The two faces of small notoriety . . . (fame it is not, but it seemed amusing enough for a comment, in any case.)

I had bought a couple of good tickets for a performance tonight, and was very much looking forward to it due to many friends in the cast, some of them previously unheard by me in these roles.  Anyway, the friend with whom I was due to see the performance had been forced to cancel at the last minute due to babysitting problems, so I had offered the ticket up online, and it had been taken up by an English-speaker.  Who failed to turn up.  After me spending rather a lot of time surveying the audience in the foyer bar like a blooming eagle.

Now naturally this is not a totally naive audience.  They KNOW that audience participation can be sprung on them at any minute, and they are prepared.  It is even probable that some of them have seen me pounce on people in my My Fair Lady incarnation.  However, the palpable shrinking from "an actor", or however they had me in their minds, was interestingly violent.  Even as I made my way to my seat in the middle of a great row in the orchestra stalls, you could see people thinking, damn, she can't start singing from there without treading on my toes on the way out, what's THAT about??  Awkward.

And then we got to post-show drinks.  Always good.  And the moment when the star of the evening has been praised to the skies by a random audience member.  Great, because she deserved it completely and I couldn't have put it better myself.  Even better because the same lady looked at me before leaving the room and asked if I wasn't the Herodias in Salome, in which case she thought I was wonderful, and had seen me in every performance.  Felt good!!

Absolutely NO moral wossname to be drawn from this whatsoever: simply an observation.