The first play I ever performed in, during my
junior year of high school. We had a somewhat unusual
director that year, one who took theatre very seriously, and who took the
anal retentive,
redneck conservative administration considerably less so.
Naturally, Fred Metzger only lasted the year.
He was replaced by a dutiful Baptist drone who shall remain nameless, but whose greatest virtue was to be so clueless about the dramatic canon as to let me and a group of friends cooperatively direct and stage a full production of Hedda Gabler, without realizing the themes that play develops in fairly direct and visceral terms. Perhaos it was really the saving grace of that horrid Victorian Archer translation) we used, since it handled themes of contemplated abortion and suicide in oblique (language that is far less clear on the page than it becomes once on the stage.