The Disappearing Actor

I've been doing a bad job of keeping up with my blog! I'm making a new effort in 2010 to find time to write. Since my last installment I opened two shows, found out that I'm going to have a niece (YAY!!) and celebrated Christmas and the New Year with my amazing family and friends in Florida.

This story begins in the fall of 2003. In order to earn my BFA in stage management from UCF I was required to find a paying internship at a professional theatre. I landed an incredible job at a regional theatre in Baltimore. I arrived in September and settled into intern housing. The first show of the season was going into tech and I was getting blisters on my hands from making thousands and thousands and thousands of glow dots. Show 1 opens. We start rehearsal for show 2. My fellow interns and I are livin' it up on our lavish salaries (a hundred bucks a week) we were all broke and we all had a lot of fun! The season continues, people hook up and break up, casts come and go, we ring in 2004, I made my first snow man, there was a hurricane and the requisite hurricane party.

We start rehearsal for the final show of the season. It's a big love fest. The cast becomes quick friends. The interns are all clinging to the last few weeks of living and working in Baltimore; excited and fearful of the "real world" that awaited us. The show goes into tech. Everything is going swimmingly. We open the show. People love it. And THEN...an actor disappears. I remember getting a call from the stage manager; she told me we were bringing an actor down from New York to play "Blahbity blah's" part; the New York actor was already on an express train with the script. He was scheduled to arrive in Baltimore at about 2 in the afternoon. We called the cast in and had a put in rehearsal with the New York actor. He had a costume fitting and went on stage at 8pm with script in hand. The next night he went on with no script and the show continued it's run without incident.

But WHAT happened to Blahbity blah?

Well...he skipped town in the middle of the night. He went out for drinks after the show, gave no indication that there was any kind of problem. (He had complained that a pre-existing knee injury was bothering him - he didn't want to see the company doctor and was not wearing a knee brace.) The cast walked home from the bar together and went into their apartments. The next morning someone knocked on Blahbity blah's door and he didn't answer. People started calling him - no answer. People got concerned and called company management. The company manager went to Blahbity Blah's apartment, unlocked the door and ALL of his stuff was gone. No note - just gone. People at the theatre were calling his agent, his emergency contacts - NO ONE knows where he went or what was going on.

Finally, Blahbity blah calls company management. He explained that his knee was really bothering him so he got up early and drove to New York City to see his knee doctor (This was NOT a day off). He claimed that he, "didn't want to be a bother" so he just went without saying anything...to anyone! All of this knee doctor business was very suspicious. He continued to call and "update us on his progress". In between updates someone Googled Blahbity blah. We found out that he double booked himself. He was not in New York at the knee doctor. He was on his way to Georgia (or Alabama or some place in the deep south with a Shakespeare Festival). He had to drive through the night in order to arrive in time for the first rehearsal; he was cast as Hamlet (or something equally huge). He ditched our show to go play the bigger part! He never apologized to anyone at the theatre or his cast mates. When he knew we'd discovered the truth - he just stopped all communication and we never heard from him again.

And that's the story of The Disappearing Actor.