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coraaI was recently pointed to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rachelmanija's theater tag, plus her awesomely bad plays tag, which are both very funny reading.
And they reminded me that I don't think I've ever told the Saga of my One Foray into Acting.
I was involved in a few plays as a teenager. In junior high, I acted, having not yet figured out that a) I wasn't any good at acting*, and b) I didn't actually even enjoy it that much. Then in high school I was sound technician, props manager, and finally stage manager. Then in college I realized that I actually found sitting backstage during endless rehearsals and performances so absolutely deadly dull** that I didn't want to do it anymore, so I didn't. Hurrah!
But before that time, I was in a couple of shows.
Only one of them was a disaster story, because the school that I went to (yes, the crazy conservative private one) was very serious about doing everything quality, and in general they were successful. (Even their crazy was quality.) So our shows came out pretty well, all things considered. But there was a play when I was in eighth grade that kind of fell through the cracks, and... yeah.
The play was A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was the only play I had a speaking part in. It was also... well, I don't know if this is true everywhere, but in my junior high, play tryouts had two or three times as many girls turning out as guys. So they cast most of the parts by gender (Titania and Helena and Hermia were girls, Oberon and Puck and Demetrius and Lysander were guys), but the Rude Mechanicals were all girls, mostly to sop up all the leftover girls from tryouts. I was Flute the Bellows-Mender, who plays Thisbe in the play-within-a-play.
Yes, this means I was a girl playing a guy playing a girl. (Or, to go back to the origins of Shakespeare, I was a girl playing a guy playing a guy playing a girl.)
That in and of itself was fine. But the play itself was... um, interesting.
The first was the fact that, while the teacher giving the play had no problem with the use of the term 'ass' to refer to the animal, she was afraid (with some reason) that parents would be. (Actually, the school was not conservative of the type that had a problem with words like 'ass' to mean 'donkey' or 'bitch' to mean 'female dog,' but they weren't confident that all the parents would, uh, get it.)
So we changed every use of the term 'ass' to 'donkey' in the play. This was kind of hilarious to start with, especially since we were all, what, twelve or thirteen? But it was even worse because Midsummer Night's Dream has rhyming lines in it, especially spoken by Puck.
Like:
Which of course became:
This got funnier every time it was said, until, at the end, the whole cast (including those on stage) would start to giggle at the word 'pass' and just get worse until the monologue was over.
The next problem came because... well, how shall I say this. The next problem came because I was twelve.
We rehearsed this play for what seemed like forever, but which was really probably two and a half months. We got our costumes fitted fairly early, because there was some kind of clearance on costumes at the local university. Being Flute/Thisbe, I needed two costumes: one for Flute, a guy, and one for Thisbe, a girl. So what we did, to economize, was get a laced bodice and a jacket, as well as a pair of breeches and a skirt. I'd wear the bodice with the jacket and the breeches for the Flute scenes, and then take off the jacket and switch to a skirt for the Thisbe scenes.
The bodice laced fairly tight across my chest, but when we began, I was, let's face it, basically flat-chested. I wore a bra more to have it while changing in gym than because I needed a bra.
That all changed in the succeeding two months. I gained a few inches of height... and a few inches, ahemhem, elsewhere. So that bodice that laced flat and modest across my chest when I first tried it on began to... strain. In places.
Everyone was too polite to say anything, and I was too embarrassed to ask, so we wound up with The Most Lamentable Comedy, and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe, Now With Bonus Side Boob.
Then there was the Problem of the Dog. See, there's the line:
...for which we got a real lantern, a real thornbush, and a real dog. A cute medium-sized terrier, very well-behaved.
Very well-behaved until the actual performance, at which point we discovered that dogs were capable of being total stage-hog hams. When the Moon was ready to leave the stage, courtesy the helpful line of "Moon, take thy flight," the dog decided he was not ready to go. He sat down and dug his claws in.
It took two of us to get him offstage, including me, who was obviously on stage well before her cue. To the howling laughter of the audience. (This might have hurt more if I wasn't laughing myself, but then, I still had the giggles from the "straightaway loved a... donkey" incident.)
This was not, however, the worst (best!) part.
I mentioned before that I was Flute, aka Thisbe. Well, in the play-within-a-play, Pyramus kills himself with a knife, and then Thisbe arrives and kills herself with the same knife, Romeo and Juliet style. This had gone smashingly in the rehearsals, so I wasn't too concerned.
So I watched Pyramus stab him(her)self with the knife, and fall down dead, and then I rushed out and cast my eyes around for the knife so I could pick it up.
No knife.
I assumed Pyramus had accidentally rolled onto the knife after dropping it, so I could just pull it out from under her (him). The narrator was speaking at that point, so very quietly, under my breath, I hissed, "Where's the knife?"
Pyramus hissed back, "Just fake it."
Have you ever tried to fake stabbing death with no knife? I had approximately thirty seconds to figure out how to manage to kill myself with no knife.
In what I still believe was quick thinking, I modified my lines. Thisbe is supposed to say:
Instead, I said:
U C wat I did thar? Rather than taking the sword and plunging it into her breast, Thisbe just... died. Randomly. Of a broken heart? Or perhaps an aneurism. Or maybe hernia: it was not easy getting the damn dog off stage.
I found out afterwards that, eschewing a scabbard, our Pyramus had just stuffed the knife into the waistband of her pants. And it had come loose and fallen down her pants. So the sword I needed was... in Pyramus' pants.
Boo yah.
So yes: that's my theater story. It's also the last time I ever acted in a play, which is a shame, because the plays in later years were much better. But I was happy being the sound technician my freshman year, and onward through stage management, and now I am happy being a person who goes to plays, enjoys them, claps a lot, and goes home.
So all's well that ends with a sword down your pants, a dog on the stage, and a... donkey, I guess.
* This isn't false modesty. I am pretty good at a few things—writing is one, cooking is another—and I'm decent at a few more. I just am a seriously suck actor.
** I realize that, for a lot of people, there is a joy or excitement in the process of putting on a play, and I am glad of it, because it means that there are people to put on plays so that I can watch them. I, unfortunately, am of the camp who wants to take the prop sword and beat someone to death with it if I have to hear that stupid monologue ONE MORE TIME OH MY GOD, so I am not cut out for the theater.
rachelmanija's theater tag, plus her awesomely bad plays tag, which are both very funny reading.And they reminded me that I don't think I've ever told the Saga of my One Foray into Acting.
I was involved in a few plays as a teenager. In junior high, I acted, having not yet figured out that a) I wasn't any good at acting*, and b) I didn't actually even enjoy it that much. Then in high school I was sound technician, props manager, and finally stage manager. Then in college I realized that I actually found sitting backstage during endless rehearsals and performances so absolutely deadly dull** that I didn't want to do it anymore, so I didn't. Hurrah!
But before that time, I was in a couple of shows.
Only one of them was a disaster story, because the school that I went to (yes, the crazy conservative private one) was very serious about doing everything quality, and in general they were successful. (Even their crazy was quality.) So our shows came out pretty well, all things considered. But there was a play when I was in eighth grade that kind of fell through the cracks, and... yeah.
The play was A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was the only play I had a speaking part in. It was also... well, I don't know if this is true everywhere, but in my junior high, play tryouts had two or three times as many girls turning out as guys. So they cast most of the parts by gender (Titania and Helena and Hermia were girls, Oberon and Puck and Demetrius and Lysander were guys), but the Rude Mechanicals were all girls, mostly to sop up all the leftover girls from tryouts. I was Flute the Bellows-Mender, who plays Thisbe in the play-within-a-play.
Yes, this means I was a girl playing a guy playing a girl. (Or, to go back to the origins of Shakespeare, I was a girl playing a guy playing a guy playing a girl.)
That in and of itself was fine. But the play itself was... um, interesting.
The first was the fact that, while the teacher giving the play had no problem with the use of the term 'ass' to refer to the animal, she was afraid (with some reason) that parents would be. (Actually, the school was not conservative of the type that had a problem with words like 'ass' to mean 'donkey' or 'bitch' to mean 'female dog,' but they weren't confident that all the parents would, uh, get it.)
So we changed every use of the term 'ass' to 'donkey' in the play. This was kind of hilarious to start with, especially since we were all, what, twelve or thirteen? But it was even worse because Midsummer Night's Dream has rhyming lines in it, especially spoken by Puck.
Like:
When in that moment, so it came to pass,
Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.
Which of course became:
When in that moment, so it came to pass,
Titania waked and straightway loved a... donkey.
This got funnier every time it was said, until, at the end, the whole cast (including those on stage) would start to giggle at the word 'pass' and just get worse until the monologue was over.
The next problem came because... well, how shall I say this. The next problem came because I was twelve.
We rehearsed this play for what seemed like forever, but which was really probably two and a half months. We got our costumes fitted fairly early, because there was some kind of clearance on costumes at the local university. Being Flute/Thisbe, I needed two costumes: one for Flute, a guy, and one for Thisbe, a girl. So what we did, to economize, was get a laced bodice and a jacket, as well as a pair of breeches and a skirt. I'd wear the bodice with the jacket and the breeches for the Flute scenes, and then take off the jacket and switch to a skirt for the Thisbe scenes.
The bodice laced fairly tight across my chest, but when we began, I was, let's face it, basically flat-chested. I wore a bra more to have it while changing in gym than because I needed a bra.
That all changed in the succeeding two months. I gained a few inches of height... and a few inches, ahemhem, elsewhere. So that bodice that laced flat and modest across my chest when I first tried it on began to... strain. In places.
Everyone was too polite to say anything, and I was too embarrassed to ask, so we wound up with The Most Lamentable Comedy, and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe, Now With Bonus Side Boob.
Then there was the Problem of the Dog. See, there's the line:
All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the
lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this
thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.
...for which we got a real lantern, a real thornbush, and a real dog. A cute medium-sized terrier, very well-behaved.
Very well-behaved until the actual performance, at which point we discovered that dogs were capable of being total stage-hog hams. When the Moon was ready to leave the stage, courtesy the helpful line of "Moon, take thy flight," the dog decided he was not ready to go. He sat down and dug his claws in.
It took two of us to get him offstage, including me, who was obviously on stage well before her cue. To the howling laughter of the audience. (This might have hurt more if I wasn't laughing myself, but then, I still had the giggles from the "straightaway loved a... donkey" incident.)
This was not, however, the worst (best!) part.
I mentioned before that I was Flute, aka Thisbe. Well, in the play-within-a-play, Pyramus kills himself with a knife, and then Thisbe arrives and kills herself with the same knife, Romeo and Juliet style. This had gone smashingly in the rehearsals, so I wasn't too concerned.
So I watched Pyramus stab him(her)self with the knife, and fall down dead, and then I rushed out and cast my eyes around for the knife so I could pick it up.
No knife.
I assumed Pyramus had accidentally rolled onto the knife after dropping it, so I could just pull it out from under her (him). The narrator was speaking at that point, so very quietly, under my breath, I hissed, "Where's the knife?"
Pyramus hissed back, "Just fake it."
Have you ever tried to fake stabbing death with no knife? I had approximately thirty seconds to figure out how to manage to kill myself with no knife.
In what I still believe was quick thinking, I modified my lines. Thisbe is supposed to say:
O Sisters Three,
Come, come to me,
With hands as pale as milk;
Lay them in gore,
Since you have shore
With shears his thread of silk.
Tongue, not a word:
Come, trusty sword;
Come, blade, my breast imbrue:
And, farewell, friends;
Thus Thisbe ends:
Adieu, adieu, adieu.
Instead, I said:
O Sisters Three,
Come, come to me,
With hands as pale as milk;
Lay them in gore,
Since you have shore
With shears his thread of silk.
And, farewell, friends;
Thus Thisbe ends:
Adieu, adieu, adieu.
U C wat I did thar? Rather than taking the sword and plunging it into her breast, Thisbe just... died. Randomly. Of a broken heart? Or perhaps an aneurism. Or maybe hernia: it was not easy getting the damn dog off stage.
I found out afterwards that, eschewing a scabbard, our Pyramus had just stuffed the knife into the waistband of her pants. And it had come loose and fallen down her pants. So the sword I needed was... in Pyramus' pants.
Boo yah.
So yes: that's my theater story. It's also the last time I ever acted in a play, which is a shame, because the plays in later years were much better. But I was happy being the sound technician my freshman year, and onward through stage management, and now I am happy being a person who goes to plays, enjoys them, claps a lot, and goes home.
So all's well that ends with a sword down your pants, a dog on the stage, and a... donkey, I guess.
* This isn't false modesty. I am pretty good at a few things—writing is one, cooking is another—and I'm decent at a few more. I just am a seriously suck actor.
** I realize that, for a lot of people, there is a joy or excitement in the process of putting on a play, and I am glad of it, because it means that there are people to put on plays so that I can watch them. I, unfortunately, am of the camp who wants to take the prop sword and beat someone to death with it if I have to hear that stupid monologue ONE MORE TIME OH MY GOD, so I am not cut out for the theater.