I Can't Believe It's Not Shakespeare

the infamous bed

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away (Queens), I Can’t Believe It’s Not Shakespeare premiered its first production: The Bros’ Play by our very own artistic director Julia Rae Maldonado.  Of all the excitement and goings on of a putting together a production there was one aspect of the entire process that seemed to demand a lot more of our time and attention than we had expected.  One word: Bed.  The focal point of the stage, the place where sin and filth would merge, and believe me, it did.

All of the other props and set dressings were easy enough to come by and fairly painless to schlep to the theater.  But where on Earth do you find a place that sells nice enough beds for dirt cheap AND provides cut-rate transportation in the form of sketchy van rides from “Big Bob” to the Theater?  I’ll tell you where: IKEA – the bastard child of capitalism and meatball loving Swedes.

We opted for the second most inexpensive model, the DALSELV.  So now all we had to do was put it together and Voilà! A bed for the set, right?  Not so fast – the bed frame was made of that inferior pale wood they call pine.  So we had to stain it a nice “walnut” color.  After hours of toxic fume inhalation and extensive brain cell death (which lead to my commandeering of the downstairs bathroom) we had successfully stained the bed frame “carrot piss”.

But before we stained the bed we made one grave error that would cause many many epic fails in the coming days, namely – during the performances.  Word of Advice: Use ALL of the parts that IKEA tells you to in their nice little picture instructions.  Do not let the playwright tell you “oh yeah we don’t need THIS part”.

From the looks of it, the bed was sturdy.  But when one of your actors needs to sit down (and mind you he could have been a defensive tackle) you can’t exactly tell him to be careful when using the bed, they have better things to worry about like…I don’t know, acting.

So as you can imagine, the bed was a disaster waiting to happen from the very beginning.  During the first three performances a number of slates holding the mattress up would fall to the ground, rendering the bed useless.  Luckily our actors were pros and somehow managed to stay alive while using that bed and pretend it wasn’t kaput.

For the final performance we decided: NO MORE!  We would do whatever it took to make sure our actors could hook up in a bed that was reliable and worthy.  Our only option: It was time to screw in the bed.  Or better yet, we needed to nail, nail in the bed.  After exhausting this joke for hours, we nailed the slates to the bed frame.  And for once, the bed held up.  Success!

After all that trouble, all those hours spent staining, screwing and nailing in that bed, our last performance went off without a hitch.  And believe it or not, we were able to sell that bed after the last show to a young man who we called “Good Patches” (not to be confused with Bad Patches, our director).  Good Patches worked at the theater (although his position there was rather unclear) and had actually helped me nail the slates down.  So although we’re unsure of the bed’s fate, it’s assumed that it lives happily ever after a few stories above the theater.

Even though the bed gave us trouble, in theater you have to be prepared to handle setbacks, Rule # 1: The show must go on.  As the producer you have to deal with any and all problems that may arise, and lucky for us our problems required only nails and a little elbow grease.

Please enjoy this video clip of the live bed fail and actors hooking up on said bed