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Town & Gown Insider’s Dictionary
- Amateur
- complimentary name for anyone who does theater out of love for it
- Batten
- a board used to stiffen or unitize scenery
- "Break a leg"
- superstitious theater people, which is all of them, believe wishing good luck will bring bad luck, so they say this instead; see also Leg
- Curtain
- suspended cloth that travels back and forth to hide and reveal the scene
- Deck
- permanent floor of the stage; see also Paint
- Door
- hole in a wall for walking through; not every door has a hinged flap (called a shutter) to close it
- Gaff tape
- the do-all, fix-all, cover-all tool; duct tape’s clever sibling; matte black cloth-backed adhesive tape
- Ghost light
- lamp burning onstage when the playhouse is unoccupied; its use is a safety practice but also keeps theater ghosts from becoming lonely and resentful
- Guild
- the Town & Gown Theatre Guild, providing immeasurable support to Town & Gown Players for over a quarter of a century
- "Heads!"
- warning that heavy, clumsy scenery is about to move into the spot where you are standing
- Leg
- suspended cloth that masks backstage areas; it does not travel as a curtain does
- Level
- part of the acting area raised above the deck
- Mainstage
- Town & Gown’s big season; these productions, six a year, have ample budgets and rehearsal time and usually run two weekends
- Paint
- the 150 or so pigmented layers that hold the deck together at the Athens Community Theater
- Professional
- anyone who gets paid for doing theater; an irrelevant remark in relation to Town & Gown
- Rail
- fixed horizontal member; the "Jay Holl rails" in the Athens Community Theater serve to brace scenery
- Royalties
- payments to a playwright for the right to perform a show; they have lapsed in the case of the Scottish Play
- "R word"
- synonym for heavy cord; some consider it rude to say the word in the theater, possibly because it spelled the end of many actors in a previous age
- Safety
- vital concern in a place where preoccupied talent must move through a dark, obstructed area without setting anything on fire; see Stage Manager
- Scottish Play
- a tragedy by Shakespeare that superstition holds to be cursed; anyone naming or quoting it in a theater must perform a ritual to cancel the bad luck
- Second Stage
- Town & Gown’s series of challenging, special-appeal, or just slightly out-of-the-way productions, six a year, put up on a shoestring on the only stage, which also serves as workshop and rehearsal room
- Shmookie
- (rhymes with cookie): a strong, versatile form of batten
- Skyhook
- device for securing a brace to overhead bar joists in the Athens Community Theater; invented by Brian Nummer
- Stage Left
- across the stage to the audience’s right
- Stage Manager
- supreme leader of techies, role model and confidant to talent, rescuer of many a clueless director; responsible for timing, traffic and safety
- Stitcher
- person who builds costumes
- Table, The
- small piece of all-purpose furniture that has been in more shows, and more colors, than any human member of Town & Gown; recipient of a special presidential award in 1991
- Talent
- actors, singers and dancers
- Techies
- carpenters, stitchers, electricians, painters and others who make theater talent-accessible
- Vance-Vinson Memorial Thruway
- a door between the dressing rooms at the Athens Community Theater, cut by John Vance and Toby Vinson, permitting offstage movement from Stage Left to Stage Right
- Whistling
- an act forbidden in theaters; many "flymen," so the story goes, were ex-sailors who signaled to one another this way, so that whistling on the deck could result in getting scenery dropped on your head
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