Welcome to Tricky Thursday

When I was a theatre major at Columbia College, I was introduced to a sacred ritual. I know not of its origins nor whether it lives on (I am certain it must), but all of us there knew of its power, and many of us continued to engage with its magic over the years that followed our tenures at Columbia as we moved into professional acting life.

Tricky Thursday goes like this - On the Thursday performances of any production, the actors (and sometimes the crew) would screw around with each other onstage just enough to freshen things up, bring each other joy, and try to make each other laugh without ruining the show. It was key that the audience not be aware of the pranks. It was a way to inject humor and play into the repetitive nature of scripted performance.

I am recalling the time when, in Suffering Fools, a drawing room comedy penned by friends of mine, one of the cast members, using eyebrow pencil, drew the image of a man climbing out of my cleavage, just small enough so only the actor playing my husband would be able to see it in the moment in the play when he threw his arm around me and pulled me in next to him, as he tried to get me to leave the party. He was quite a bit taller than I was and had a clear view.

Instead of breaking, however, he rolled his eyes at me, added a line and whispered, “Come on, Shakey,” to me in my ear, and then, using the arm he had around me, caused my body to vibrate for the rest of the time we stood there, making tears come to my eyes as I held in the laughter dying to escape my body. “Shakey” was my backstage nickname, given to me by another friend as she once watched me having trouble applying my eyeliner in the dressing room due to the preshow jittering of my hand.

Tricky Thursday was always much more fun and wild when doing a comedy. That does not mean we did not engage when in a dramatic production. However, during those Tricky Thursdays, the jokes were more muted, except for the famous to all of us from that generation of Columbia College students moment when an actor threw open the trunk of a car during Man and Superman and another actor had secretly hidden himself in there and whispered, “Help me! Help me!” a la the ending of the original version of the movie The Fly.

During the lead-up to a Tricky Thursday college production of a farce, one of the actors became increasingly freaked out by the idea of it. He went to a faculty member and told on us. Sheldon Patinkin, the head of the theatre department, called a cast meeting in which he read us all the riot act, raising his voice and declaring that out in the professional world, “If you engaged in disruptive antics onstage, you would be summarily fired!”

I knew this to be complete bullshit, as Brad Mott, another faculty member, had already regaled me with numerous stories about the pranks that he’d played or had been played on him while onstage at Steppenwolf, The Goodman, The Royal George, Chicago Shakespeare, and on and on.

When I indignantly told him about Sheldon yelling at us all a few hours after it happened, he said, “Oh, please! Sheldon is one of the worst when it comes to pranks! No one I know has ever been fired for having too much fun onstage.”

One of Brad’s funniest stories was about the time he was in The Nerd at The Royal George Theatre. The play was directed by Charles Nelson Reilly (I am really dating myself here) and was also a farce. During the run, one of the actors left the show to join another project (not unusual in a long-running show).

During his last performance, there was a knock on the apartment door, the main set of the show, with a “Special Delivery for (actor who was leaving)!” call on the other side. A crew member silently wheeled in a dolly stacked with boxes, deposited them on the set, and left, as if it was in the script, leaving the actors to continue with the show, now having to work around said boxes. The metaphor was clear, and Brad told me they all worked the boxes into the rest of the show that night in as many ways as they could.

I am not sure why I am sharing about Tricky Thursday today, other than to mention that while doing yoga a couple of days ago, I started having all these memories about the ritual and the many pranks I’d been involved in onstage and behind the scenes.

My deeper takeaway at this moment is that comedy is essential, and as Shakespeare says in As You Like It, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. As real and hard as this reality can be, someday we will all leave it and return to our etheric origins. Tricky Thursday antics/comedy can be an antidote to the ennui of 3D life’s repetitive nature. Our faerie/5D/higher selves revel and reveal themselves in play.

I fell in love with comedy the first time I got a laugh in my third-grade play. During the Gaian Congress last weekend, I attached the word comedian to myself as I introduced myself and my work to the attendees. It’s the first time I’ve done this while presenting in a “spiritual setting”. The wheels of my post Second Saturn Return phase are turning.

May you make your Thursdays tricky in the funniest and most joyful of ways.

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It begins a week from Saturday, on January 31st, our Level One Channeling Class on Zoom.

I am so looking forward to spending time with those of you who have already registered. If you’re still thinking of joining us, a wonderful group of beings is gathering, and we still have a few spots open.

This class is all about the love. There is no competition or expectations, just an opportunity to connect with unconditional support and love. The class will meet you exactly where you are, and the play and fun of the experience will take you further, deepening your connections.

Full description and registration are here on my site: https://www.noraherold.com/events

Or register directly here: https://noraherold.as.me/channelingclasswinter2026

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