![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I 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. )
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. )
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.
