#17 Act in a Play

In order to do this 'thing' contemporaneously (i.e. in the present day) I would probably have had to join an amateur dramatics group [shudder]. Apologies to any am-drammers reading this. It's nothing personal, I just find all that stuff a bit cringy.

Luckily I was more into it when I was younger. I had a minor speaking part in St Ives Junior School's production of 'Annie, Get Your Gun'. I had chorus parts in 'Grease' and 'Little Shop of Horrors' at St Ives Secondary School and a more interesting part in a play called 'Hell's Mouth'. Our drama teacher wanted to move away from the traditional productions and try something new. I was genuinely completely mystified about what the hell was going on throughout the play at the time, and looking back at this photo of the cast does absolutely nothing to shed any light on it:



I'll save you time - I'm the one in the front row in the middle. Wearing the red gloves and hat. No really. My character was called 'G & T'. How prophetic. I basically came on swigging from increasingly large bottles of gin and had to act more and more drunk as the play went on. I have no idea why. I think I was one of 5 'posh ladies' who all behaved obnoxiously for one reason or another. I remember one of the others was called 'Sensible Footwear'. Crumbs. It was a really strange play.

I feel fairly sure I'd make a good actress. It's just a shame that theatre groups make you do all sorts of stupid 'warm-up' exercises, like pretending to be a lion or an elephant. 'Warm-up' my bum, it's clearly a ploy to see who'll be suitable for the really humiliating roles. I mean honestly, can you imagine Sir Ian McKellen crawling around on all floors using his arm as a trunk?! No, if there was a way to bypass all that tosh I'd be picking up my Oscar this time next year. In the meantime I'll stick to writing for my creative outlet, that only needs to be as humiliating as I make it. Which, based on the evidence above, is already humiliating enough.