From middle school to high school, I was involved in theatre plays, either with the school drama club or the local theatre. I mostly did backstage and lighting work, and I was also an actor in several high school plays. We did Grease, West Side Story, and The Outsiders, among others.
My favorite play I was involved with was You’re Good Man, Charlie Brown, put on by the local theatre group in April 1990. It was an all-adult cast, and I was the only kid in the production crew. I did some backstage work and set building, but mostly lighting. I had just turned fifteen before the performance ran Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings for two weeks. Rehearsals were fun, and there were plenty of antics, especially among the cast.
After the first weekend performances, we even had an evening rehearsal where we turned it into improv and did whatever we wanted, crew included, as we performed the entire play from beginning to end. It was a hilarious evening, to say the least.
It was a great cast and crew; everyone made me part of the group despite being the “kid.” After a month and a half of involvement with this play, I was sad it had to end. I felt at home doing theatre work.
After school started in the fall of 1990, Ardell Welch, a wonderful, talented woman who had done a lot of theatre work with the school district and the theatre groups in the seacoast area of New Hampshire, asked me to get involved with producing a drama play from scratch, which would be put on by my peers at the high school I attended, about topics facing teenagers, such as drug abuse, drinking, bullying, and teenage pregnancy. I have worked with her many times before, and she has entrusted me with this project and the role of the stage manager.
I helped Ardell with the groundwork by working on plots, setting the scenes, and covering topics in each scene. There, Decisions? was born. The play focused on a new boy to the high school and a bit of a nerd. In the beginning, he would get bullied, but over time, he would lose his nerd status and start to hang with the wrong crowd. We threw in “b” scenes between the main story to cover teenage topics unrelated to the main character.
Once Ardell and I, along with a few other students, had the scenes on paper, we handed them to the student actors and let them improvise. Mind you, we didn’t hand them a script; the entire cast and crew worked together and came up with the “script.” We worked through each scene from beginning to end and made adjustments along the way.
It was fun building a play from scratch and watching it evolve. It made me love theatre even more. The play was so well-received that we performed it at other schools in neighboring towns.
Decisions? was brought back the following school year, and we needed someone to play the principal, so I experienced my first time acting in that role, on top of being the stage manager and lighting. Again, we performed at neighboring schools.
After that, I did a few other plays and then stepped away from the theatre work. Because of my migraine issues throughout the myter high school years, I had to cut back on activities besides school work so,I wasn’t overworking myself. Since then, I haven’t thought much about theatre for a long time.
Twenty-five years later, looking back at all the theatre work I did, I miss it.
Greatly.
Many memories came back to me after I attended several Broadway musical performances in Denver, Colorado. I saw The Lion King in November and A Christmas Story: The Musical a few days before Christmas. I had such a great time watching the performances that I felt right at home. I wanted to be part of it. It was a feeling I hadn’t felt in such a long time. In a way, I had an epiphany. I asked myself why I wasn’t involved in theatre again, whether it was acting or backstage, or even film & tv. I have always been fascinated with film, TV, and theatre productions, so why wasn’t I doing something in this industry? Fear of trying to step outside my comfort zone played a significant role. Instead, I chose the easy route with a career in accounting. Not that it was a bad thing.
Now, while still having a career in accounting and working on other projects, I’m exploring the possibility of returning to theatre and taking acting and voice classes in the evenings. I’m researching the different options. I’m not talking about doing Broadway shows, which is a huge, huge leap (Seriously, it’s a nice thought, but let’s be realistic here), but looking into a regional theatre where I can start new, learn along the way, and build my experience to bigger opportunities. We’ll see. I’m going to take it one step at a time. I’ll write more about this at some point.
“Nothing great happens when you hold back.”