[1585] in Humor
HUMOR: Gilbert & Sullivan Humor
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Sep 6 17:06:28 1996
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 1996 09:18:19 EDT
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 21:13:03 -0800
From: connie@interserve.com (Connie Kleinjans)
Forgive me. I'm a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan and this was quite silly.
From: Howard Stateman <howeird@best.com>
>From: gking@sjos.wr.irs.gov
>> Subject: Amateur theater from backstage <long, bodily functions>
>>
>> The Princess and the Pee
>>
>> by Jim Mica
>>
>> I work backstage with an amateur theater group specializing in
>> Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. This summer's offering was
>> Princess Ida. Ida runs a college for women and her idol is
>> Minerva. In the second act Ida sings a lovely paean to Minerva.
>> The director and set designer wanted her to have a statue to sing
>> to, so we had one.
>>
>> Our Minerva was vaguely Greek, 4ft something and had a pouring
>> water jug on her hip. She stood on a 3ft-something platform with
>> a kid's wading pool --cleverly disguised as a marble pond-- on a
>> lower platform in front of her. She was to be a working
>> fountain.
>>
>> Well, getting Minerva affixed to the platforms was no small feat.
>> She was one hefty chick. It took four lag bolts to get her to
>> hold still. Next came the matter of the water. The ribald crew
>> quickly dubbed this the problem of "Making Minerva Pee" --we
>> soon learned just how apt the phrase was. She was drilled to be
>> a fountain, but we needed some extra tubing and a pump.
>>
>> The first pumping effort ended in failure when the set designer
>> learned that a pump rated to raise water two feet will not raise
>> it four feet, even when the water is for a fountain in an
>> imaginary castle. As his "day job" the set designer uses CAD to
>> design plumbing systems.
>>
>> We got a heftier pump. It worked but brought new problems.
>> Minerva now produced sound. Imagine someone with a truly
>> prodigious bladder capacity relieving himself for an extended
>> period of time. This was the sound. It never dribbled out and
>> it could drown out half of the strings in the orchestra.
>>
>> Opening night Minerva's pond had an interesting added sculpture
>> consisting of some wire, a stage weight and a brush. The brush
>> was situated, bristles up, on top of the weight and right under
>> Minerva's stream. This little pond monster cut down the volume
>> some, but it didn't change the timber of the sound being
>> produced. We had to leave it at that because the curtain was due
>> to go up soon.
>>
>> Act one of Ida runs only about 25 minutes. It was followed by a
>> 20 minute intermission because we had to move an entire castle,
>> add water to the fountain and get it running. Act two runs a bit
>> over an hour. The audience was subjected to the sound of Minerva
>> for that entire hour. When we closed the curtain on the act
>> there was a stampede for the bathrooms. Our professional ushers
>> --they came with the theater-- tried to stem the tide by blocking
>> the side exits and telling everybody to stay near their seats
>> because this was to be a very brief intermission. There were,
>> thankfully, no injuries or accidents.
>>
>>
>> The Minerva Effect continued throughout the run of the play and
>> even hit the cast and crew. I well recall a nervous chorus girl
>> standing in the wings hopping from foot to foot during the second
>> performance. During the third performance one of the assistant
>> stage managers called me to her station, ripped off her headset
>> and, shaking with emotion, cried "I've got to go!" During the
>> last performance, just before the second act curtain, I did a
>> quick backstage sweep. I came upon one of the principals in the
>> cast behind the furthest upstage flat doing "the pee-pee dance".
>> Since this is Gilbert and Sullivan, however, it might be better
>> to describe it as a micturation minuet. At any rate, she looked
>> at me with pleading eyes and said, "Oh that statue!"
>>
>> ***********************************************
>> Permission is granted to forward and reproduce the above for non-
>> commercial purposes as long as the title and author's name are
>> attached.
>>
