In the 8th grade there was a casting call for a play. I loved acting and I went to the audition and the turnout was rather light. Pretty much I got the part just for showing up. This play was directed by a theater student in High School. There were five parts. Three were given to high schoolers and two to Junior High kids, myself and Joel Terry. Joel’s sister was Mariana Terry, the director. I previously wrote briefly about this in my post titled “letters". Joel wasn’t at the audition, he was just told to do it I assume. The other three parts were to a couple of girls in high school and to a short super skinny guy who happened to be dating Mariana. Yeah, nobody auditions and crazy amounts of nepotism. If I were a smart kid I would have gotten out. But I loved acting and there I was.
Joel was in the 8th grade with me. I didn’t really know him, not really until we’d work together at Burger King in a few years. After about a week of rehearsals he quit
showing up and they scrambled to find a replacement. But they found their man. Manfred the German exchange student. He was tall, skinny, had long blonde hair. He could pass for Mark Lanegan of the
Screaming Trees circa 1991.
 |
| The guy on the right is either the singer of a 90's Seattle grunge band, or a German foreign exchange student. https://www.discogs.com/artist/76753-Screaming-Trees |
He was so terrible. So, so terrible. His acting was seemingly inspired by Tommy Wisseau from
the Room.
Our rehearsals (and performances) were held at the Jr. High
Auditorium. This was located on the east
side of the gym in an old building erected in the 1930’s as a part of
the PWA program.
 |
| The famous Auditorium in Bonham. https://www.fannincountyhistory.org/bonham-high-school.html |
I’m not kidding. This helped the US get through the Great Depression. Every day the door in the back of the gym was
supposed to be unlocked. More than once
it wasn’t. We had an easy solution
though. The windows in the gym were
unlocked. Just about eight feet up though. We’d lift up Mariana’s boyfriend onto Manfred's shoulder then help him stand up. He’d
squeeze through an opening.
 |
| Bedford Falls productions. |
Imagine
Jared Letto from My So Called Life (but with short black
hair, and a much shorter build). Squeezing though a small brick hole.
 |
| The side of the Auditorium. Pic via Google Maps. |
So the play was about a couple of friends visiting their
buddy in the hospital following a car accident.
They talk about what happened.
They try to cheer him up as he’s depressed. By the end of the play there’s a twist. It was not a good play. I got the part of Shawn the class clown. There’s also the nurse. The class genius. The pretty and perky girl who’s my girlfriend. And Manfred was the star. He was Eric, the kid in the hospital. He never learned his lines. No problem.
He got to have a copy of the script in his lap. He read his lines. Nice.
By the time we got all our set rounded up (a hospital room
bed, a couple chairs and a table) we ran lines a couple of times and just dicked
around for a few weeks. Mariana and her
boyfriend made out upstairs in the balcony.
I just sat quietly listening to Manfred and the two girls talk about
bull-crap. I didn’t understand or know
about or care about their stuff.
One day I arrived at “rehearsal” and the girl that played my
girlfriend was freaking out. She was crying about how everybody hates her. Her mom was this horrible person. She just quit smoking and it’s hard and her
life is falling apart and oh my God!
Life is terrible. Her friends, my cast-mates, were listening to her and were her rock. To me at the time she was having a mental breakdown over cigarettes! She was an anthropomorphic example of one the of that year’s biggest rock songs.
Everybody decided to pile into a car and run lines at Bonham
State Park. We headed south. Bonham State Park was a couple miles outside
of town. There was a small lake for
swimming or canoeing and some trails you could walk down. It was also built by a 1930s Fed program to boost our failing economy. We sat down at a picnic table and did not run
lines. Instead they all focused on the
girl’s problems. I was just there. I didn’t go to school with these kids. I didn’t know them. I just wanted to do a damn play.
Then the time came.
We had two performances for the thing.
We would perform it, for free for the Junior High, my school. And the next evening for the public for
$5. By public they meant friends and
family. We weren’t even going to put it
on for their school, the High School. So
I had a note and left my 3rd Period social studies class and met up
with the cast at the auditorium. A
little while later my whole school funneled in.
And we put on the play.
We did alright. I
came in from stage left wearing whatever it was I wore to school that day. I held a boom box to my head with my right
hand and an empty six-pack in my other hand. “Warm up the tube and cool down
the beer, it’s time to party because I am here!” was my first line. It didn’t get much better than that. Like I said, our performance was “okay”. Other than the fact that somebody, Manfred,
forgot a line. How was it possible? I don’t have a clue. He had the damn script in his lap! After a moment of silence I grabbed a magazine
and sat in a chair. They were gonna
figure this out. A few years later I was in another play (The Odd Couple:
Female version) where my “brother” forgot his line. I took a more active approach and just said
his line for him.
Eventually Manfred found his place and said his line. Another actor got their cue and said theirs
and we finished the play. There was no
standing ovation, no big group bow. We
struck the set and I went to my next class, Band. Nobody mentioned the play to me. Not a single classmate. What kind of sick psychological games do
people play? It was the weirdest damn thing ever.
We performed the play once more and it was actually
good. No dropped lines. Laughs and stunned silence where
appropriate. Reaction at the end. We took a bow. We took in like $60 at the gate. About a dozen folks showed up. Big hit!
I’d go on to high school and do another play with
Mariana. Though she’d act and I’d be a
stage hand. In fact, I’d be on the crew
of a couple of plays and only act in one.
Guys in my High School were not interested in acting. It was so lame. So deflating.
But I liked to act and loosely hung around the Theatre Department in
High School. To Absent Friends was an
experience worth having, though not a good one.
It was not enough to discourage me though. I didn’t really fit into any groups, any
cliques. I fit in with the freaks enough
though. They accepted me. Or at least I was quiet and out of the way.
###
###
Comments
Post a Comment