"Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Whatsit" (Not if she's dressed like that!)

"Once more, with acting..."

Some fellow forumites were discussing their memories of school plays today.

Let's see.

The earliest Nativity I can recall was probably the first, when I was still in nusery school. I played Joseph, opposite my friend, Lauren as Mary. It was a very traditional affair, tea towel headscarves and all.

The next Christmas, I was at a different nursery. I'd been selected as one of the three kings, and actually asked specifically to be "the gold one", which earned me a telling off. But that's the part I got!

The costumes for this particular production were of staggeringly high quality. I have no idea where these outfits came from, but the whole cast looked magnificent. My mum still has a picture of me, resplendent in head-to-toe shimmering gold (the other kings were purple and green, but I don't remember which was frankincense and which was myrrh), and I don't think I've ever looked so expensively dressed since.

At primary school, there was the semi-legendary Oliver!, production of which involved literally 8 weeks of almost non-stop rehearsals. I was merely one of Fagin's gang, the result of a machiavellian conspiracy, at least according to my friend, Ryan, to cheat him out of the role of Dodger, thus knocking him down to playing Charlie, the role originally earmaked for me. I'll never forget those endless weeks wearing rags, of "Oom-pah-pah"-ing and Considering Ourselves At Home. The fact that Gene Cubitt was cast as Bill Sikes, despite a dazzling lack of acting talent, simply for the unspoken reason that he was very, very intimidating and scuzzy, or that Sally Fazakerly, one of those amazingly self-assured kids you meet every so often, wound up playing Fagin because she was so much better at it than Mr. Knight, our music teacher/director. Or that the population of 19th Century London was 40% muslim.
We did three productions, my mother came to the second, reasoning that it'd be the one where we'd ironed out all the wrinkles, before we'd all gotten too tired. She was right. The whole thing was a big success, and the cast (pretty much my entire Year group, actually) was comissioned to perform a cut-down version at the city hall!
Naturally, I was ill that week.
Admittedly, all the other kids got out of it was a coach trip and a ring binder and pen set each, with CARDIFF CITY COUNCIL stamped on them, but I still felt profoundly cheated for having missed out.

Fortunately, my next period of illness the following year coincided with the next school play, the dreaded Grease. I manged to miss the whole thing, and am not a bit sorry.
In the final days of primary school, it was decided we'd have a go at Cats, and for once I actually had some lines, the first of which I fluffed badly. This was a one-night only gig, so there'd be no second try. I covered it with a jokey ad-lib that earned me lots of laughter and applause, but I still feel embarassed about it now.

My high school didn't really do plays, as such, but there were drama presentations, short scenes usually performed as a practical exam. Sometimes, it'd be an English class thing, like when did dramatised versions of The Red Pony or Of Mice And Men (have I mentioned, I loathe Steinbeck?). We never quite got round to Shakespeare, but there was an aborted production of An Inspector Calls, cancelled because the drama department was such a shambles. I was a serious minded aspiring actor back then, and I seemed to be the only kid in my year who didn't see Drama class as an excuse to piss about, and an easy 'A'. Well, there was one girl, Vicky, who attended a drama group out of hours and who despised Matilda actress Mara Wilson, as if they were somehow rivals. She works in Waterstones now (Vicky, that is. Dunno about Mara Wilson). Anyway, we did things like Abigail's Party, where I played Lawrence for the first half. With my floppy hair and awful, charity shop blazer, I think I looked appropriately 70's. Funny how many people my age would adopt that same look once they hit college!

Then there was All's Fair... They split us into pairs for that one, and let me tell you, it aint easy being a moody teenege male trying to portray a 1940's Welsh girl named Dilys, and that's without your dyslexic mate playing her younger sister and pretending to paint your legs with gravy browning the whole time.

My last bit of school acting was more succesful, it was a segment from a high-concept and somewhat slapdash production, called Wheel of Time.
Drafted in at the last minute and partnered with a lad from a lower year, I did a modified reading of Wilfred Owen's 'Strange Meeting'. I did rather well, if I do say so myself. Especially considering I had to contend with an intrusive horn soundtrack, the fact that I was dressed all in black whilst the other kid (who'd just come from an orchestra recital) had on a white shirt and a South Park tie, or the fact that everyone immediately forgot about my performance when Emily Gaskell came on later, and did 'The Secretary'. Fair play to her, given that it was a monologue and she wasn't a member of the drama class, her reading was superb. Unfortunately, she seemed to have taken 'secretary' in the porno sense of the word, and turned up dressed in the tightest blouse, shortest skirt and highest heels that stage (I went to a church school, did I mention that?) had ever seen, so nobody was paying much attention to the words. How the famously prudish Mrs. Morgan even let the curtain rise (hey, hey!), I'll never know. Perhaps it had something to do with the ambitious reading of 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night', insanely staged as a duologue, coming to an abrupt end two verses in, when Alice Salmon declared she'd forgotten the rest, Miss, and exited stage left in a big hurry.


As a wise man once said "Madness, and...Madness, and stabbing pain, and...Ooh...Uh"