Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Theater people watching shows about theater

As a theater person I totally get sucked into shows about my profession. Glee is one of those shows. Despite the fact that it is technically about a high school glee club lets face it, those characters are going to grow up and do musical theater.

It doesn't surprise me that I got sucked into Smash on NBC.  This TV show about all the drama that goes into a show on broadway was right up my alley. As a matter of fact I couldn't believe I was getting sucked into this show because of how similar it was to what I was working on. There was an episode of Smash where the writers are working on a song about what the characters of Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio and they decide these two want to run away and get married and be out of the limelight. This was so much like a scene in End of the Rainbow where Judy says she and Mickey Deans should just run away and get married.  

After a while my realistic theater person comes out when I watch these shows and it becomes hard for me to suspend my disbelief on certain things.  For example I'm amazed at the sets the William McKinley High School scene shop builds week to week. For some reason I was completely unable to suspend my disbelief during Smash this week. Katherine McPhee's character, Karen  drops by Megan Hilty's (Ivy's) show to drop off a pair of expensive sunglasses and get her cheap sunglasses back.  She just walks up to stage door and the attendant tells her to go on backstage find the ASM(assistant stage Manager) Maybe we do things differently in the Twin Cities but I'm not sure I'd just be able to go to the stage door of one of the theaters here and be told to just go backstage and find the ASM.  I'm not sure I'd just go backstage on a set I didn't know and a show I didn't know to drop off sunglasses.

Later as these two characters walked through Times Square the wardrobe/costume girl in me couldn't figure out why everyone else had coats on while Ivy was dressed in her angel costume and didn't seem to be affected by the cold at all.

Maybe detectives and police officers watch Law and Order and think "Oh that would never happen in real life."