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Dear Friend and Reader:

My first hours in Santa Monica were shot from a cannon. Caught in LA rush hour traffic, slowing to a crawl the last ten minutes of the drive, I inched towards the I-10 and a relatively car-free thoroughfare heading west. In all, except the last 30 minutes, it was a relaxing drive. However, as soon as I arrived, wobbily removing myself from my little Nissan hatchback at the Highways Performance Space, I was put to work.

I’ve always been an actor. I never bothered with what was happening on the other side of the stage. My concern was for my part and being part of an ensemble. All I ever worried about was making my mark — meaning hitting my spot light or sound cue at exactly the right time when either occurs. Its a partner dance between you the actor and the house itself, the theater. You call, and it responds.

Today, it’s Angela Baham’s job for this show to be the actor and star of В “The Unsung Diva.” I’m the show’s director, and therefore part of theВ production crew –В responsible for what the eyes of the public will see when they see our show Saturday.В That means knowing what lights go where so that when she moves center stage on a line she won’t be spouting poetry in the dark, or when to bring up a sound cue so it doesn’t come up during a serious monologue. Cue-to-cue rehearsal, the placement of sound and light cues into a show, is the hardest and most demanding theatrical process on all involved. The director and the actor have to know what’s needed where.

The lighting and sound technicians in the tech booth above the stage wait patiently for me to give clear instruction on when, where, on what line and what visual cue our actor will provide. There is tension. There are a dozen more actors whose shows will undergo the same thing before Saturday’s matinee when everyone goes up. We have 50 minutes to work and write in the cues for our show. This is the first show in which I am playing the part of director. Anxious? Hell yes.В If ever there was a moment to be present, this is it.В Welcome to LA. Welcome Aries New Moon, I am sure singing to you right now.

Stage technicians have the hardest job in theater – to make the actor look good while they’re up there on the boards. Its an ego-free position, one of the few in theater in the best of circumstances. They feel the deadline more than most and they are as integral a part of the show as the actor and the director from the days before the show premieres until the last curtain call of the last show of the run. Only you never get to see their faces as you give the actors their applause.В When I met Joyce Long, technical director for the festival at Highways Performance Space, I got the sense of someone who is a decades-long veteran of working the tech booth, and knows the house where we’re working intimately. That immediately brought my anxiety down by 110 decibels.

Confidence builds working with someone who’s experienced, who knows that you don’t have to panic when you don’t know something, and that any problem can always be fixed.В Confidence is an energy that permeates.В You need to be present to feel it, make use of it, become it. The careful give and take between our actor and the theater, ultimately the audience, needed me to negotiate the cue changes with Joyce and the technical crew with certainty.

In this part in this show, I needed to be sure, because no one has any time for us to be ambiguous. Tentative energy in a light cue, in the delivery of an actor’s line, or the dithering of an indecisive director — just doesn’t cut it. We’re working together to create a living painting in a condensed period of time with light, sound, and human energy to tell a very human story. The New Moon in Aries brings with it the feeling of creative urgency: we all need to be here.

Yours & truly,

Fe Bongolan
Santa Monica