Boredom Sets in...

Well, summer break officially sucks... Aside from a knee surgery, some play rehearsals here and there, and a little bit of time with friends, it's been a really, REALLY boring summer, and today was no different. So, it is here that I find myself writing this post to tell more of my background story in theatre...

Now, I was at the part where I had auditioned for the summer community play Westward Whoa!

I had no intention to audition, but my friend was apparently being hounded by his neighbor that she had "a couple of perfect parts" for us again and wanted us to audition. So, of course, I got dragged into it... Now that I look back on it, I see that it was good for me to do it, because it got me to where I am today... Kinda...

So we auditioned, and my friend got cast as Straight-shooting Sam, and I got cast as The Arizona Kid in the production. Now, I will admit, I didn't like the play... In fact, it was downright horrible... It was a musical melodrama, which in the hands of a less than competent director who had no idea the concept of anything good, was even worse than it sounds with THAT description. The experience was different under the director this time, though. She was much more schedule oriented, and didn't make any last minute additions... Possibly because I cussed her out during The Royal Bachelor, or possibly because my mother did. But either way, she stuck to the schedule.

Actually, this time, it was more in the area of the SET that there were problems... I had always helped out with the set building because I feel that if I don't do something tech oriented, I'm pretty much dead weight and in the way. Unfortunately on the set build day, I couldn't be there because of an obligation I had before even auditioning for the show, and I therefore couldn't help build the outlaw cabin in which I would spend a majority of the show.

The outlaw cabin was a raised platform, standing about eight inches off the top of the stage, and hanging off a good two or three feet. It had a small overhanging roof that looked like a couple sticks and a piece of cloth, and on the left side (stage right) was a wall made out of literally shards of left over wood. So it was rickety to say the least... But the wall was the least of my worries...
They made the floor out of thin sheet wood, like the wood used to make the walls for sets. Less than a quarter of an inch thick, and it had only one or two supports underneath... So I'm walking on it, and it's cracking under my weight. Not breaking, but you can hear the wood begin to crack...

They decided not to do anything about it for quite a while, and we went on rehearsing. That was, until the dress rehearsal two days before opening night, when I dropped down on my knee, like I always had done, and put it through the floor, upsetting my balance, and falling five feet to the hard floor below. After months of warnings, I finally proved that the floor would crack under my weight... Unfortunately it was at the expense of my back, and almost at the expense of a very expensive microphone that just so happened to be in my "flight" path. And wow, that was a lot of "expense" for one paragraph...

But, as they say, the show must go on. And it did, and both performance nights, the entire cast received a standing ovation.

Shortly after this, I started my junior year in high school. I had had every intention of auditioning for the next play because I realized that I truly loved acting. But catastrophe struck, and my family and I were forced to move from our home in beautiful Colorado, and come to not-so-beautiful Missouri... Now, don't get me wrong, it's a nice enough state when it comes to the people, but nothing can top the view of the mountains from your back yard.

Luckily my mother had the foresight to email a theatre teacher here in the town we moved to, and get information about their program. But more on that in a different post, because I think this one's getting longer than the last one...