Focus, Focus!!

"I don't know what the heck happened...!" I spluttered after the first botched take of Sarah Skinner's Little Mermaid, for the Venus Uprising DVD of their latest show, Objects of Desire.

Cast as the Sea Witch, it was my job to figure out how to convey the following in about 20 seconds of stage time:

(1) The Little Mermaid has fallen in love with a shipwrecked prince, whom she has rescued and wants to trade her tail in for legs.



(2) She asks the Sea Witch, yours truly, for legs -- but the Witch demands a price. She offers her jewels and hair, but I grab her voice instead.



(3) Then, how to de-tail her (mmmm ... sushi!!).... Sarah, an expert seamstress, created a skirt with a mid-length side zipper. Armed with a scary (and real) knife, I appear to jab the blade into her side, then grab a cord looped into the zipper's pull tab with my thumb, and yank the zipper and knife down so it seems that the blade is raking through her body. (You can see the hilt of it in her side, here:)



Needless to say, I was worried through the dress rehearsal and each performance that something would go wrong with the zipper or knife.

Thankfully, all went smoothly -- until the filming.

Earlier that afternoon, I had been talking with a dancer in another number about my segment. She remarked, "The stuff with the knife looks very scary and real!"

"That's good to hear," I explained, "Because it's hard to grab the zipper and keep the blade straight."

"Well, actually," she said, "You can't see the blade at all because your other sleeve covers it."

This was sort of good news, but I was a little disappointed to hear all my struggles with this prop weren't making much difference.

And this weighed on my mind straight into the filming.

At the moment I "jabbed" the knife into her side, my eyes darted for a half-second to my sleeve. Was it covering? No? Yes? Maybe? I hooked my thumb into the zipper's cord and pulled down.

And it jammed. I fumbled with the knife, nearly dropping it. I yanked the cord again but still couldn't unzip it. Sarah looked down, frustrated, and ripped the zipper open herself.

I felt like crap.

I apologized profusely -- but it turned out part of the frame was blocked so we were going to have to do another take anyway.

"I don't know what happened..." I bleated... But of course I knew exactly what went wrong. Focus, focus!! It is everything in live performance. It's important in filming, too, but less so...

And maybe it was because we had all been so perfectly focused during the mishap-free live run, that we simply had to let up a bit.

Ultimately, we did about four takes because each time SOMETHING went wrong with a prop (other than mine... :-> ) or costume piece.

So yeah, I felt bad -- but not all that bad!

And I re-learned a good lesson: Focus, focus, focus!