well, tonight is our opening.  i hope i remember my lines.  i hope i don’t just stop and stand there like a moron, as i did a coupla times on monday night.  since then it’s been going pretty well, but, well, you never know.

meanwhile, here are a couple of before and afters.

the thing is, i think i look pretty old here with no makeup on!  but not 65…

and this is after amy grayed and fixed my hair in a fashionable bun.

and here i am on the set with the old makeup on…but i think i don’t look much different from the “before!”  but i will, i assure you…

last night as i was leaving rehearsal, this guy who works at the hoogland was leaning against the building smoking.  i had seen him there the night before, watching part of the performance, so i asked him if i looked old up there.  “Uh…no,” he said.  But i’m supposed to be old!  The makeup didn’t make me look old???

“Yeah!  yeah it did!”  hopefully he was relieved that i was supposed to look old, and maybe he lied about it at first cause he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.  usually a woman doesn’t accost a complete stranger and demand to be acknowledged that they look old.

i hope we have an audience, too.  why won’t people come out and support plays, as opposed to musicals?  i’ve sat through some pretty awful, long, poorly-done musicals, and they always had at least decent crowds.  but last night they were talking about the really really funny play “The man who came to dinner” – phil funkenbusch, KING OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN MUSEUM, directed that one, plus he had a fantastic cast, and the play was charming and funny…and pam said that on one of the matinees there were only ELEVEN PEOPLE in the audience!  there were more people on the stage than in the audience.

well, i know that at least we’ll have more than 11 people tonight, because i have 10 people coming to see me.  last night, while serving me DELICIOUS WARM FRESHLY-BAKED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES, amy kept saying, “don’t stress about the crowd, just have fun doing it.”

well, yes, i do hope to have fun, but it would be nice to have people to actually be there watching!

so if you’re reading this and you live here in lovely springfield or the surrounding areas, PLEASE COME SEE THE PLAY!  i promise you’ll laugh.

my aunt sandy came all the way from chicago to see it, which makes me happy.

amy and jim went to see his niece in her grade school play last night and i’m looking forward to seeing that on video.

ok then,

mrs. friday morning opening night hughes.