March 2010
Comic Potential
Okay, now as many of you know, as most of the readers are fellow members, my family and I are members are The Drama Workshop (TDW), a community theatre on the west side. Now as I am teenager who does not do musicals and goes to a school without any theatre program, meaty roles are few and far between. In the past two years at TDW, my credits have included Hot Dog Vendor and Mac...impressive aint it? This year, TDW chose for their winter show, Comic Potential, a British sci-fi romantic-comedy...with robots. When the show was being considered by the play reading committee, several members read a certain character and believed that I would be perfect for the role. The role: Young Man, Alex Crayshaw, a whiny character who complains about his broken foot and cries...another reason why I am the red-headed step-child of TDW.
For this show, I got to work with four people whom I had worked with at least once before. Kasmira, of whatiwore2day.blogspot.com fame, Jim, Henry, and Tom. The rest of the cast I had met before through parties and such. An interesting turn of events led one of the cast members to drop out of the show and to be subsequently replaced by the Beefy Muchacho himself, beefymuchacho.blogspot.com. This was the second show in a year that I was in with both Kasmira and the Muchacho.
The show was interesting enough with me ending up with a total of four roles plus acting as the pre-show announcement, all with varying British accents. Of those four roles, the dress shop assistants will probably go on my list of my favorite bit parts following my Edward G Robinson inspired Mac in You Can't Take it With You. Though I must say, that Kasmira was absolutely awesome in her part and having worked with her since her first community theatre role in Mrs Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge, she has grown immensely and I cannot wait to work with her again.
Probably my most memorable moments would be off the stage for this show. The first being my heart-to-heart with the Muchacho during Tech week when I nearly broke down crying because of my Evansville rejection. The other being after opening night, a good portion of the cast went down to Boswell's Alley, where it was karaoke night. Most of the singers are good and then you come to "Crazy Drunk Tone-deaf Bitch Who Decided to Butcher Queen" or CDTBWDBQ...roles of the tongue. She requested Bohemian Rhapsody; now if we had just let her sing, then it would have been one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. However, since it became a great group participation event which counteracted all the suck being exerted by the said CDTBWDBQ.
This was not one of my favorite shows, it was a fun show despite lackluster ticket sales, especially disappointing after being told that I was the common factor of the highest grossing productions for the past three years. There were other faults but I cannot address them as I do not wish to open up a can of worms that I cannot close.
So there's Comic Potential and my senior year in theatre. I'll admit that the schedule with all these shows did get hectic at times but overall it was a fun year and if I could, I would do it again.
