#jeanscharfenberg

29 Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare dir by Jean Scharfenberg. Ah yes, the other show that was so… not good, it got mentioned in a person’s eulogy. I was cast as Mercutio. This show was cursed. At the start of the rehearsal process, I was given an understudy because there was the chance Our Country’s Good might perform at Nationals for the ACTF and it would happen right in the middle of the run. That didn’t happen, and I ended up being the only lead who didn’t use an understudy by the end of the run. You would show up every night and not know who you would be onstage with. Illness and injury plagued this production. I don’t think the cast that was posted in January ever performed the show together in the parts they were cast in. It also felt like there was 147 people in the show. We were staging the curtain call for the show, not an easy task for 147 people, and Jean says to someone “move to your left” without saying which person she was talking to. And when that didn’t happen, she blew up and changed the curtain call to a single file Bataan Death March around the front of the Allen stage, which took forever since THERE WERE 147 PEOPLE IN THE SHOW. It’s reputation was so bad I KNOW several faculty skipped it. Also, I remember trying on costumes and I put on this really awesome black tunic and Jean said “No! All wrong! Don’t worry, love I won’t let them do that to you!” And instead I got fuchsia lederhosen with a skirt and pixie shoes. The upside was, I was dead five minutes into the second act and would go have beers in my friend’s grad office. Also good because closing night, Mike Dailey accidentally kicked me straight in the balls at the end of the nurse scene and I saw stars. I seriously questioned my ability to do the Tybalt/Mercutio fight. But I got through it. His words of comfort were, “at least we know it will never happen again.” Show photos by Pete Guither #retrospective #1993 #romeoandjuliet #williamshakespeare #jeanscharfenberg #mercutio #isu #isutheatre #redbirdsflyinghigh #deathmarch #lookraoulstars (at Illinois State University) https://www.instagram.com/p/B45HD6OplWP/?igshid=mbe45g1z1zk2

21 Love for Love by William Congreve, dir by Jean Scharfenberg. From Why Am I Afraid of Love to Love for Love. Sadly not a lot to love about this show. Except the people of course. I was Jeremy, the wiley servant to Valentine the protagonist. All you really need to know about this show is it was a “comedy” and three and a half hours long. I was a major named character who had an hour and twenty minutes off in the middle of the play and I still was onstage for two hours of it. And how do you end a three and a half hour play? WITH THE SLOWEST DANCE IMAGINABLE. Big cheer and then MINUET. Which is just people walking in a circle for 3 minutes. The other memorable thing about the show was having to do it three times in 24 hours. We had an 8 PM show Thursday, which means it ended at 11:30, which means we got out of there at around midnight. Then we had to be back at 8 AM for a 10:30 AM Student Matinee performance, at which ¾ of the students had to leave before act III because they had to get back to school, and they were sadly the best audience we had. So that show came down at about 1:30 and they promised us lunch, which was late, so you have a bunch of loopy college students crying over not having Brown’s Chicken, and then back into the show for the evening performance. This show was so bad it got mentioned in Jean’s eulogy as one of the bad ones, along with her last R & J, which I was also in. And our costume crew were all practicum workers who would shove the wig pins in like they were pitons on the side of Everest. Doug and I would be having a chat while getting wigged, they would shove a wig pin into one of us, and we would just cross our eyes and yell “CINNAMON!” A gag I have worked into a few shows since then. I’ve included a picture of Doug because he looks like a Restoration Joker, and he was also the funniest part of the show. Show photos by Pete Guither. #retrospective #loveforlove #JeanScharfenberg #jeremy #williamcongreve #1991 #isu #isutheatre #redbirdsflyinghigh #sailordance #littlesampson #capricorninyourteeth (at Westhoff Theatre) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4kK_zyJcSM/?igshid=saq7pwzu1f7s