All The World's A Stage

“I know very little about acting. I’m just an incredibly gifted faker.”

---Robert Downey Jr.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be up on stage, acting in a play? Some think it’s easy, but every step taken, every word spoken is precisely planned. You must stand where the director has told you to stand and you must say the words exactly as the playwright wrote them. It’s something that requires a lot of concentration while at the same time it has to seem like it’s as natural as breathing.  Monologues and scenes that have been watched and played by thousands of audience members and actors must sound fresh and new. Seriously, everybody and their brother has at least read Romeo and Juliet, if not seen it performed. Making a romance from centuries ago come to life, when most people just think, “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again (dead, but not really) boy kills self, girl kills self” is no easy task.

In elementary school I was in a few plays, as every kid was. Juliet might be a tough role but try being wrapped in crepe paper and being a cabbage. In middle school there was one of those horrible history plays, about Abe Lincoln, but of course it didn’t include him getting shot in the head at a play. That’s probably too complex for 6^th grade, not to mention the violence. It was more about Abe’s early days.  I played “Townsperson Number 1” who got to say, “Here comes the President” and I almost blew the line.  By high school, the plays had improved and even if my acting hadn’t it was still fun. Senior year I played a demented murderess with an artificial hand, who was carefully exacting her revenge, one by one, on those she felt had wronged her. That was a stretch for me because while holding a grudge is a talent of mine (literally, I am still mad at my friend Caitlin from 2^nd grade who tripped me at recess and made me dent my Mary Poppins Lunchbox) spending years looking up people and then killing them seems like way too much work.  In each play though, it was a chance to get out of my own head and be someone else. Who among us doesn’t want to do that every now and then?

So, since it would be a shame to waste all that acting background, not to mention my natural ability to be dramatic in front of groups of people, I finally pulled the trigger and tried out for some community theater. I didn’t bother to do a lot of research first, because it just seemed like it would be more fun going into it without a lot of pre-conceived ideas. Here’s a pro tip: If you try out for a musical, you will have to sing at the audition. Imagine that. Someone told me to just try out for the chorus, which I thought were like extras who wandered around in the back of a scene, humming or something. Not so much. So I’m on stage and the director asks, “What are you going to sing?” Thinking fast, I said, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and the piano guy goes “In what key?” Seriously? I refrained from snapping, “The ones on your piano, dummy!” It was a disaster, all six bars of it. But hey, I will try just about anything once. Or twice as it turned out.

The next audition was for a play with no music and required me to memorize a two-minute monologue. It wasn’t quite as mortifying as the musical audition and the director was nice and laughed at a few parts. Which I didn’t think were funny, so that should have told me something. Then came the waiting. Callbacks were a few days after and I was checking my email like a meth addict hoping for a hit. Finally it comes, thanking me for my time…but…they were going with someone else.

It takes a lot to get up on a stage, in front of total strangers and sing and act and, in my case, throw up in your mouth a little, but it really was fun. The sheer terror was worth it; we should all do something that scares us. Not every day, because stress kills, but once in a while. Oh and I suggest taking a friend with you. My best friend tried out too and we about killed ourselves laughing while rehearsing monologues and memorizing lines. I never cared for Shakespeare in college, but nothing beats Rosemary bursting out with “Think not I love him! Though I ask for him” at any random moment. Just call us Lucy and Ethel, and yes, we will be back.