So I took myself out to my car on break this morning, partly to make a phone call to my bank, and partly to go and fume about the latest corporate BS email. While I was sitting there trying very hard to remember the new password that the bank phone agent had given me, The Tubes’ She’s a Beauty came on the radio.

This is the song, of course, that the “other” RHPS cast in Boston used to perform as a pre-show. And it made me realize something aside from distracting me from my overwhelming dislike and desire to shove prickly cactuses up the sphincters of several managers: I miss doing pre-shows.

See, pre-shows are the only place you can really get creative with something like Rocky. You don’t get much leeway (although we took every inch of leeway we could get!) with the movie itself – it’s all pretty much scripted out already. But pre-shows, on the other hand, were entertaining. We started with a piece of music, a song from the radio, and built on it, casting people in roles that occasionally made sense (I still remember the night I had to go from “scary goth chick” in the first song straight to “restrictive momma” in the second with no time for a costume/make-up change). For songs that didn’t have a strong plot, we added one; for those that did, we built on it to add character to the roles. It was creative; it was teamwork; it was fun. Probably the most fun we ever had with half of our clothes on :p