We had an exciting night at the theatre tonight.  Broadway Christmas Carol at ART Station in Stone Mountain.  David, Bethany and I had just received the five minute call from Jon our stage manager.  We were all hanging out and talking in Bethany's dressing room.  She gets the decent room with the attached bathroom because she's the girl, I guess.  David and I get the shop.  I am almost completely serious with that statement.  We were discussing issues of the day when we heard a booming sound  from outside and the lights flickered and came back on.  The power has been known to surge at ART Station which reeks havoc on the light and sound board.  They must be re-booted and such.  Usually, the power blips and is fine.  This night was different.  The lights sputtered again and then all was black.  It was very dark in the dressing room and back stage.
We had a full house of patrons and could hear them reacting, mostly positively, talking amongst themselves.  Sounded like they were all in a good mood.  My sister and brother-in-law were out there.  Jon announced that Ga Power had been contacted and things should be back up momentarily.  Well, momentarily stretched into quite a while.  
The actors sat in the dressing room with a flashlight and chatted about the end of the world.  I couldn't help but think of all the apocalyptic tales I was familiar with.  I just finished listening to Cell by Stephen King, and I was reminded of The Stand as well.  I imagined that I would most likely be in a theatre if and when that fateful bomb is dropped and the events leading to the end of the world as we know it are set in motion.  Jeez!  In the dark for fifteen minutes and already I was writing my end-of-the-world tale.
I was content to sit in the dark and save batteries, but Bethany seemed to prefer the light.  As we talked, she would shine the flashlight on whoever was speaking.  After a short while I had to tell her to stop as I was getting rather dizzy by her light show.  At least she could have played some Floyd.
Our stagehand Joanna came back to say "hi."  She told us about the overly helpful patrons who were leading people about the lobby and down to the restrooms with the light from their cell phones.  Only later did I learn that one gentleman had an actual flashlight and he was not only leading ladies to the water closet, but then helpfully assisting them by shining the light up under the stall while they did their business!  Talk about trust.
Patrick, our pianist, agreed to come out and play Christmas songs in the dark.  The patrons sang along, in good spirits.  Thirty minutes and several audience updates later, Jon came out and announced that we were going to do the show by lantern light and started setting them out on the front of the stage.  Reminded me of the Mary Martin biography when she talks about doing a Broadway show by candle light, I think it was The Sound of Music.  Just as we were trying to figure out how to execute the quick changes in low light the power came back on.  Great timing!
Ga Power came through in record time.  Found out later that a car had sped into a pole and knocked out the transformer that sat atop it.  Can anyone say drunk?
So we did the performance.  Went up around 8:46.  Bethany and I had this crazy energy from all the excitement.  David was about to pass out after his exhausting day of teaching children and then all that sitting blew his momentum.
My sister and her husband thoroughly enjoyed the show, but the rest of the audience was weird.  I thought that after all of the singing and waiting in the dark that they would be happy, nay thrilled that we had finally graced the stage with our enormous talents.  Working our way through Dickens' classic tale they sat there like stone statues, barely making a peep.  Very disappointing after our fun evening in the dark.
Oh, well...