My car is filthy again. I just had it washed on Saturday in a fit of vanity. Granted, it was only the $4 express wash that left lots of
dishwasher spots, but hell, it was still clean. Now it’s streaked with dirt. Keeping my car clean is an impossible task, I think. Things that don’t help include the fact that it’s white, the
oak tree in the yard, and the bird that uses my driver’s side mirror as a perch. But at least it wasn’t like that idiot I saw on the way to work who wrote (in shoe polish? Grease pencil?) "For Sale" in big letters
on his windshield. I can’t stand dirt obscuring my view, how the hell do you drive with your own phone number staring you in the face?
A dull day at work. Rehersal for
Lysistrata afterwards. I got involved with this last week when we did a reading in class for kicks, and I got recruited for a role in the presentation for this week’s Classics Forum, or whatever they’re calling it. I must confess that I volunteered to read in class in hopes of precisely this happening. So now I’m the constable or the commissioner or the magistrate or however you want to translate that.
Doesn’t everyone want to be a star sometime in their life? I was always too shy and stricken with
stage fright to manage anything more than Freddy Flouride in Grade 5. But getting in front of a classroom quickly cured my stage fright years ago, and my theatrical teaching style and my
Abbie Hoffman like prank runs for student government president make me think that I have a frustrated actor hiding inside of me. Or at least an attention starved
inner child. I’m wondering if now is the time to let whatever it is out.
We have no costumes, no sets, no
chorus, and the scene is on Friday. Oh, joy. But we did the best we could. It’s being performed by a small (it’s me and three of them in the play), independent student theater troupe, so no assistance from the theater department, which can be notoriously territorial.
It’s been a while since I’ve hung out with actors. There was a time when I fancied myself a playwright, but the less said about that the better. I was reminded and humbled about how much talent and effort can go into acting. I was amazed at how quickly and skillfully Greg, the troupe’s leader and the one playing Lysistrata, went over the script, cutting and reworking lines, creating the
blocking, instructing the three of us.
I have some natural talent, I suppose. For one, a loud, projecting voice I developed in the classroom. And years of closely reading literary texts makes it easier for me to instinctively grasp how to deliver a line, changing inflections and inserting dramatic pauses. Beyond that, I suck. I can’t remember my lines or and I keep forgetting the blocking. I probably can’t act worth a damn.
I’m not nervous so much as concerned. I have people depending on me, not to mention the opportunity I might have here.
I will not fuck this up. I will not fuck this up. I will not fuck this up…