Well no, actually you didn’t. You see, it was a silent auction. Although, how you can call something silent when you’ve got Bret Fetzer constantly exhorting the crowd to spend more more more is a wee bit baffling. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Last week, I had the good fortune to have an opportunity to play photographer for Theater Schmeater’s annual wine auction. I really wish I could bring you the smells and sounds, as well as a few of the sights, but alas, I didn’t have a tape recorder, and I’m not sure how the smell-o-vision thing would work in any event.
I arrived as the last of the last minute preparations were being made. The first thing that struck me was the aroma. Someone was cooking something that smelled fantastic. Unfortunately for me, food doesn’t mix well with optics and delicate electronics, so I can only assume it tasted fantastic as well. As I wandered around, bottles of wine were being opened, and final touches were being added to the auction displays.
I’d never been to a silent auction before, and I wondered how they were going to make the evening more compelling than watching a bunch of people wandering around eating and waiting for the season preview. It turns out they had a plan.
First, the items were divided into a number of themed areas. They had, unsurprisingly for anyone who knows Teri, a Rod Stewart area. They had a Hawaiian area. They even had a “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” area. The auction in each of the areas closed at its own time, so someone was winning fabulous merchandise every half hour or so all evening.
Second, there was Bret Fetzer. If you haven’t been to a party where someone handed Bret a wireless mike and said “Keep things interesting,” you’ve missed out. The Schmee brought Bret in to be the ‘Auctioneer/MC’, and I think he really came through. His unique and entertaining style of ‘Auction in Your Face!’ really brought the evening to life. He spent the evening talking up the items, letting bidders know when their bids had been topped, counting down the auction closings, and generally castigating the crowd for not bidding enough.
The evening culminated with a rousing game of ‘Raise the Paddle’, a sort of reverse auction with the opportunity for participants to pledge however much they were comfortable with, and a preview of the show that ‘Raise the Paddle’ was helping to finance.
The preview was a scene from “Live! From The Last Night Of My Life” by once again local playwright Wayne Rawley. I’m not going to give away much in the way of specifics about the preview. If you wanted to see it, you should have come to the auction. I will say that it was absolutely hilarious. You should really think about putting it on your calendar for next September.
After the preview, it was all over but the cleanup, and the picking up of merchandise won. It was an interesting and entertaining evening. I got to see the Theater Schmeater staff in their finest of finery. I got to see Managing Director Teri Lazarra speechless, for the first and probably the last time in my life. Overall, it looked like a good time was had by all.
-daveh














