My Dramatic Setback

Our Town coming to the Okefenokee Heritage Center in Mid-March, sponsored by Purlie Productions. Tryouts at the Okefenokee Heritage Center this Saturday, Jan 11 at 6 PM.

I attended the play tryouts of Our Town last night.  Unfortunately, my schedule and personal circumstances preclude me from participating in a significant way with the production. But I did want to come and show my support. 

This has the potential to be a great production and has assembled an excellent support team behind it, including Amara Grace Jeffords as Director.

It is not my first brush with Our Town.  It was also my first brush with acting failure in college.

After being in a couple productions a year in high school, my involvement with acting dwindled to almost nothing in college.  Here is the number of plays I tried out for in college - ZERO.

I did participate with the University of Men's Glee Club, who had won the International Glee Club competition the year before (think Pitch Perfect male edition).  In my two years in the group, I had one solo part, a few lines in Gee, Officer Krupke from West Side Story.  I sang as if I were a 62-year old female social worker.  When I sang it at Carnegie Hall, the audience interrupted the song to applaud me.

But all was not roses and kittens.  I had only one acting class in college, Radio and TV Acting, and I struggled hard to make an impression on the artsy professor that ran the class.  The TV assignment I had was a key part of Our Town, the malt shoppe scene, where the high school athlete, George, professes interest in the beautiful young Emily.  I thought I was pretty good, but the Professor did not.  First, having only done theatre, I was probably too broad.  Second, he kept wanting me to act like a jock, and as hard as I tried, I couldn't capture what he wanted.  I have always been as far from a jock as you could imagine.  Also, it was the first romantic scene I had ever participated in.  I got too close to the girl, and she smelled like cigarettes, something I had not had to deal with before.

Nevertheless, even with all these obstacles, I did the best I could and worked hard to overcome them.  I worked as hard as I could to get something right as I did anything else in my whole college experience (except maybe College Algebra).  I thought I improved immensely.

There were tons of acting exercises.  I did not do well with those.  They are a challenge to my shy nature.  But, again, I did the best I could.  To this day, I cannot stand to do acting exercises and will do whatever I can to avoid them.

When my grade came, it was a B.  In all my years of academic experience, it was the grade I was most ashamed of.  For the only time in college, I went to the Professor to try to get an explanation.  Instead of explaining why I didn't get an A, he explained why I was lucky to get a B.  He seemed nonplussed that I thought my acting was "A" material.

After college, I started into community theatre at about 23 years old.  There have been more successes than failures. Even the successes, though, I have found fleeting and impermanent.  Nothing I do leaves much of a mark or record.  There is always somebody better and more well remembered.

I have few places where I am conceited.  I do not consider myself a good actor.  Even with setbacks, I see myself as a great actor.  But as I get older, I realize that that doesn't mean anything.

I still want to do some theatre.  I still get high off a good performance and absorbing the audience's reaction.

But still, in the back of my mind, there is that nonplussed Professor - why does this kid think he is so good?

Ok, maybe I'm not.  But sometimes, for a few brief seconds, I do feel like I'm somebody.

And it's hard to give that up.