Reflecting on “once”

Once in 2024 was the only time I’ve seen my friends cry.

It was January, and this new, creative endeavor was about to be seen by the general public. Opening night nerves were well past me. I had been through a dozen or so by this point, and I learned the useful skill of becoming content with the work you’re about to ask an audience to pay and sit through for an hour or so just before opening. It was—of course—different this time. I think I need to back up a little bit.

January 9th, 2024: About a week away from opening for “Once”. A few days after moving into the venue.

I started the previous year being creatively, emotionally, and perhaps-spiritually broken. Green Day’s AMERICAN IDIOT was opening in January, and the previous three months of my time were a living hell. It was my first time helming a musical, and it was—of course—one that meant everything to me. But it should be no surprise to anyone familiar with me, that material, or life at that time that it was not going the way I wanted it to. A variety of reasons why, but it came to a conclusion that left me shaken to my core. By opening night, I found myself unable to celebrate the work, but rather celebrate getting through it. The cast and crew (made up majorly of friends and schoolmates) despised me, any support I had garnered over the years for my company were gone in an instant, and I felt completely embarrassed asking friends and family to see something that was the reason I pushed them all away for weeks. Didn’t matter by that point the show was actually quite good (a lesson only learned in years of retrospect), I felt like it was proof enough I was done in the theatre world.

January 7th, 2023: Set construction for “Green Day’s AMERICAN IDIOT”.

Professional and personal hijinks ensued for several months after. I fell in love, drank myself to sleep, traveled the country, worked my one and only summer-stock job, came back to Las Cruces begrudgingly, and found myself right back in the same spot I left in. No real irony to be found in living this sort of perspective just after living in the American Idiot world, but I digress. I was back at home with the same theatre responsibilities I had when I left. Then, for a myriad of reasons, I found myself with an option to dive back in again. You see: The company I had done American Idiot under was in trouble. Money was tight, and our relationship with our venue had tarnished. For some reason, however, there was hope in it again. The venue manager at the time presented myself and my colleagues with the opportunity to put on a little show called Once.

Now, to be honest, I had no idea what Once was. I knew part of it from a parody performed at the Tony Awards, and I actually knew John Carney’s other film work. But Once was, in maybe a calling-sort-of-way, was being dangled in front of me and my team. One night, I had some friends and folks from my theatre company over to watch the film. What felt, at first, like a quick night of drinking and putting on a movie, turned into my friends and I staring blankly at the credits to a film that genuinely broke all of us (except Mattie, who was finishing a sketch for her costume design class). From then I rented a copy of the perusal and dove head first into the material. Despite jumping right into this world, I wasn’t even confirmed to take on the show. I recognize now how much people did not want me on this show. After all, I just ruined so much goodwill with friends and colleagues over a very demanding show already, with much criticism stemming from those folks believing I just didn’t understand the show I was directing. Fortunately, however, people gave me a shot again and allowed me to tackle the material with longtime and repeat collaborator Darcy.

November 5th, 2023: First music rehearsal.

There isn’t much to say really about the rehearsal and production phase of the show. I don’t think it makes for fun reading to explain how we came to direct a split-scene in a bar. But it’s mostly safe to say that the show went off without a hitch (for the most part). But I do want to tell you about one day: December 4th, 2023.

We had the idea to record a video of the cast performing the big number “Falling Slowly.” It was actually one of the only times the public would get a look (or, rather, a listen) at the show. We had periodically done forms of promotion that included clips and videos of the performers, but this one was a little different. It came because, in a lot of ways, confidence for this show grew as rehearsals went on. People who had maybe never picked up an instrument before learned in a matter of weeks, and could play along really quickly. And anyone who's familiar with this song knows just how impactful it is. You can read comments from message boards back in 2007 from people who had never heard of the movie Once shed a tear seeing Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova perform at the Oscars. So, we got the whole cast together on our tiny beat up couches and chairs, and they hammered away at performing on camera. And, in some ways, it’s the only time I felt really, really good. For the first time that year, I felt really good about what I was doing and where I was. It was the confidence booster to tell the people in my life and beyond just how good this show was going to be. We released that video on Christmas.

December 4th, 2023: Recording the song “Falling Slowly (Reprise)”

Back to January of 2024. The various craziness of opening a show begins to happen in the final days leading up to opening night. Blocking has to be changed because people were seated on stage, whole set pieces were altered or scrapped, moments are given longer or shorter times now that there are a hundred or so seats separating the actors from an audience. The usual things. One of our actors got Covid opening weekend, and the scramble to solve that was some of the least fun I have had working in theatre. The Thursday before opening rolls around: Final dress. That feeling of content kicks in, knowing whatever the show becomes that night will be what the show will be. I invited some friends to come see this final rehearsal. Both were unfamiliar with the material, but close creative collaborators. I felt as though they could tell me what was wrong with the show and we’d go and have a drink after. I didn’t sit near them for most of the show, but I joined them about thirty minutes from the end. The song “Sleeping” just started, following a scene where the two leads share a moment on top of a hill. Emotionally charged, Guy asks Girl “What’s the Czech for ‘Do you still love him?’” and he proceeds to ask her that question in Czech. She responds in Czech “Mijuli Tebe”, or “I love you.” When he asks her what she means, she responds with “Looks like rain.” A heartfelt moment no-less, and one that crushed many of us in rehearsal but lost the effect as time went on. As I sat next to a friend, he sat kind of motionless. I started racing in my mind that it didn’t work. That the weeks of rehearsal meant nothing to someone in that moment. So I walked away.

January 17th, 2023: Two days to opening night.

I joined those friends again just before the final scene of the show. That friend from earlier offers me s sip from a flask he had, and I politely declined. He seemed in high spirits, and I checked in with the others and they seemed in better spirits. The final scene, over the course of a reprise of “Falling Slowly” with the whole company, finds the character Guy handing off a check to Billy, a music shop owner. He runs off as Guy starts playing the opening chords to the song. At which point, Billy, brings out the piano Girl had been playing for the entire show with a big bow on it. The family around Girl show her the piano, and she’s emotional. The Girl and her Daughter sit down to play, and they both join Guy in singing this gorgeous song. The company file around the set and begin to play too. Lights out. Done, Curtain. The usual. As the house lights turned on, I turned to my friends who I was half-expecting to stretch or yawn or something, had bright red circles around their eyes. My flask-offering friend was still crying. I couldn’t really believe it at the moment, but the show affected them exactly the way I needed it to. The way that show had affected me and this group for months was felt exactly the same.

The weekend after opening, I had a couple of friends that came to see the show. These friends were long, LONG-time friends of mine who enjoyed the theatre I was doing but saw it for what it was: actors and cardboard and all that jazz. They came to see a pretty rough show. For one thing: Professors of mine that I hadn’t seen since dropping out came to see the show, and Two: Upon the first moment the piano was to be played by Girl, it played no sound! The keyboard produced no sound, resulting in the actors ad-libbing and improvising around it the best they could. A crew member came out to see what was wrong with it, and still no luck. So, they performed this grand moment with one less instrument. Nightmare. (Turned out that the battery pack keeping the piano on had turned off once it was charging.) So, once again, embarrassment kicked in. I sat outside for the show because I just couldn’t handle this notion of being in the same room as peers, professors, and friends watching this show. As I walked back into the theatre at the end of the show, I filed through the various people I felt I needed to say hi to. I came across my friends, who were just as teary and red-eyed as my last group of friends. It’s still the only time in my ten-plus years of friendship I watched one of them tell me how proud he was with snot coming out of his nose. I think it changed my life, to be honest. This show holder all of the emotions I had been feeling over the months and asked this audience to feel them too. I couldn’t stop crying in my car over that comment my friend had offered me.

January 15th, 2024: Photo by Christian Crosse.

Glen Hansard died a couple of days ago, and it naturally forced my brain to live in the Once world again. I don’t really know where to place my feelings about his death without living intensely in a world that is so unfamiliar to me. Only two and a half years ago was I living in a headspace full of Swell Season and Enda Walsh. I was holding my breath over every decision and effort I made to relive a theatrical mind. I waited patiently for someone to tell me I was fucking up again. I let a relationship deteriorate so I could be further obsessed with this show. I was losing sleep just to make ends meet on a show I really cared for. And really it’s all because of the music in this show. This objectively simple story made complex by its music is proof of why doing anything creative is important.

Everything’s so different now. No part of my life looks similar in comparison to that point. I miss it somedays. But I’m just really lucky to have lived in this world for the time that I did. And we’re all really lucky to have had the music of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. How I’d kill to experience it all for the first time again.