Theatrical Thoughts

Not unlike the past, I hadn’t auditioned until being called in for callbacks. City of Angels is one I do like, but figured I couldn’t do the run because of school. Well, the director asked me to audition for Stine and Stone, and I was pretty tempted. Both are great roles.

Obviously, I ended up auditioning. I had mentioned ahead of time I wouldn’t be able to say the blasphemies in the show. Modern writers just feel a need to get in their quota of blasphemies it seems. No biggie. I have a full life without doing those particular shows. But the director agreed that I could omit a couple words here and there. The callback went well and I was cast.

When I did the show before, I played Munoz. This time I was Stine. Okay, sure, I wanted to play Stone, but that didn’t happen. I think they just want taller actors for that particular role. And I don’t seem to be growing much taller nowadays. I may not be doing that role unless I either magically grow or fund and star in my own theatre company.

The rehearsals went well. Having done the show before made it easy to memorize my part. Musically, the songs (for Stine at least) all have long crazily-high endings, which are sometimes fun, but always challenging. Nevertheless, that’s the way it is.

Doing the show did require some sacrifice. I had been planning on taking three master’s classes during the quarter, but the director wasn’t okay with me missing THAT much rehearsal time each week, so I dropped two classes and kept the Monday night class. It worked out well, as the one class used up entire weekends for reading (Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, a 1000-page poem, written circa 1590).

Flubs? Perhaps there were a few tiny line switches at times, but no major bloopers happened. To give me an extra bit of support, I kept the first two lines of my final Act II song on the paper in the typewriter.

Overall, I was glad I did the show. It provided a good place to go during a transitional time in my life.