I LOVE this and am so glad you shared it, as I have never read it before! As a one woman show at my school, somehow, this makes me feel understood. I shall have these words before me in future, to remind myself that I am not completely crazy, but have great company in this wonderful and slippery art form we know as theatre!
------------------------------
Karen Maupin
Mountain Home High School
AR
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 06-14-2022 12:14
From: Billy Houck
Subject: "Wednesday's Wisdom" from EdTA Emeritus...Favorite Theatre Quotations
"It was all going too fast; there were a hundred things still undone that I knew could not be done now before we opened. What I had not yet learned, and would have to learn the hard way, was that once in rehearsal a play – and everyone and everything connected with it – is sent spinning down a toboggan slide on which there was no stopping or turning back. Whirling down the slope one can only take the twists and turns as they come and hope to have sufficient luck to land safely. It is a marvel to me that so many do, for there are no exceptions made – the same rule applies to everyone – and the toboggan slide is especially iced for each new play."
- from Act One, an Autobiography by Moss Hart 1959
I had this passage from Moss Hart's delightful autobiography Act One tacked up by my desk for years. This particular section is about the production of his first Broadway play Once in a Lifetime in the early 1930's. Although there are a lot of differences between Broadway in 1930 and educational theatre today, I have found this passage to be apt, relevant, and true for every single play I have ever worked on. Once the dates have been set and the cast is in rehearsal, there is a terrifying and beautiful inevitability to the process. The best we can do some days is to grit our teeth, smile, and hang on.
Billy Houck
Theatre Teacher, Retired
Carmichael, CA