"Stage mommy"

A friend of mine somehow acquired the affectionate nickname of "stage mommy" when she was wearing her Stage Manager hat. Quiet and efficient, she could nevertheless be quite loud and ruthless when necessary. She ran a very tight ship, made sure cues happened when they were supposed to, and never let us sing in the dark unless that was supposed to happen.

I may be borrowing her title for the rest of our run. One of our cast members has now called me twice when he's been running late, presumably after calling the director. The second time was last night, as I was sewing on the Sgt's insignia. When I got off the phone, I joked to the room in general, "When did I become the mom of the cast?" But of course, since all the rest of the women and at least half the men in the cast are in their teens and twenties, I am old enough to be their mom. And as our Mabel commented, "you take care of us."

Last night was not our best show but neither was it as bad as we'd feared, given that most of our leads were sick with one thing or another. And one of our poor pirates spent most of Act II in the bathroom emptying his stomach. Which prompted me to load up a first aid kit of sorts with Pepto-Bismol tablets and antacids in addition to the more usual bandaids, antiseptic ointment, throat lozenges and such to take to the theater tonight. Here's hoping we don't need any of it!