The run of The Elephant Man went extremely well. We had good solid audiences every night, including sold-out shows both Friday and Saturday. Our director Lucius said - and most of us agreed - that every performance was better than the last; every time getting more weird, more passionate, more committed to the communal vision of a "demonic fairytale." I did makeup every night, and the incarnations of my pinhead- circus- freak got more and more disturbing. The above picture is an early, tame incarnation; by the Sunday night show I looked positively Undead.
Audience members - friends, family and strangers alike - mostly loved it. This surprised us, frankly. It's not a cuddly show by any means - Julie compared it to A Clockwork Orange - so we were ready for extreme negative and positive reactions alike. As for my own experience of the play, it was a wonderful unexpected thing...since I was removed from the central action of the story, I experienced the play through fragments and glimpses, only getting partial themes at any one time, and never the whole picture. I appreciated not "getting it" - and moreover, not needing to. As Rajeev and I were musing, there are many ways of Knowing, and not all of them are conscious.
I took a lot of pictures in rehearsals, and backstage, before shows; you can see them here!
