4.21.06 Part I: Ironic self-deprication
This is a two-parter, listed as two separate posts. The following post is [another] existential rant. You can skip it if you’d like. But for the appetizer, something light.
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When Barrie showed up to vet my remount, his highest praise was for my casting of the “First Corpse”, who will appear naked. The extra I chose is a magnificent specimen. Barrie, Andrew (my new main homo) and I are huge fans.
There are fifteen male extras in Le Grand Macabre. There’s also about five substitutes, so I generally work with about twenty people, in this context.
It’s a mixed bag. A Turk. Two Africans. A smattering of Balkans. A few Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, etc. And then the Austrians. All between 20 and 34.
Extras are a strange thing. They are paid terribly, and are often students, or at least theater enthusiasts with day jobs. They know that they’ll inevitably end up moving furniture or hauling props around on stage, so they tend not to be divas.
Our crew is especially sweet, and not just because I get to see them in various states of undress on a regular basis. They’re just nice kids. And because of their diverse ethnic makeup, my crap Deutsch is more forgiven that usual.
Except for today. At the beginning of the fourth tableaux of Barrie’s Le Grand Macabre, fifteen dying male mermaids writhe onto the stage from left and right. Today we decided to try it with the original mermaid tails. Some, it turned out, were too big for the extras.
It looked terrible. Just sloppy, ungainly shite.
I stopped them once they’d all come onto stage and taken their final positions on the revolve. Addressing both design staff and extras alike, I called over the microphone:
“Okay, dass sah furchtbar aus. Guck mal…ich weiss dass manche Schwaenze sind zu gross, aber es ist doch moeglich fuer jeder eine passende zu finden!”
Everyone…all fifteen on stage and the technicians and rehearsal staff in the wings and hall began shrieking with laughter.
What? I asked…WHAT?
Fuck. I’d forgotten. The colloquial term for penis in German (like cock, sort of) is the same word for tail. In this context, I’d said:
“Okay, that looked terrible. Listen, I know that some cocks are just too big, but it’s got to be possible for everyone to find one that fits.”
Oh, another triumph. Ugh.
