--Abbie Hoffman
The more astute readers of this blog might remember that a few weeks ago I mentioned that I was in a play. Or rather, I mentioned a return to my great school love of community theatre, seeing as how I was a whore for performing on the stage. By the time I graduated from high school, I had been in 105 different productions, including school plays.
Yes, those of you who are good at math are working out the numbers correctly. There were times when I was in two or three plays at a time, and rarely a time when I wasn't in a play at all. I give one example of this, second semester of 7th grade, if only to show the ridiculousness and what an attention whore I was, and what understanding parents I had, who loved to drive halfway across town more often than not.
During the days, I would leave school and travel around to local elementary schools in Colors, where the cast were crayons and everyone learned that problems get solved faster if all of the colors worked together, even the crayons that no one ever uses, like white. Immedately after school, I would rehearse for the school play Pollyana, wherein I played Dr. Chilton. Rehearsals for the school play ended at 5, and after eating a bagged dinner I would start rehearsals for Peter Pan at 5:30, where I played one of the Lost Boys. I was one of the twins, but I can't remember which one. Also at the time I was involved in a weekly radio show put on by the local Childrens Museum. No wonder I turned out gay, right?
At any rate, I was a theatre whore, trying out and performing in some real doozies. But at some point after high school, I grew really sick of theatre, or more specifically, theatre people. I took one intro to theatre class in college and hated it immensely, and the plays I saw oncampus left me cold. I had pretty much given up theatre and kind of assumed it was just a phase that I grew out of.
But, you know, I'm fickle and I like the attention, and our threesome buddy was asked to direct a short play in a series of short plays for a local theatre company within walking distance of my place. And he promised me a role in his play. It was just a 15 minute short, one of out 11 that the company was putting on. Plus, it'd be nice to make some new friends, seeing as how most of my friends have graduated and gone back to home, or gone on to great jobs. And Initials friends are all kind of losers.
And I tried out, and was loved by all at the auditions, where I was offered roles in 5 out of the 11 shows, pretty much all that offered a part for a guy in his mid twenties.
Unfortunately, too many people tried out for the show, and the bitch producer decided that there were parts for everyone who tried out, no matter how bad the audition was. And so I was only in one play, directed by our threesome buddy.
Out of 11 plays, there are three that are solid, four that are pretty good but go on for too long, two that are pretty bad but they have their moments, and two so bad that it's painful to sit through them. Not to brag, but my play is one of the three solid ones.
As a whole, though, I'm not planning on trying out for another play for a long time. At least not through this theatre company.
I'll save the reasons why I hate performing in this show until tomorrow, because everyone looks forward to whiny blog posts!
