriend, Christmas Eve, another human character, came on to complain about her own case—after a lot of hard work, she'd earned two master's degrees in social work and was a therapist with no clients, and she, too, thought it sucked to be her.
Princeton interrupted, explaining that he was looking for an affordable place to say and so far had searched Avenues A through P inclusive, but everything was too expensive. Fortunately, a "Room for Rent" sign on one of the run-down buildings gave him hope. Brian and Christmas called the superintendent—Gary Coleman, a guy, but played by Dally Lombard with a large helping of sass—and Princeton got the room and the plot, such as it was, had launched.
The puppeteers made no effort to hide. Each one dressed in head-to-foot black, but they emoted right along with their puppets, emphasizing the emotions of the characters. Before long, Dipper found that hew as accepting the puppets as characters in their on rights, just as real—in their way—as the human characters. He started to be involved with them and so did Wendy. He could feel her appreciation for Kate's blossoming romantic interest in Princeton when she sang about his making her a playlist of songs, and she—and Dipper—got a little misty about young love.
Most of the action and dialogue, though, was pure comedy. The audience reacted with laughter and applause. Dipper noticed only one hiccup. At one point, Kate, a kindergarten teaching assistant, gets her first opportunity to teach a lesson all by herself. She decides to teach a lesson about the internet.
Mabel began to sing about how great the internet was—and then she paused. Nothing happened. The musicians stopped playing and the tune died.
After a beat, Mabel, through the puppet, said to the audience, "Yeah, the internet. Sure, these kids are only in kindergarten, but so what! You're never too young to learn about all the wonderful things you can learn by searching on the internet. How to make paper airplanes! How penguins survive the cold! Where great big dinosaur fossils can be found!"
Then the musicians struck up again, and Mabel repeated her line, singing "The internet is really, really great," and immediately Trekkie Monster appeared at an upper window and yelled, "For porn!"
From there on the slightly bawdy song went on properly. The rest of the show—irresponsible behavior and repercussions, romantic disappointment and rebound, regret and reconciliation, and hope for a better future—played out to an appreciative, though small, crowd.
At the end, the actors came on stage and took their bows to enthusiastic applause.
Dr. Mayberry walked out from the wings and said, "Thank you so much! If you liked this, tell your friends to come. Our regular performances begin Wednesday night—plenty of tickets are still available. The box office number and web site are on your programs, so help us spread the word. For those of you waiting, I'm going to have a few notes backstage for our puppeteers, so you're welcome to remain here. Give us ten minutes!"
The four of them waited for Mabel, and she appeared in a little over the promised ten minutes, still wearing theatrical makeup and her puppeteering outfit—black leotard and long-sleeved black tee shirt. "Whoosh!" she said. "We got through it!"
People waiting for other actors called out, "Great job!" and other compliments, and Mabel took an exaggerated bow and thanked them.
They walked her to Helen Wheels. "I know, I know," she said. "You want to know how come we screwed up on the internet song. I was so embarrassed!"
"I didn't notice anything," Clint said.
Eloise took the opportunity of introducing him to Mabel. "Aw," she said, "when you see Trekkie up in the window, the two puppeteers have to be up on a scaffold. Drew does Trekkie's left hand, and slipped and got his ankle caught in the scaffold. It took him a little time to get out of it—he had to take off his shoe, you might have noticed he was barefoot when they came out on stage the first time."
"No," Wendy said.
"Neither did I," Dipper said. "Or I did, but I thought it was just part of the show."
"Well, anyhow, they didn't get the puppet to the window and missed their cue. They'll be practicing that before the next performance. Uh—the, uh, the sex scene-?"
"It was hilarious!" Eloise said.
"Really funny," Clint agreed. "Especially when they started switching positions!"
"Not . . . too much?" Mabel asked.
Dipper said, "It was kind of edgy, but that's probably because you're my sister. No, it's part of the show! And yes, it's really funny. But Mabel, do me a favor—in real life, promise me you won't drink too many Long Island iced teas!"
"I don't think I could," she said. "Well—too late to just stand around here." She hugged Eloise. "Thank you guys so much for coming! Please tell people at WAU to come to the show. Having a good audience made all the difference!"
Wendy and Dipper dropped Eloise and Clint off at their dorms, and then they drove back to the house. Helen Wheels was already parked in the garage, so—as usual—Dipper parked on the apron out front of the garage, and he and Wendy went inside.
Mabel came from her room, wearing a robe over pajamas. She had removed the stage makeup and presumably had showered. "Really and truly," she said, "did you guys think I did OK?"
"You did great!" Wendy insisted. "Acting and singing both."
"Dipper, do you think Mom and Dad are gonna be upset? Is it too sexy?"
"Personally," Dipper said, "I think Mom will be so relieved that you're not playing Lucy the Slut that she'll laugh her head off. Dad and Mom aren't all that prudish, Mabel. And the night they'll see the play, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford will be sitting with them. I know Stan will enjoy it and laugh his head off. That'll keep Mom and Dad laughing along."
"I hope so," Mabel said. "Well, anyhow, they'll see the last performance, so I won't have to worry about them disapproving and making me all self-conscious and all. You guys willing to come back?"
"Wouldn't miss it," Dipper said. "In fact, we may buy tickets for Friday and Saturday night both."
"Yeah, we're worried about that last Saturday," Mabel admitted. "Since Thanksgiving break starts on Monday, lots of people are gonna be off-campus by then. But Friday may fill up, so make the reservations early."
Wendy yawned. "Well, Dip and me better turn in. You've got an early start tomorrow, too."
"I don't know if I can get to sleep right away," Mabel said. "You get real pumped up doing a show—all that adrenaline, you know. It takes a little while to run down. I guess I can go read in my political science book. Checks and balances may make me feel sleepy."
"Goodnight, Sis," Dipper said. "And really and truly—you did great. If you guys keep it up, you'll have huge audiences coming in just from word of mouth."
"Oh, are the posters up on your campus?"
"On every bulletin board in the Student Center," Wendy said. "And there's one on the big Events board in the library."
"And we'll talk it up," Dipper promised.
When she was alone in the living room, Mabel switched on a lamp, sank onto the sofa with her PolySci textbook, and let Tripper hop up beside her. "I wish you could've been there," she said. "I know you'd like all the puppets."
"Woof," Tripper agreed.
