My Big Break

I'm a thespian! Time to break a leg! Where is my SAG application?!

Well, not yet, but I'm getting my "big break" in our church's upcoming Christmas play. Did you know the term Thespian is not actually derived from the Greek city-state of Thespiae but rather is comes from Thespis of Icaria who, Greek legend has it, was the first actor? The production we are doing is called "Imagine Christmas" and I have been asked to play one of the main characters who is an angel (ok, you can stop laughing now....).

My friend Beth asked me to do it and handed me a script and a DVD to check out. Of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, I have this very agreeable component to my personality which had me screaming "YES!, I'LL DO IT!" before I even read the part. I have no idea why she and my friend Chad think I might be the right person for this part. Although the part is supposed to be funny and I can do funny. However, the only acting I have ever done was in a short drama also done in church where I only had five or six short (but funny) lines.

The DVD I was given was pretty much like what I had been told by some others in the production. It is completely over the top, but really, really good. It was over the top as in let Cirque' Du Soleil do your church's Christmas play. I am not making this up. There were people sliding down and climbing up ropes, swinging from the ceiling, people flying around on wires, lots of dancing, and crazy lighting. There is lots of video parts and even narration. They even have tons of snow flying across the stage! However, I watched it, and what struck me was how amazing the basic story was and that you don't even need any of the special effects to really pull this off successfully. I mean, I'll bet anything that our folks will put everything they have into this and we are going to pull off a little magic of our own, but whatever we do will be icing on the cake as long as we can pull off our lines and get our parts right. Although I can't stop thinking about that episode on the Brady Bunch when they were making their own movie about the history of Thanksgiving and they used Alice's laundry soap flakes as snow. They had all these boxes of soap and when the time came, they screwed it up and it came out more looking like a blizzard. I think we'll at least be able to do better than that.

It's funny, when we lived in Salem, Mass., several of my friends were real actors. My friend Michael even showed me his SAG card once. He had to join the union so he could be in a TV documentary on the the history of Massachusetts. He played a priest, which if you know Michael, is more funny than the thought of me playing an angel. When I first met Michael, he was a bartender. His signature drink was the "Masochist", which he lovingly called "a fruity rum drink", but from what I could tell from others drinking it, it was more like, as Douglas Adams would put it "the alcoholic equivalent to a mugging: expensive and bad for the head." While living there, I had another friend who ran a theater production company, and yet another who worked for a company that makes movie sets. So, I am no stranger to actors or theater, but I am a total stranger to actually "acting" itself.

I really don't have a problem getting up in front of lots of people and talking. The way they do the lights, I actually have a hard time seeing a lot of the people in the audience. It's remembering all my lines that I have a problem with. Luckily, I have plenty of time to learn my lines, but there are a lot of them. I have some pretty bad memory, so this will be stretching the limit for me, and I think I am really going to have work hard at it. Besides having a memory problem, I have this teeny-tiny little bad habit which I am seriously trying to break, which is when I am really under a lot of stress..... I kind-of-sort-of curse..... but just a little. Hey, I was in the Navy for six years and some old habits die hard. I finally decided to tell my friend Chad about this little issue just moments before we went on for the last drama we did. His eyes got wide after I told him, as we were going out in front of the whole church. But I reassured him and there wasn't a problem. I had my lines completely memorized and we were great.

So I am pretty excited about doing this. It is still a long time between now and Christmas so there are going to be plenty of opportunities for some laughs and to make some new friendships. I am also looking forward to learning more about acting. I like getting involved in new stuff that I know almost nothing about. I just hope nobody takes this play so seriously that the fun is taken out of it. I know we will all want to do our best to make this show the best it can be, but I also want to enjoy the whole process.

Besides the Brady Bunch episode I mentioned, I also can't stop thinking about the movie "Waiting for Guffman". If you've never seen it, Wikipedia gives the following plot overview: "The movie is a loving parody of community theater set in the small town of Blaine, Missouri. It chronicles the trials and tribulations of a handful of utterly delusional residents as they prepare to put on a community theater production. The show, a musical chronicling the town's history, titled Red, White and Blaine, is to be performed as part of the town's 150th anniversary celebration. Corky, the director, has presumably used connections gained from his "off-off-off-off" Broadway past to invite Mort Guffman, a Broadway producer, to critique "Red, White and Blaine". Corky leads the cast to believe that a positive review from Guffman could mean that the group can take their show all the way to Broadway." As you can imagine, when the characters begin to believe their show could possibly to to Broadway, the production becomes unbelievably funny.

I doubt anybody in our production thinks we're going to Broadway with this, but we're going to give it our best. And I know it's going to be awesome. The show is going to be at Powhatan Community Church on Christmas Eve and there's going to be two shows. Don't worry, I'll keep you up to date on our progress as Christmas approaches and invite you again before the time comes. You won't be able to miss me, I'll be one of the two angels. Just be sure to tell me to "Break A Leg." I want to make sure I get the whole experience.