Green room productivity

Patrick Healy has a piece in the New York Times about the unusual ways in which some actors spend their downtime during a performance: Jan Maxwell (doubly Tony-nominated next Sunday) helps her son with his homework; during August: Osage County, John Cullum actually went and did another play, then returned for the curtain call.

Since a recent post on local actors who can improve box-office receipts scared up a lot of comments, Bobo thought this topic might do the same, providing some modest entertainment value. So ... local actors, how do you spend your time backstage?
Any amusing stories about people completing their master's theses, brushing their teeth, changing their cousin's baby's diapers in the minutes before rushing onstage as the fourth chorus girl from the left?

[ image: from thegreenroomstudio.tv ]

To Co-Produce or Not To Produce

Leonard Jacobs (with whom Bobo spent a couple of weeks writing theater reviews at the O'Neill in Connecticut in the summer of ought-four; a great guy) has a *Backstage* article about theaters doing co-productions and even merging. Both the Seattle Rep and Intiman (shared costume shop) and Idaho & Great Lakes Shakespeare Festivals (shared everything) are mentioned.
Here in Spokane, we have the one-off example of Interplayers and Lake City Playhouse having shared a production of *The Rainmaker* in September of ought-seven.

Could co-productions be a way here of theaters surviving the recession? Could co-productions break down petty turf protection and reinvigorate actors, directors and techies by cross-fertilizing people who have, after all, similar interests?

[ photo: Idaho Shakespeare Festival in Boise; from pnwer.org ]