Dancing Barefoot (8 page)

I'm pacing the dressing room, running my hands through my hair, occasionally swearing, and
stressing myself out.

My friend Travis asks, “Why are you so worried? Trekkies are the most supportive audience
in the world! They will love anything you put up there! All we have to do is show up, and
they'll go nuts, right?”

“Wrong.” I tell him, gravely. “They can be the most hyper-critical audience in the world.
They've booed me off the stage. They've marched up to me at conventions to tell me how much
they hated me. Some of these people have a sense of entitlement that you'll never see anywhere
else. This particular audience will be filled with people who've paid lots of money to see our
show. Some of them paid as much as 1500 dollars for ‘all access' passes to the convention. So
they expect, and deserve, an amazing show.” I pause. “I also have a lot to prove to them, you
know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Travis says.

I don't say it out loud, but I have something to prove to myself, too.

There is a knock on the door, and the stage manager tells us that we can get into the
theater.

We get our props set backstage.

We find an appropriate lighting level.

We give the list of blackouts to our tech guy.
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“The last line of each scene is on this list,” I tell him.

“And the lights come down right after that line, right?” he says.

“Yeah.” I say. “Do you have our body mics?”

“Body mics? Nobody said anything to me about body mics.”

Oh shit. We have no body mics. This means we don't have any mics at all. This means it's
highly unlikely that the back of the house will be able to hear us. This means we are
screwed.

I call a huddle of the actors. Jim, the sound and light tech joins us.

“Guys, we have a situation. There are no mics.”

Travis, who was just trying to calm me down, freaks out. “There is a full house! It's over
500 people! How are they going to hear us?!”

Maz is calmer, “I think we should just project like crazy.”

Tracy agrees. “Yeah, we're all good actors. We'll just play to the back row.”

Kristen nods. “When you introduce the show, just mention that we have no mics, and
encourage the audience to keep it down . . . and we'll just have to project our voices.
Pretend we're in Ancient Greece.”

“How Greek is this show going to be?” Kevin asks, saucily.

“Not that Greek.” We all laugh. Crisis averted.

We are going to run through our blackouts, but it's now close to 8:30. I can feel the
audience outside the theater trading their “We love you, Wil” signs for torches and
pitchforks.

I decide that we're not going to keep them waiting any longer. We've prepared like crazy
for this show, and anything we do now isn't going to make it any better. We're just going to
get ourselves backstage and open up the house.

I give my CD of “Warm Up The House” music, (Ataris, MXPX, Save Ferris, and other indie
rock bands,) to Jim.

Kris Roe intones, “Last night, I had a dream / that we went to Disneyland / went on all
the rides / didn't have to wait in line . . .” and the doors open.

I hear the house begin to fill. The voices mingle to create a familiar white noise.
Occasionally, I'll hear a word above the din, or my father's distinctive and very loud guffaw.
Anxious moments pass while we all go through our pre-show rituals:

Tracy stretches in some yoga poses. Maz recites his lines to himself and walks in a
circle. Travis and Kristen talk about odds bets on craps. Chris and Kevin run through a scene
called “Dude.” I stand alone to one side, reciting lines in my head, trying to calm my
nerves.

Dave Scott comes backstage, smiling broadly.

“You've got a full house. We even sold some standing room only seats. They are really
excited! Are you guys ready to go?”

We all look at each other. “Just give us a second, okay?”

Dave walks over to talk with Jim, and we all step close together, forming a circle. I
extend my hand, and it is immediately covered by Kristen's, which is covered by Chris's. Maz
and Travis come next, then Kevin, and finally Tracy. We lock eyes, all of us, and I say, “You
guys, this is going to be the best show, ever! Thank you so much for coming out to be part of
this. Don't forget to play to the back row, and improvise if you get stuck. If you're not on
stage, listen . . . we may need to call you out if we get into trouble.”

We chant a secret actor's chant, ending with our hands stretched skyward. I am overcome
with excitement. I can't wait to go out and show these people that I've grown up, become
funny, and (most of all) that I'm not Wesley Crusher.

Dave comes back over to us, and asks if we need anything else.

“Scotch,” I say.

“Hookers,” says Kevin.

“A pool boy,” says Tracy.

“Can we replace Wil?” says Travis.

We all laugh. We're ready to go. This is what we live for. Dave laughs with us, and takes
the stage.

I hear the crowd applaud, and there is some wolf whistling. They are in a good mood. I am
thrilled.

“This show has been in preparation for several months, and I am just as excited to see it
as you are,” he begins. “However, if you video or audio tape the performance, we will hunt you
down and kill you.”

The audience chuckles. They have all heard the warnings before.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the director of
Mind
Meld
, Wil Wheaton.”

I walk onto the stage, trying to hold my head up, and keep my shoulders back . . . but
walking across any stage has never been easy for me. I feel awkward, and studied, like they're
sizing me up. If I ever get on Letterman, that walk across the Ed Sullivan stage will
absolutely kill me.

I take about five steps before I realize that Dave has decided to play a little practical
joke on me: the entire audience is wearing “Groucho” glasses. It is insanely funny to me,
seeing all these people, in various levels of space-suitery, enjoying a mass giggle, like a
bunch of school kids putting one over on the substitute.

I take a long look around the room, lift the microphone to my mouth, and say, “You're all
related, aren't you?”

Huge laugh. The laugh I'd hoped for earlier in the afternoon. Much happier that I have it
now.

I am hugely relieved – they've traded their torches and pitchforks for Groucho glasses.
They're on my side.

“I can't begin to tell you all how excited I am to be standing here tonight. I have
brought with me some of the most talented writers and performers I know, and we hope to
present you with a show you'll never forget. We are
Mind Meld
, and our
show is called,
Assimilate This
!”

There is wild applause, and the lights dim. I walk offstage, trading places with Kristen
and Tracy who are to begin the first scene.

The lights come up, and the show begins.

It goes incredibly well. We are all funny, and we never miss a beat in any of our
sketches.

Jim is a natural. He never misses a cue. A few times, he even anticipates when an
improvised bit needs to end and blacks it out like he's been doing it for years.

We are extremely lucky to have him doing our lights.
If we take this show on the
road, we'll take him with us
, we decide.

All our sketches kill
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]
except one, and that's a great batting average for us.

We only have one real problem, and the audience never knows about it: With about 20
minutes remaining in the show, Maz and I both have to pee worse than we've ever had to pee in
our lives! Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. All theaters have a bathroom backstage, but
we're in a ballroom, behind pipe and drape, and there's no way to run off to the real bathroom
without distracting the entire audience.

We have little choice but to do the pee-pee dance for the rest of the show, even when
we're on stage for sketches. I seriously consider using an empty bottle of Crystal Geyser, but
think better of it.

Months of planning, hair pulling, and agonizing have resulted in 90 incredible minutes,
and the show is over. When we do shows at ACME, there is always a touch of sadness on closing
night. That feeling currently mixes with the opening night excitement that we're also feeling.
I can't believe it's over.

When the lights go down on the final sketch, the crowd roars, whistles, stomps their feet.
They demand more, but we don't have anything else to give them. We have left it all on the
stage.

I walk out to thank the audience for coming, and introduce the cast.

As I step out from behind the curtain, the most amazing and unexpected thing happens –
they leap to their feet. They scream. They applaud. They whistle. They howl. I stand there,
dumbfounded, and struggle to keep myself together. The validation I feel from this crowd is
overwhelming, and my eyes fill with tears.

It's hard for me to share with anyone how much shit I've gotten over the last 15 years
because of
Star Trek
. The lousy treatment at the hands of WILLIAM FUCKING
SHATNER is
nothing
compared to some of the things Trekkies have done to
me. They've insulted me. They've called me names. They've hated me without knowing why. It was
risky for me to put up this show . . . if it had tanked, I would never have been able to show
my face at a Star Trek convention again.

I've been working so goddamn hard for so goddamn long to get people to just give me a
chance – to let me challenge their expectations of me, and hopefully change their minds about
me. Getting this huge, genuine, passionate, heart-felt standing ovation, from this group of
people, is simply magical. I will cherish it for the rest of my life.

My only regret is that I forgot to thank Jim, our sound and lighting technician.

So, Jim, if you're reading, here is what I would have said:

“This show did not come together overnight and it didn't come together easily. We all
worked very hard to make it happen and the whole thing could have been easily ruined by a bad
tech guy. Fortunately, we had the most amazing tech guy ever. Jim [here is where I'd point to
the side of the stage and call you up] has never lit a sketch show before and he didn't miss a
beat tonight. If you enjoyed the show, Jim deserves your applause as much as any of us do.
[The entire house and all of us on stage applaud. Jim gets hit in the face with several pairs
of women's underpants . . . and one set of boxers. I whistle innocently.]”

The house begins to empty out and I run at Mach Four to the bathroom. When I come back
into the theatre, I get the most important review of all: Anne walks over, puts her arms
around me and says, “Oh puss! You were great. I've never laughed so hard in my whole life.
This is one of the best shows you've ever done! I am so proud of you!”