Hot off the presses: Here's the video, shot by the most excellent Will Albritton, from last night's final dress rehearsal. What was it like out there under the lights, caked with makeup and blue eye glitter, squeezed into black tights, singing in falsetto, jumping with a walker? Everything you'd expect: Scary, fun, a blur. An adrenaline rush. Somehow, the theater miracle happened once again: bringing 25 cast members, hundreds of costume changes, 23 songs and 16 walkers into a coordinated whole that is somehow much more than the sum of its parts.

Here's the exciting news (or the not so exciting, if you have absolutely no interest in me dressed as a Little Old Lady): I'll be performing one "bonus" performance at the Sunday matinee on Sept. 28. I'd better not forget my dance steps.

I'm dead tired this afternoon. Will finish my final blog entry on my actual performance -- with more photos -- after a good, long nap. Until then, check out Will's video.

UPDATE 9/20: For those who found your way here from my story in Sunday's Spotlight section -- complete with abbreviated timeline so that those who don't want a heavy reading load can get the condensed version -- welcome to this blog series. On the jump, I finish up the series with more on my Good Company Players debut and some final thoughts about this whole wacky experience.

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Previously on the Beehive:
I Wanna Be a Producer: The Blog (part 1)
I Wanna Be a Producer: The Blog (part 2)
I Wanna Be a Producer: The Blog (part 3)
I Wanna Be a Producer: The Blog (part 4)
I Wanna Be a Producer: The Blog (part 5)

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About this blog series: The tables are turned on The Bee's theater critic as he joins the ensemble for one number in "The Producers." He'll go through the rehearsal process and will make his Good Company Players debut at the final dress rehearsal.

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ON GO THE black tights. I burrow my toes down into the bottom of the footsies, then peel the fabric up around my calves and thighs. I've never worn black tights before. Interesting. I feel like I could saunter into Henry VIII's court. If you recall, costume designer Ginger Kay Lewis-Reed requested that the Little Old Ladies add black tights to their costumes because the men were "sharing a little too much information" during their fan kicks. I'm more than happy to engage in this extra layer in the interest of modesty.

Up till tonight, I've pretty much skipped the makeup except for a few half-hearted attempts at lipstick. Now, I've decided to go into full Old Lady mode. I walk out of the men's dressing room to the common makeup area outside, sit down and surrender (much to their delight, I think) to the talents of three young women ensemble members who gather round me with rouges, little pots of creams, eyeliners, jars of glitter and lipstick. They're like mechanics swarming the underbelly of a car. On goes the penciled old-lady wrinkles, deep-blue eye shadow, thick swabs of mascara. I close my eyes and feel the strange sensations against my face. I feel as if someone is painting on a mask. I open my eyes and look in the mirror. Oh my goodness. I really do look like Bea Arthur in drag.

There's a lot of time to kill in the first act, because I don't go on until the first-act finale. I spend most of it hanging around the tiny backstage area. The sound of the audience laughing -- uproariously at some points -- is so cheery that I realize I have a big grin on my face. I look around and realize that others do, too. All of us have heard these jokes so many times that the spontaneous hilarity factor is long gone. So it's almost shocking to realize that people who are hearing the one-liners and watching the silly sight gags for the first time are actually finding them funny. It's gratifying, too.

Considering that it's just the final dress rehearsal, there's still a tentative feel -- a puppy-growing-into-its-big-legs lankiness -- to the back-stage proceedings. People still have to get their routines set: the best way to pull off a jacket and fling on a blouse; the most convenient location to leave your shoes for two scenes down the road; the place NOT to stand when all the storm troopers come rushing off stage. In some ways, it's like being in a World War II era submarine: dark and creaky, with a closed and confining atmosphere. A couple of murky TV monitors sit on a shelf, offering a flickering vision of the view onstage. A dull haze of light seems to hang in the air. Periodically, between big dance numbers when dozens of cast members are doing quick costume changes, the tight space erupts in a frenzy of activity, as if the crew is going to battle stations. During these times I stand perfectly still, not wanting to get in anybody's way.

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AS I WATCH the crazy goings-on, I think back to the things that stand out about my "Producers" experience. A series of mental images flashes by: Charlene Cano performing her hilarious "virgin milkmaid" routine for the first time. Steve Sousa's Chrysler Building dress. How I cracked up every time Gigi Gibbs sings a husky "Keep it gay" as the butch lighting designer Shirley Markowitz. The irked look on director Fred Bologna's face that day in rehearsal when everyone kept singing long after after he'd stopped the action. The nice chat I had with Johnny Pecina and Kelly Gibson, one of the five couples I counted in the show -- did you expect anything less, with all the time that these people spend together? -- about what it's like to carry on an in-cast relationship. Steve Pepper's foiled expression onstage as Donald Dinsmore, the wannabe-Hitler-auditioner. The look on Arthur Koster's face in rehearsal when everyone realized his adding-machine tape was a lot longer than the other accountants in the scene. Stage manager Dave Filipczak admonishing the cast to be neater backstage, especially in the downstairs business office that doubles as a costume changing area, which he says "looks like Tinkerbell threw up on the floor." Watching Scott Hancock changing costumes so quickly between scenes that I'm afraid he might sprain something.

And to think that every community-theater show that anyone puts on in this great land of ours -- and there are many -- creates its own little world of personalities, conflicts, romances, highs, lows, laughs, annoyances and dramas. Just as no single performance of "The Producers" in this production's run will ever be identical, so too will no cast ever be exactly like this one.

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FINALLY, IT'S TIME. I mentioned in a past blog entry that I have some previous theater experience, way back in my dark ages of high school, but what I didn't mention is that I seemed to get progressively shyer as I got older. I started out the star of "Oliver" when I was a freshman, and I think that time was my high point in terms of public performance. Downhill from there, it seems. By the time I was a senior, I was a member of the ensemble, but I had already started being acutely self-aware when I was in front of an audience.

College was even less of a "wanna be a star" period for me. True, I was in my college marching band, which meant I did perform in front of thousands of people, but that meant always being safely tucked within the anonymity of a uniform (and big hat obscuring my face). I loved the thrill of being in front of a crowd, but the last thing I wanted to do was stand out.

This public shyness manifested itself in my college classes as well. I became ever quieter. I'd have to work up enough courage to raise my hand in class and ask or answer a question, even when I was totally on top of the course material. (Which I usually was.) To add to that, I seemed to blush a bright red whenever unwanted attention was directed my way, especially in large lecture classes. I could feel my cheeks instantly heat up like a blinking neon sign if, say, the professor called on me without warning. During my senior year, I know that there are courses that I went all the way through without saying barely a word. Put me in a small seminar with 10 or fewer students and I turned into a talkative machine, braying opinions and arguing with professor and classmates, but in a group larger than that, I suddenly went mute.

Why do people get quieter -- or louder -- at different times in their lives? Heck if I know. For me, I think it was my red-blooded Scottish-heritage complexion that somehow set my tentativeness in motion: I knew I couldn't control my blushing capillaries, and I felt so self-conscious about that physiological response that I tried to keep myself out of those situations.

Whatever the cause, I got better as I got older. Perhaps it was being a journalist and being forced to talk to people. Because of the nature of my job, I started giving talks to everything from college classes (!) to service organizations. I realized that being up in front of all those people wasn't going to kill me. Or maybe I just grew out of my self-consciousness. I can still blush like a suddenly-changed traffic light these days, but I just shrug and go on. I think there's a lot to be said for just making yourself do new things. Put yourself outside your comfort zone now and then. Push till you get the adrenaline going.

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THE WALKER DANCE goes fine. I make a few mistakes: I jump too soon, and I feel as if I cause a mini-traffic-jam on stage when at one point I momentarily step to the left instead of the right. Even after all those rehearsals, I manage to bungle one set of lyrics. But looking at the video afterward, the errors don't stand out. They seem to go with the character of all these twittering old ladies as they fuss and preen on stage.

Afterward, director Fred Bologna tells me that my smile starts out small and then just keeps getting bigger and bigger.