Annie Paladino continues our series of guest posts detailing the small theater experience around the Bay Area. Today she gives us an inside peek at the Bay One Acts Festival, which opens this Sunday, April 22nd. To find out more about the festival, check out http://www.bayoneacts.org. To find out more about Ragged Wing, the group Annie is a part of, check out http://www.raggedwing.org.
Um…hi.
It feels weird to divulge this secret to the entire Internet, but…here goes.
I am a BOA virgin.
The annual Bay One Acts festival is rife with, shall we say, artistic repeat offenders: a fabulously tight-knit, yet ultimately sprawling, cadre of Bay Area indie-theater hotshots. There must be some powerful chemical that gets released after your first time, because they (by their own admission!) just can’t help coming back for more. But of course, there’s got to be fresh meat every once-in-a-while and, speaking as one such noob, we are eager and anxious for our first time.
So, this year, for BOA XI, I am your intrepid reporter, your ethnographer of all things BOA. For half of you Theater Pub blog-reading-types, my observations will provide an engrossing and (I’m guessing) truly salacious behind-the-scenes peek at how it all goes down for a BOA first-time. For the rest of you (you BOA old-timers, you!), well, you can look forward to enjoying some patronizing chuckles at my quaint and (probably) charmingly over-excited field notes. A bit like reading your socially awkward, over-enthusiastic 12-year-old niece’s journal entries from the night of the Junior High Semi-Formal.
You might ask (let’s just assume you did), “Well, Annie, presumably you’ve already been rehearsing, since BOA IX opens in LESS THAN A WEEK, so come on, spill the beans: any juicy deets thus far???” What a great question, Internet! I have indeed been in rehearsals for Maybe Baby, Ragged Wing Ensemble’s fantastic piece in this year’s festival. But my true first foray into the world of BOA begins this week — with tech rehearsals, a dress rehearsal, and of course, Opening Night. My first interactions with the Other Companies (henceforth referred to as The Others), in addition to BOA as a whole, are still to come. We’ll see what tawdry secrets come to light.
Stay tuned for more, my darling voyeurs — this will be a weekly series for the duration of the BOA XI run.
Until next time,
A.M.P.
San Francisco Theater Pub 