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Jesus saves, passes to Moses, Moses scores!

That title may be thoroughly misleading, but I like the sound of it anyway. Plus this post is related to religion and Jesus and stuff along those lines, so I make no apologies.

I thought it might be a good idea to delay this post for a day or two after writing about Scrooge because I didn’t want it to sound like I’m going to back out of my offer to help with the show. I said I would, so I’m gonna. However, when I got home after that first rehearsal… part of me had misgivings and I’m not really sure why.

It’s not like it was a bad experience. It didn’t last long enough to be a bad experience. I was at the church for maybe three hours and not all of it was dancing and singing (I spent the first chunk of time finding a jacket and pants for my costume). Besides, I was in a musical theater revue group at college for two years—I’ve done this stuff before—so it’s not like the experience is going to leave an eternal scar on my soul.

The only thing that I could think of after getting home was what happened when we wrapped for the afternoon. The latter portion of rehearsal was singing; given that I didn’t know any of the songs, let alone the lyrics, I was reading everything off a sheet of paper and kinda humming and singing quietly. Consequently, the other three guys’ voices were getting smothered by the females. Not that I’ll make that much of a difference, but four is better than three. Or at least louder than three.

Incidentally, the person typing out the lyrics either didn’t proofread his/her work very carefully or just didn’t care, but whatever the case, some of the typos are pretty awesome. Aside from people telling each other to “Marry Christmas”, the females were supposed to sing “Gory to the newborn King.” I’m told the show has some really impressive special effects, but I doubt any of them involve fake blood.

After we finished, Pastor Vickie (the person leading the singing) had us gather around into a prayer circle. Not a big deal, I’m cool with holding hands and bowing my head. However, as she talked more and more about how we were doing it all for the sake of the church, bringing people in so they could experience God’s love… I don’t want to misrepresent the message she was sending, but it was a fairly long prayer and for most of the time she was talking, I kept thinking “Not true, not true, not true…”

I’m not saying I have no sense of faith or religion or spirituality. It was that message in particular. I didn’t agree to do this for the church. Screw the church, I’m doing this for my friend. Screw the church, I’m doing this for the audience. Screw the church, I’m doing this for me.

Just a second… nope, didn’t burst into flames. I thought I should wait for a moment, just in case. But here’s my thoughts on the matter: my understanding is that within the Christian belief system, we all have a direct relationship with God. He’s all-powerful, so He’s hugging me everywhere I go. I can stand anywhere and give a high-five to Jesus. For me, churches are unnecessary. I don’t need a conduit between me and the Big Guy Upstairs. Doing something for the church? Forget it.

I’m trying to make the world a better place. Helping my friend: another male townsperson will make her job as the director easier, give her a little more peace of mind. Helping the audience: making Scrooge a good show will put a smile on their faces (even if they aren’t visited by the Holy Spirit during the performance). Helping me: I’m helping other people. I’m trying to make the world a better place.

If that involves being onstage inside a church, no problem. If someone thinks the church is a required part of the equation and says so on my behalf, well, that might be what pushed the wrong buttons for me last weekend. I’m hoping it doesn’t happen again. I’m hoping I can keep going to rehearsal on Saturdays, work on my singing and dancing and eventually give the audience a great show. And if I do a really good job, who knows? Maybe I’ll be walking out to the parking lot after a performance one night and get a high-five from Jesus.

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My odds are better when I don’t audition

It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s been true when it comes to me and Expressions Theater.

Years ago, I auditioned for Mind Over Matt and was cast in the main role. In the spring, I auditioned for Wage Warfare and got shut out. 50% success rate. That by itself sounds pretty good, right?

However, for this summer’s production of Everybody Loves Opal, we were scrambling for a cast: not enough people auditioned for all of the roles. I was supposed to be just an assistant director, but since I’d been reading the Brad role during rehearsals for everyone else’s sake, I ended up playing that part for the performances as well.

Then there’s the fall/Christmas show that Expressions is putting on stage in November. I was planning on taking some time off, just relax and enjoy the season without acting, working backstage, etc. I got an email about auditions for Trials, Tribulations and Christmas Decorations and promptly deleted it. Life was spiffy.

Then I got a random phone call one evening about a month ago. At least I thought it was random. Erin, the director from Opal and the assistant director for this show, was calling to ask if I’d accept a role in the play. (Cindy, someone who’s worked with Expressions in the past, was yelling in the background that I was accepting the role whether I wanted to or not.)

There are two males in the script: John (the main character) and his son-in-law, Dennis. John is supposed to be of grandfatherly age and four or five people auditioned for that role. With about an hour left of the second day of auditions, they were distinctly lacking in a Dennis. No 30-somethings showed up, so they called me.

I suppose I could interpret that as “We’re desperate, you’re at least a marginally okay actor and won’t make the show suck too bad.” I prefer to put a more positive spin on it: “We’re desperate, you’re a slightly-more-than-marginally okay actor and could make people not thoroughly regret the fact that they paid for their tickets.” It’s all about stroking my own ego, right?

And it turns out that my luck for lack of auditioning has continued outside of Expressions. I’ve mentioned playing trivia on Thursday nights here before, but I haven’t mentioned is that a lot of my teammates attend the same church. They’ve put on a production of Scrooge every year since… I have no idea how long. I’m guessing they started sometime after “A Christmas Carol” was written, but that’s the extent of my knowledge in that regard.

I also know that one of them is the director this year and she’s been sounding… reminiscent of Erin this summer when we were having trouble finding people to put Opal onstage. In this case, it’s because they’re having a problem finding male townspeople to sing and dance in the background for Scrooge. A MAJOR problem.

Because I remembered everyone’s distress this summer, I volunteered to help out. Up until the last few weeks before performance weekend, my rehearsal schedule for the show will entail about three hours every Saturday. Learning music and choreography… I think I’ll be okay. I hope. We’re doing this for a church, I’m sure God will forgive me if I totally screw up.

I discovered how big the problem was when I got to the church last Saturday. I had no idea where I was going, but I walked in the front door, followed some voices I heard in the distance, then got pointed in the right direction. When things finally got organized, we had all the townspeople in one room to practice choreography. There were 10, maybe 12 females there? And I was one of four guys. FOUR. When you need to have couples dancing and have to tell the girls, “Pretend there’s a guy here and a guy here”… that helps explain the tone of desperation.

So now I’m committed to two shows in the next few months when I didn’t audition for either. And if I could apply that luck to finding a girlfriend, I wouldn’t care nearly as much about what Cindy might be yelling in the background during a phone call.

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Lazy Man’s Ironman

According to the person at the front desk, that’s what the YMCA used to call their “Healthy Living Challenge.” Apparently, insinuating that participants are lazy doesn’t encourage people to sign up, so they changed the name. Still, that’s essentially what the challenge is: an Ironman that you have to complete over the course of about six weeks.

I’m planning on going the traditional route: swim 2.5 miles, bike 112 miles, run 26.2 miles. (I’ll probably be leaning toward walking instead of running, but you get the idea.)

However, they have… alternative miles. Instead of swimming, you can row for 12.5 miles or take a water exercise class for three hours. Trying a new fitness class or volunteering at the Y is the equivalent of 10 running miles. Eating together as a family? 25 miles. So if you’re single, no major shortcuts for you! Unless you give yourself 25 miles for every meal since you’re a family of one, take your pick.

Criticism aside, I decided to register. For one thing, I’m woefully out of shape. I haven’t played soccer in ages because I’d probably run onto the field, then just run all the way across and call for a substitute because I’m about to collapse already. For another, it doesn’t cost me anything extra and I’ll be getting a free t-shirt. Yay for free t-shirts!

I finally started the challenge today—the event itself began last week, but I had a nasty cold that was clogging up my lungs—and IT BURNS!!! My leg muscles are reminding me how long they’ve been neglected. But I’ll probably head back to the Y tomorrow and grind out some more miles, if for no other reason than if I put things off for too long, I’ll have to work really hard to finish and then it won’t be a lazy man’s Ironman anymore.

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A new look, a new feel…

I’ve been neglecting the blog for too long, so I decided to give it a facial (minus the cucumbers—I don’t think they’d have a positive effect on my laptop’s keyboard). I just updated the features a little bit, trying to make it look and feel pretty… I don’t think any of the changes I made will cause the world to erupt in a ball of flames, but if it does, at least I didn’t waste any money buying cucumbers.

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Curses! Opal’s murder foiled again!

I’m trying to think of when it started sinking in: “Everybody Loves Opal will be done soon.” Suddenly, after so many rehearsals and two weekends of performances, my schedule would be almost completely empty. No more evening plans on a near-constant basis. It was like hitting a brick wall on Monday night. Still, we all had a blast doing the play (if anyone didn’t, they hid it very well) and I think it was a worthwhile endeavor.

That said, I’m in kind of a reflective mood, so in writing about some of this stuff… I should probably include a generic POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT! After all, some of you might see a production of Opal somewhere else and those people might not want the audience to know what’s going to happen the entire time. I don’t mind if you find out or not, but I’m trying to be considerate. So again, POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT!

I didn’t get much work done during summer camp. That week was pretty much a wash when it came to learning my lines. I had a lot of fun at camp as usual, but my knowledge of the script didn’t change much between the day I left and the day I returned. I don’t have a calendar, so I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I think with that loss of a week, I had… three fewer weeks to prepare for Opal versus Mind Over Matt? A pretty significant number.

I could feel the difference onstage. When we were performing these last two weekends, I was always thinking, “What’s my next line? It’s coming up here in a second…” It just didn’t feel as fluid. And I don’t think I ever completely screwed up any of my lines before, either. I did on Friday.

It was weird: I was more nervous about the second Friday than opening night. I imagine it was because we’d had a week of dress rehearsals, then moved directly into performances. Between Sunday and the next Friday, we met once for a “speed-through”, which is basically just the cast sitting down and saying their lines, no actions involved. I’m guessing that week away let some rust accumulate in my brain, which led to… ugh.

In a way, I was fortunate. My character, Professor Bradford Winter, went to prison a long time ago because he killed someone while driving drunk. While in prison, “one of his lungs went.” I don’t know whether it collapsed due to the harsh conditions or he got shanked by one of the other prisoners, but given his pompous attitude, I’m leaning toward the latter. Thus, when I started stumbling over my line, I burst into a giant coughing fit—something that happened several times during the first scene of the play—which gave me a chance to regroup. And did I mention that this happened on the night we were taping the show? Yeah…

But I don’t want to focus on the bad stuff. Saturday and Sunday ran soooooo smoothly in comparison. We got offstage to meet the audience afterward and it just felt great. And perhaps the greatest compliment I ever got from people was their hesitance to shake my hand. I knew they were just teasing, but as the baddest bad guy—the last one to “love Opal”, so to speak—I took that as a way of them saying I was pretty bad up there. I mean “bad guy”, not… you know what I mean.

Plus there was the final show. Sunday afternoon. A pretty solid performance and I was happy with it. I was especially happy with it because the last people to leave the theater were members of my family. My 95-year-old grandma was there and I’d asked for tickets in the front row ahead of time so she’d be able to see and hear more clearly. (She didn’t catch all of the words, but being able to see our body language helped.) That also meant the rest of my family was sitting in the front row, too.

Or at least I assume so. I opted not to wear glasses during the production—it was written in the 60’s and the style of my glasses… more modern by 50 years didn’t feel appropriate. I didn’t need to read anything, so I had no problem acting with a bunch of giant fuzzballs onstage. That also meant the audience was comprised of fuzzballs as well, so I had no idea I was staring directly into some of their faces during part of Act II.

Okay, OFFICIAL SPOILER ALERT! (In case you ignored the earlier warnings.)

There were three of us conniving crooks who put a life insurance policy on Opal and wanted to murder her for the insurance money. After each unsuccessful attempt, she believed one of us saved her life, so she lavish that person with love and affection that would eventually be returned. The first person to cave was the girl, Gloria. When Sol and I were planning the second murder attempt, Gloria wanted out. After several failed attempts at coercion and threatened violence, Sol pushed her down to the floor, at which point I walked up, squatted down to get close and delivered this line:

“Maybe Sol won’t kill you, but I promise… if you oppose us in any way, I WILL SLIT THAT SLIM THROAT OF YOURS!”

I used my thumb to make a slashing motion across my throat… you know, just in case she didn’t know what I was getting at. I kept yelling at her as I stood up and walked away, but that part was pretty badass.

Now flash back to the part about my family sitting in the front row. When I delivered that line, I was looking at Gloria and also staring directly at the face of my older brother. When he gave me a hug after the show, he asked me where I was channeling that rage from. That was an even better compliment than people not wanting to shake my hand. (I’ll get back to the rage part in a bit.)

And that was only a part of Act II. It was the hardest one for me to get used to, maybe because I had so much to do: talk to Sol about killing Opal, coerce/threaten Gloria, get Sol prepped for the murder, seduce Gloria (yes, it’s only ten minutes between me threatening to kill her and us making out on the couch), then try to make sure Opal dies. Completely switching emotions and behavior on a dime so many times… that was the exhausting part of the play.

Act III was a lot more fun because I got to be a lot more loose and casual. Professor Winter was terse, stern, proper, snooty, condescending… I could come up with a laundry list of adjectives, but most of them go out the window when I spend all of Act III being drunk. I couldn’t slur my speech very much because I still used a large vocabulary, but stumbling around a bit, doing more random movement, talking louder and acting like a petulant child at times… it was fun. Whether it was more fun than making out on the couch… that’s a toss-up.

Being drunk also meant I could laugh while preparing my own attempt at murder. My evil plan? Drug Opal’s tea to knock her out, then set the house on fire. “It’s a tinderbox!” The first part worked: she passed out with her head on the table. Within the next few minutes, I ran around the room, dragged her out of her chair and fell down on my butt to get her on the floor, poured “kerosene” all over her (well, up to chest level so she wouldn’t get water in her nose), threatened my former cohorts with a pistol when they walked into the room… I did a lot of giggling and some singing in the process. Ultimately, my plan failed, but I enjoyed the attempt.

(As a side note, it was pretty cool to hear the audience gasp when I poured water on Opal so they could see it sloshing on the stage and getting her clothes wet. “That’s right, I’m not just miming pouring this stuff on her!” I’m not sure why they thought it was so shocking, but I thought their reaction was pretty cool.)

Ah, I almost forgot the rage part. I was never in a drunken rage in Act III, but I’ve never been drunk before. At all. Ever. I don’t drink and don’t plan to. Alcohol ain’t my bag, but some people told me to call A.A. after a performance just to make sure. (To create the drunken movement, Andy Wilkins said to pretend like I’m standing on a raft moving around on a lake. You keep your balance by bending your legs and shifting your weight around, so doing that on flat ground makes you look drunk.)

Two things I’ve never been—full of rage and drunk—but I don’t think I “channel” anything. I couldn’t tell you where it comes from. It just seems like the right way to act in that situation. If you’re really pissed at someone, you yell, bare your teeth, clench your fists. If you’re drunk… well, I’ve seen drunk people who can’t walk in a straight line, wobble around, throw up on their shoes. Maybe it comes from being a people-watcher, but it just seems like the right way to respond to those circumstances.

There are plenty of other stories. Sol reading the obituaries, trying to think of ways to kill Opal and making up a different headline every night. Officer Joe Jankie’s first play ever. (The first time he came offstage on opening night, it immediately hit him: “I’m an actor!”) Shuffling people around to ensure we’d have at least two crew members every night—I don’t think any of them made it to all six shows because of schedule conflicts. It was an interesting ride, to say the least.

So to the cast, crew, audience, the kids at summer camp, everyone reading this… probably to the dude who wrote Everybody Loves Opal, too… thanks for the memories. Except for the memory of me screwing up my line. That one, I could do without.

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Not Really Fast Nor Furious

I was riding in the car with my mom yesterday and she wanted to switch into the left lane. She hit the turn signal, but before she could move over, some car sped up from behind us to cut her off. The driver couldn’t hear her, but she still told him, “Okay, fine, don’t let me in.”

A moment later, I burst out laughing and said, “Nope, you really are a dick!” Needless to say, she was confused. She became less confused when I pointed out the car’s license plate at the next stoplight:

2FST2H8