Dormouse has left the building

I can't quite believe it's over.
I'm no longer the Dormouse on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

My part was small and required me to hide in a bale of hay for the first half of the show.
My bale of hay, or mouse house, as the assistant director liked to refer to it, was a three sided box the size of a regular bale of hay and because of where the curtain was located, I had to push it out further on the stage as soon as the curtain was opened to provide the proper distance for the running and comedy hijinks that would follow.

The director, who also played the Mad Hatter, is a Staff Sergeant, and the White Rabbit, who is a CW2 helicopter pilot, designed the box.

"Lay on the floor on your side," they said. "So we can measure how big the box needs to be."
The height was fine, but the length was a problem.
"She's pretty long," the Mad Hatter said.
"We're gonna need to do something about the feet," the White Rabbit said.
"Tuck your legs in more," the Mad Hatter said.
"We'll figure it out," the White Rabbit said.

When my mouse house arrived, I took one look at the bread box-sized shape and said, "You want me to fit into that?"

Using a method I can only describe as magic, I managed to cram myself into the box, but moving it across the stage was another matter entirely.

"You'll have to belly crawl it out," the White Rabbit said.
"Excuse me?" I said. "You want me to crawl on my belly? Did I mention that I'm a librarian? We do not crawl on our bellies."
A few of us were on stage checking out the White Rabbit's handiwork as he had built the box for me.

"Sure," the White Rabbit said to me as though crawling on one's belly was the most natural thing you could do, not unlike breathing or eating. "You just crawl and push the box at the same time."
The White Rabbit is a lot taller than I am so I looked up at him like he might have taken a crazy pill that morning.

Judson, the star of the show and a First Sergeant, realized what the crux of the problem was. "You don't know how to crawl on your belly? Just get on your stomach and pull with your elbows..."

Even Dorothy, the child of a soldier, was like, "Yeah, it's easy. Do it like this..."
And so there I was standing tall on the stage while my cast-mates demonstrated proper form for belly crawling on the floor.

Then it was my turn.
There was a pause when I finished and then Judson shook his head and said, "Your butt is up too high. It's showing over the box. Use your arms more..."
"The box is too narrow for me to use my arms," I said.
I was hopeless.

I ended up lying on my back pushing the box out with my feet.
And this worked just fine until I got my costume which was adult-sized grey footie pajamas with a big white belly and a tail.

Footie pajamas don't have any traction so Chris helped me put duct tape on the footie bottoms so that I would have some semblance of a regular shoe. Even with the duct tape, I had to work a lot harder to move that box out quick and I was having trouble figuring out how many pushes it took. Before the costume, it was two big pushes. With the footies, it was something like twenty-seven.

Then the set designer, a Specialist, said, "I can make you a speed bump." He taped two dowels together on the stage floor and when I bumped into it, I knew it was okay to stop.
"Zach," I said. "You're a genius!"

Chris ended up playing a part in the show too. The project manager was looking for an emcee to introduce the play so I wrote a brief intro for Chris to deliver as a Rod Serling type. She loved it and he did a great job.
The two of us haven't been on stage together in twenty-nine years.

Aside from having fun with the show, it was no small task to make it happen. Six of the cast and crew are soldiers on active duty with the rest of us a mix of DoD Civilians, family members and retirees.

We had a great response from the audience. One of the moms who brought her two little boys up to the stage after the show to meet the characters said, "They were just fascinated by you! They kept asking me, 'where did she come from?'"
As if popping up out of a bale of hay was the most amazing trick ever.
Children under five are a wonderful ego boost.

By November we should find out how well we did in the Festival of the Arts Army Competition.

Now it's back to regular life as a librarian.

The cast - Photo by Christina Clark