So we went to the Theatah lahst evening....Dramah Dahlings....

[rareboy]

Actually we went to see a school play put on by the Grade niners at the Academy for young white rich kids....The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe...

And it was a hoot. It took me back to Theatre Arts in High School.

so who here acted in a play when you were in High school and what are your memories.

I was in 'The Chalk Garden' and Henry VIII.

 

[palbert]

double post sorry

 

[palbert]

I acted, but plays are lost in fog of time. Enjoyed it though.

Henry Viii - Elizabeth would have never allowed! Your memory eludes you.

 

[G-Lexington]

My debut was probably second grade in the choir singing Christmas carols. I in fact was a lord o'leaping that year, if memory serves.

I first did actual acting in fifth (?) grade, when I stunned the world with my heart-wrenching performance of Mr Bumble in the school's performance of "Oliver!". I got to wear a fake mustache and pound a cane and act very blustery. I also shocked the world by turning in a fanciful double role, doubling up as the scissor grinder in the "Where Is Love" segment. Oddly, that section was my only singing part.

I did almost no acting after that until college, and even there, I only took theater courses and acted in scenes within those classes. I recall once semester, I was paired up with a female student who said she really liked the idea of doing a particular scene from "Burn This". I read the scene over, and then talked to her the next day. "Um...it IS a good scene. But...did you get to the end?" She gave me a half-hearted "sort of", so I said "Well, at the end, I've taken your clothes off and climbed on top of you, and it's pretty clear I'm either fucking you or just about to."

She reread the scene...then changed her mind about doing it.

My friends were into film at the time, so I would occasionally help them out with that. I rarely appeared in front of the camera other than as an extra. (I recall playing a really excitable student scribbling notes during a classroom scene.) Usually, I was holding the boom mic or driving or something like that.

Several years on, some friends of mine purchased a small local theater. And occasionally, I'd help out with their productions. Again, I was rarely on stage - I mainly ran the sound, or did the sound design and music, or things like that. For one play, I actually had a speaking role...but was never on-stage. I literally just had to yell my lines in from off stage. I did the sound design for that play, as well, which gave me the strangest list of sound cues I'd ever had to make.

* baby crying on baby monitor (six cues)
* gun shot, followed by clock on wall getting struck with bullet
* men trapped in basement freezer yelling/hollering to be let out (seven cues)
* cat having golf ball shoved up its butt

Lex

 

[palbert]

@ LEX - are you a supporter?

 

[G-Lexington]

...of the theater?

Lex

 

[Swellegant]

I had friends in drama at school, but I never appeared in a play until I was in my thirties: a two-performance musical pastiche about sobriety called "Can't Stop Recovery" (built around music mostly from Hairspray, as well as A Chorus Line and Company), created especially for an annual gay AA/Al-Anon conference. I played a drag waitress and had one spoken line and one sung solo line, and the rest of the time was part of the ensemble. It was a lot of fun, but way more work than I have ever had to put in as a performer: having done solo lip-synch drag all my adult life, six months of weekly rehearsals, singing in an ensemble while trying to stay in my own range instead of the range of whoever I was standing next to, and having to pay attention to blocking and cues was a hell of a grind.

 

[TickTockMan]

I was always a techie.


In second grade though I helped in back as well as stood in as a “townsperson” for a “Smoke-free 2000 Play”.

 

[purina]

My only experiences on stage was in Catholic elementary school. Don't remember exactly which years. Once in a group of other boys in my grade outfitted as a marching band singing "76 Trombones", the other time also a group of boys all dressed as bums - I don't remember the musical number we sang, but I recall us being dressed down for being such fuck-offs afterward. At a later age I played Santa and drew a lot of laughs from all the other kids in the audience even though I didn't have any funny business to do.

The cutest thing was all the girls in my second grade class dressed in rain hats and slickers and pushing around a big cardboard cut-out of a whale while singing "What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor".

 

[rareboy]

I acted, but plays are lost in fog of time. Enjoyed it though.

Henry Viii - Elizabeth would have never allowed! Your memory eludes you.

Oops. I should have written 'Anne of a Thousand Days'

Oh. And I just remembered ...'Murder In the Cathedral'.