This meant that which section of the play we performed was limited by considerations of safety - since we couldn't rehearse in the space I wasn't about to let the actors do any kind of physical work - there are a few fights and falls in my JULIA & BUDDY. And when I went up into the both before the show began, the lights/sound person wasn't there, and so couldn't answer my questions about whether we got any kind of lighting cues. Now granted we were only doing five minutes of the play, but it would have been nice to know if we could at least expect a lights down at the end of the performance.
But since we got virtually no technical support I had to improvise - so I had the actors begin their scene on the way up onto the stage. Oh yes, and the actors couldn't come on from a backstage area, they had to come in from the audience.
And on top of that, there were microphones on the stage. Luckily I had cleared in advance that my actors could move the microphones so they could perform. So in the photo above, Claire Warden is in the process of moving the microphone stand off center stage. Meanwhile, Matt DeCapua (in the blue shirt, arms out wide) has begun their dialog while standing in front of the stage, on the ground, with his back to the audience. As you can see, the house lights were still up. It actually made for pretty effective theater.
So it turned out OK. But not without lots of anxiety on my part. And they still haven't mailed me a certificate for winning Outstanding Performance of a Full-Length Play almost two weeks later.