The Internationalist by Anne Washburn(This was written before The Internationalist closed, which was January 17, 2009.)
Man, I love this play. I'm so glad we got it up.
This one almost didn't happen. I don't know exactly what's going on in Columbus, maybe I'm getting a bad reputation with actors, somehow, but we're having a hell of a time getting a cast together and getting them to stay committed. Casting issues plagued <>Militant Language for the 6 weeks preceding the beginning of rehearsals, and in the end it got so bad we had to cancel the show.
Some of those people drop out of shows for legitimate reasons, but some people just get a little scared and/or a little flaky.
In the end, we gathered a fantastic cast who brought a lot of talent, but several issues to the table. Three of them were working on Infinity - I mentioned that opened December 20, right? And we started rehearsing The Internationalist December 13 to open January 8. A little conflict there, you might guess. One of those 3 people was going to shoot an investment trailer (seen here) in the week after Infinity closed (he also has, like, 9 jobs). Another actor has only been in one show before, and another was cast sight-unseen on the recommendations of some dear friends. Oh, and our production team was pretty tired from Infinity and the busy holiday season that fills their schedule with bizarre union jobs. Oh yeah, Christmas, Hanukah, and New Year celebrations had to fit in there somewhere, along with my own travel to Michigan for 3 days. And adding to all of this was the fact that though The Internationalist is a pretty short play, it had a great deal of dialogue that Ms. Washburn wrote in a fictional foreign language. So there's that.
It's not that I didn't have complete confidence in my collaborators, I just knew hard hard it was going to be and I prayed we wouldn't kill each other in the process.
And I'm not even going get into the board meeting we had in which we were all tearing our hair out trying to create a solid business plan for the next few months having barely begun to fundraise and no inkling of whether or not The Internationalist would actually be successful.
So .... the show has opened and is thus-far a great success. We had, for the first time, a house full of people we know are a lot cooler than us. Our attendance numbers are up, despite it being early January, right after the new year, and kind of nasty weather in Columbus. And I think we're all still having fun.
I have to mention the amazing work of the cast. They didn't just open the show competently, they nailed it. They're work with the language issues is phenomenal, they totally sell it. And the dude who's now in his second show ever is perfect in his role, he even learned a standard Brit accent for the 2-page near-monologue to boot. What a great group of people. And they told me I was mad at the university. I'll show you who's mad! I'll open another show 4 days later! IN BALTIMORE!!!
