In my previous post, I started telling what happened to me at the first High School Drama Festival I went to at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales.
The Drama Festival also included a number of workshops. There was one workshop that offered some warm up exercises. Since I would be performing that afternoon, I thought it would be a good idea to warm up for that (even though I only had one line.) I arrived at the classroom. There were some other people already there. I went to the back and took off my jacket, on which I recently had my mother sew my All-State patch on it. One of the girls said, "Oh, he went to All-State, too." I then realized these girls were at the Solo and Ensemble Festival and heard me sing. One of them was the one who had talked to me afterwards.
Her name was Dayz. She was a year older than me and went to school in Portales. She had medium-length dark blonde hair and blue eyes. I was surprised that someone this attractive would want to talk to me. She was definitely out of my league, but I felt like I had a shot with her.
Later that afternoon, we performed our play. Afterward, we were critiqued by the adjudicators. They had praise for our lead actress, who was a foreign exchange student from Germany playing an Irish woman, but they didn't seem too pleased with the production as a whole. Even though I only came in toward the end with another actor and we said one line each, we were criticized for how we brought in the body of the male lead character like it was a mannequin covered with a sheet, which it was. Honestly, we did not put that much thought into acting like we were carrying 150 pounds of dead weight. You tend not to pay attention to details like that when you only have one line.
Dayz had been sitting in the audience watching our presentation. She actually liked our production (or was maybe being nice). I hung out with her that afternoon, watching some of the other plays. Unfortunately, Orld and this other guy decided to hang out with us as well. They also thought they had a shot with her. I was irritated that I met a very attractive girl who seemed to admire me and they were trying to shoehorn their way in without giving her any reason for liking them. She saw ME at Solo and Ensemble! She saw ME wearing a jacket with an All-State patch! She saw ME carry in the body and deliver that one line in the play! They weren't even in the plays we performed. All they did was show up and start talking to her while I was in the middle of a conversation.
That night, we went to see the Univeristy Theatre Department's production of "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds." I was familiar that there was a movie with that title, but didn't know it was a play. Once there, I located Dayz and sat with her. Orld and the other guy located us and also sat with us. More irritation.
The one stunning thing about the production was that the Theatre Department mounted it on a raked stage. I had never seen that before. It was hard to concentrate on the performances because I was completely bewildered as to how the actors were able to keep from rolling off into the audience.
Our Drama Club went back to our motel that night. We didn't do anything else but go to bed.
On Saturday, we woke up and drove down to Portales. The previous two days, we had eaten our breakfast and lunch at the University cafeteria, because the school was paying for that. This particular morning, we went to the cafeteria to find it closed. I said, "Oh, yeah! I thought it would be closed. UNM's cafeteria was closed on Saturday during All-State." My teacher got mad at me for not telling her that in the first place, but that wasn't really my fault. We ate breakfast at Tastee-Freez. I had an order of pancakes. When the waitress brought it to my table, I was surprised at how large the pancakes were. I said, "I'm going to need two plates for this!" Very soon after that, the waitress brought me an extra plate. I was only kidding about that!
There was a make-up workshop that morning that would teach how to create beards and mustaches. The person who taught the class was one of the professors in the Theatre Department. I volunteered to have him put a beard and mustache on me. It was incredible. It looked real. I walked around the rest of the day with that on my face. Everyone was surprised and shocked because up to that point, I'd never had any facial hair.
I also surprised Dayz. I spent the rest of the morning hanging around with her AND Orld AND the other guy watching the productions. I asked for her address so I could write her. They asked for her address, too.
We watched the final high school production of the festival. It was a good play, but close to the end, the lights just suddenly went out. At first we thought the play was over, but it wasn't. They got the lights back on, the performance resumed, and... the lights went out again. This happened three more times. It must have been very frustrating for the actors on the stage. I know that I would have just given up and walked off if that kept happening to me.
The Festival ended with a pizza party in the cafeteria. All the schools sat separately, which meant I didn't get to spend any more time with Dayz. But that wasn't the end of her story. I'll be writing more about her in future posts.
They handed out awards for actors and productions. There were three levels of awards: Superior, Excellent and Honorable Mention. The foreign exchange student got an Honorable Mention award for the play I was in. Rod and another student from our school got Honorable Mentions for the other play we did. I got nothing, but I can't really say that I was really expecting anything for my one line, no matter how brilliantly I recited it.
We drove home. I scared Mom and Loyd with my beard and mustache. I had to take it off because there was no way it would last until I got to school on Monday. The funny thing is that, even though I am almost 50 years old now, I have never been able to grow enough facial hair to make a beard and mustache anywhere near as good as the one that I had that day at the age of 15. And believe me, I've tried.
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