Archive for February, 2011

SpeakeasyDC Valentine’s Show

Posted on February 20, 2011. Filed under: SpeakeasyDC, storytelling | Tags: dance place, dc, jessica piscitelli, performer, speakeasydc, storyteller, storytelling |

“The Perils and Pleasures of Romance,” brought to you by SpeakeasyDC, was a challenging show for me.  Lots of things in my life were conspiring to keep me from doing the show, to the point where I was truly afraid it wouldn’t happen.

In my personal life, I am dealing with the illness of a loved one.  We have just had to start at home hospice care, and that home is about 350 miles from where I live, so all my non existent spare time this month has been spent either traveling to or helping out in NJ.  Of course, this is what one does when a family member needs you, but it has been both physically and emotionally draining.

A week before the show, I woke up with a sore throat.  Now, I memorize the good old fashioned way – through repetition.  I am sure there are better ways to do this, but it’s worked for me all these years so, gosh darn it, I am sticking with it.  The only problem is, if you get a sore throat the week you are supposed to be memorizing, it really puts a cramp in your style.  Then of course, four days before the show, my ear exploded, at least, that’s what it felt like.  More specifically, it was like someone shoved a hot poker into my ear, something I think I’ve seen done on “The Tudors” but hoped never to actually experience.  The sore throat, my doctor explained, led to an ear infection.  Thankfully, that led to antibiotics.

By the time our night before rehearsal came around, I was feeling mostly better – though the rehearsal ran past 8PM, my bedtime that week.  When we finally got around to story time, I started off strong and then, well, then I kind of forgot my train of thought.  I got it back after starting and stopping a few times but, considering the show was TOMORROW, I was not feeling too good about my memorization.

The other minor crinkle in things was that the show was in Northeast D.C.  This was fine, except that when SpeakeasyDC originally posted about the show, they listed it as NW – the information I had used on my blog and to send to all my friends and, for that matter, to get to rehearsal.  I ended up not being too late, thanks to having left myself plenty of time, but did have to do some scrambling that night to let everyone know about the change.

Saturday night arrived.  Dance Place had apparently sold over 100 tickets and was hopeful that they would sell out the other 100 by show time.  Show time arrived – 7PM – and the seats were looking um, well, empty.  It is always, in my opinion, harder to perform to a few people than a lot of people.  But even friends I knew were coming hadn’t arrived yet.  I think the location maybe threw some people for a loop.  We held the curtain and sure enough, by 7:15P, the place was sold out.

The show itself went great.  All of the performers were fantastic.  I will be posting more about them and videos of their stories soon, but it was a great show overall.  I felt like I hiccuped in the middle, but I had just a ton of people come up to me after the show – strangers! – who told me that they loved my story.  That felt really good and made the struggle to get to the performance so worth it.