Since we’ve been in Crystal Lake (it was two years last month), I’ve nicknamed our summers. Our first summer was The Summer of the Move, and didn’t really count as summer since we got out here in late June and spent the following two months unpacking, settling in, and trying to avoid the 18,000,000 mosquitoes that had made our backyard their home.

Last summer was The Summer of the Screenplay, because I worked on a horror screenplay with a former student of mine. I am 99.9% sure that it will ever be made (or read by anyone, ever), but it was a weird and interesting experience and now I can say that I’ve written a screenplay. A good screenplay? Well, let’s just move on.

This summer has been The Summer of the Play because this summer I’ve been rehearsing for a play that opened last night. (Do you notice how amazing my nicknames are? I am the most creative person you know!) The play is God of Carnage, and I wrote about it a bit last week. Here are my castmates and me, posing like happy, well-adjusted people:

And here we are, being…not happy:

Although we’re four of the angriest, saddest, most frustrated people on stage, we’ve been having a hell of a lot of fun backstage.

And our comfortable, relaxed, and frequently silly backstage energy fed us last night, for the opening night of the show. Our ninety-seat black box theater space had an audience of about sixty, and let me tell you, they were terrific. They laughed and cringed and reacted visibly and audibly. It was a wonderful relief. I’d forgotten how funny this play is — our director and crew have sat through it about a dozen times; we’re used to them, and during tech early this week they were much more concerned about lights, sound cues, and costuming than they were about laughing at us. But having a room full of strangers laugh where you want them to (and laugh where you don’t expect them to) was new, fresh, and fantastic.

One of the audience members was Bill Geheren (a.k.a. Sir William), co-host of the 2 Dudes and The Duchess radio show on Huntley Community Radio, where we appeared last week to promote the play. And post-play, while some of the cast came to Camp Crystal Lake to eat, drink, and debrief about the performance, Sir William was writing a generous and flattering review of the show. It was lovely of him and we are grateful for his support.

Trevor is coming to the show tonight with Mom and Dad Bork (he might try to sneak Roo in, too…). I told them to get to the theater early enough to enjoy a piece of clafouti, which will be served for the first twenty minutes that the house is open.

If you’re looking for something to do tonight or next weekend, come out to Camp Crystal Lake to see the show. It’s only eighty minutes and you’ll get to see me do things you have likely never seen me do before. Yes. You’re intrigued. So make a reservation now.