Getting a peek behind the curtain was the best experience

Glens Falls' victory highlighted basketball week; incident Thursday marred it

When I walked into the Wood Theater Friday night for Playfest, I found myself on unfamiliar terrain.

"Playfest 2024" is an intriguing theater concept that puts a 24-hour clock on theatrical creativity. While it may be the ultimate challenge for actors and playwrights, I thought it would fit my deadline newspaper sensibilities perfectly.

Entering the Wood Friday night, it felt like the first day at a new school. The people around me were giddy with excitement to see there old friends in anticipation of a new school year while I felt like the new kid with no friends.

My job as one of eight writers was to produce a script before dawn so a director and four actors could make it into, well, dramatic art.

I've spent my whole life working on deadline, so I wasn't worried.

We were told the theme was "decades" and from that one word would come our inspiration.

Our team gathered at a table in the back of the theater to get acquainted and discuss a direction for my writing.

Our director, Amber, was a local woman who said this was her fourth time doing Playfest, but her first time as a director. She stressed a "team-oriented" concept.

The actors consisted of Raphael, a theater major and recent graduate of an Ivy League college who had seen his theater career derailed by Covid; Kira, a first-time performer who was working behind the scenes with her fiance on a movie; Nicki, a South Glens Falls native who previously worked in Whitehall as a teacher and had recently enrolled in the improve class at the Wood; and Sara, a Russell Sage graduate working in Albany as a writer while trying to expand and challenge herself creatively.

Like me, this was their first Playfest and they all seemed to be looking for something more out of life.

Amber asked what the theme "decades" suggested to each of them.

I suggested addressing different generations of a family in a setting such as a hospital or nursing home with the family gathering around a dying grandmother. That morphed into a dead relative with the scene in a funeral home, then someone suggested the death of a young person might be more dramatic.

That was the genesis for my 10-page script.

I started writing at 10 p.m. and like any good newspaper man set a deadline (2 a.m.).

But it was a lot tougher than I thought it would be.

At 2 a.m., I had about four pages and still wasn't sure where the story was going or how it would end.

But desperation can be an ally to a writer, and by 4 a.m. I had found my voice and was done.

Our little theater troupe went through their steps on the main stage about six hours before curtain on Saturday.

The director and actors arrived at the Wood Theater at 7 a.m. and began reading and discussing the script and the story.

I showed up a little past 10 a.m. and found an intense scene in a basement room of the Wood Theater. The actors were poring over their script, the director was searching out props and no one even noticed I was there. When I asked how things were going, the director  said, "Great," but acknowledged they had made a few changes to the script. When I eyed the red ink on her script, I thought, "Oh my!"

But what I found during rehearsal were actors massaging the words, ad libbing lines, creating background for their characters and rearranging the order of events to create more drama. We weren't allowed to do that in journalism.

When I wrote about participating in this event last week, Matt Funiciello - also a writer for Playfest this year - offered up some sage advice in a comment here. He told me to hand in my script and let it go.

It was good advice.

I left the director and actors to their work and I went to the Civic Center to watch basketball.

When I returned they had arranged a makeshift set as I described in the script. And for the first time I was hearing those 4 a.m. words come to life.

I agreed to enhance the set by asking my wife to create some floral arrangements for the funeral home setting.

My wife Gillian contributed the floral arrangements to my makeshift funearl home while I cast my son as the deceased and used his graduation photo as a prop.

Around 2:30 p.m., there was the first reading on the main stage. The director was worried the actors were not projecting enough. Back in the basement, the actors stood 20 yards apart and started yelling the lines at each other to improve the volume. They regularly offered each other suggestions on how to enhance their performance.

From 4:30 to 6 p.m., the "Cue-to-cue technical rehearsal" was held on the main stage and each of the eight groups ran through moving their props onto the stage as fast as possible, then coordinated with the sound and lighting people any special instructions.

It all felt very rushed.

Back downstairs, the actors ran through the play one more time "off-book." They had been at this for more than 10 hours and looked tired. They flubbed lines, gave each other blank looks and I started to worry if any of it would make any sense on stage.

The curtain went up just past 8 p.m. and over the next hour and a half, my wife and I watched five 10-minute plays. Most were loud and a little over the top. There was some funny bits and some performances that stood out.

I knew my play was not like that. It was quieter. I was trying to tell a story about relationships and families and I was not sure how that would play.

There was an intimacy to our production that I did not expect and the audience listened which was the greatest reward of all.

When the curtain went up, the set looked pretty much as I imagined it. The actors looked like the characters I imagined.

What I didn't expect was the quiet.

The audience was listening. We had their attention.

Many reacted to the Glens Falls references and the first death ever in the roundabout, but more importantly, there was an intimacy among the characters on the stage.

My goal was to tell a story.

The actors' job was to bring it to life.

They did that.

My goal with this column is also to tell stories, but I don't get to see you read my column in your kitchen.

But Saturday night, I got to see my story play out before my eyes with the actors taking the words and stories I wrote and enhancing them further, making it their story, too.

It wasn't something I considered before.

I thought a lot about that the next day; about the passions these fledgling artists brought to their roles to bring a story to life; how close they worked; and how close they became in such a short period of time.

This play was as much their's as it was mine.

And we did it all in 24 hours.

Glens Falls’ undefeated Section II Basketball Champions.

Glens Falls wins

Earlier this year, I suggested this year's Glens Falls boys basketball team was the best I had ever seen. Considering Joe Girard's team won the state title five years ago, that says a lot.

But going into Saturday championship game against Catholic Central, my expectations were low. After three weeks off, Glens Falls had turned in a lackluster effort against Ichabod Crane - although they still won by 35 - then struggled  to put away a talented Lansingburgh team in the semifinals. On the other side of the bracket, Catholic Central appeared to be unstoppable.

Catholic Central scored the first eight points of the game Saturday and it was looking bad for Glens Falls. But then Catholic's star Darien Moore, who is committed to Division I Seton Hall, had to sit down with three fouls.

Glens Falls had life and with Moore on the bench rallied to take a seven-point lead at the half. But rejuvenated by Moore's return, Catholic Central scored the first 13 points of the second half to take a six-point lead.

Glens Falls rallied again - despite horrible free throw shooting - and led by as many as 10 in the fourth quarter, holding on to win by six. It was a great game.

Glens Falls is now 23-0 and will play Tuesday at Shenendehowa against Beekmantown.

By the end of basketballl week at the Cool Insuring Arena, there was a police presence on hand.

It's just game

I call it Basketball Week. My wife calls it Hell Week.

There were triple-headers all week long at the Cool Insuring Center and I relish the opportunity to see the best teams from the Capital District and something I have never seen before.

That's what happened Thursday night after Green Tech's 66-52 victory over Shaker.

Several Green Tech fans were so incensed by something that was said by a large contingent of Shaker students that several Green Tech fans had to be held back.

In the minutes after the Green Tech victory, there was a commotion in front of me and I saw a Green Tech fan trying to get at some of the Shaker students.

Several rushed from their seats down in the front of the N section into the nearby hockey bench area.

A woman from Green Tech started taking photos of some of the students and said she was going to call the police. A woman next to her, shook up her soft drink and started spraying the drink at the students.

It was getting ugly.

The Glens Falls police eventually did show up and took several of the Shaker students into the hallway to talk to them. They never returned. I suspect they were asked to leave.

I love basketball, but emotions should never run this high in high school sports. The players can often be the best behaved.

On Saturday, I noticed there were three members of the Glens Falls police present before the Glens Falls game. I wondered if it had anything to do with what happened Thursday night, especially with Green Tech playing later in the afternoon.

Road rage

I was walking down Ridge Street toward Centennial Circle in downtown Glens Falls Friday night when a woman yelled out to be me from her big pickup truck.

"I love your scarf! It reminds me Hufflepuff in Harry Potter," she yelled.

"Thanks," I said, "But it's actually West Virginia University."

And she drove on toward the roundabout. But as I turned the corner and turned up Warren Street I heard the voice again.

"Learn how to drive!" I heard her scream. "Learn how to freaking drive!" Except, she didn't say "freaking."

I turned and saw her big pickup's bumper almost touching a little white car. Turning onto Warren Street, she stuck her head completely out of window of her truck and yelled again, "Learn how to freaking drive."

After witnessing her actions, I was glad she liked my scarf. I hate to think what might have happened if she didn't.

Glitch

I apologize to any of your who were trying to sign up for a paid subscription over the weekend and were unable to complete the transaction.

I think I've worked out the problem and it should be good to accept payments again if you so choose.

It was nice to see more subscriptions coming in on Sunday.