You start easy enough. The first one is free. Sign up for Intro to Theatre as a freshman. That is, if you can get it, space is limited and some unluckies don't get in until senior year. You walk into the strange room labeled simply "146". You enter a room that would make Fred Sanford happy. Is it a junkyard? Or your Crazy Aunt Martha's living room? It appears somebody lives here, there is a fridge, coffee maker, hot tea pot, microwave and...one...two toasters. The red microwave has a note taped to it that says "Chairman Mao" and the white toaster is labeled "Sexy Bob".
You look at the black walls around you. Shouting and singing from the brick walls are the plays and musicals dating back fifteen years. At closer inspection you realize some of the show paintings have googley eyes glued to them, giving the Harlequin posed on A Company of Wayward Saints a dimension you are compelled to continue staring at.
The woman who seems to be more of an installation in this gallery than a human being tells you to cop a squat and makes you demonstrate your double joined pinky when she calls your name. Fascinated and out of your comfort zone, you sit back and watch as others roll their tongues, do the splits or make bird calls. Everyone around you is behaving in a manner that would get them kicked out of any other class, and nobody is asking them to stop. In fact, it would appear that such ridiculous behavior is encouraged.
See, that's how we get you.
That's how she gets you.
"She" being My Master.
This Amazon Bitch called Theatre.
You can't help but return for the next class. You willingly keep a spare pair of sweats in your locker in case yoga or stretching is required that day. You turn off your cell phone and leave it in your backpack because you believed it when you were told if you brought it on stage it would fall into the Pit Of Despair never to be seen again. She makes you work with people you don't know well or at all. She laughs at you when you are funny and laughs with you when you take a chance. You create fairy tales with combat, mime scenes badly and laugh at yourself when you stumble through a time step.
After an exhilerating eighteen weeks of physical work, mime, tap dancing, scene work, song interpreation, theatre tech and truly ghetto power point lectures, you realize you want more. Kids who are enrolled in the higher level theatre classes have cubbies and keep their lunch in the fridge. They do their homework and noisily drill and saw, creating sets and props and costumes during their off periods. You want to do that.
And that's it. You're hooked. Intro the Theatre is the gateway drug.
Before you can say "Anne Bogart" you find yourself strung out on verbs. You are roaming the halls, desperate for eye contact so you can practice repitition. You walk from 146 to your math class leading with your left shoulder because you want to understand how John Wayne managed. You answer questions in lit with a British accent, stand in the kitchen and eat cookies while isolating only your head and build a pannier in your basement with garden edging.
See, that's how we get you.
That's how she gets you.
"She" being My Master.
This Amazon Bitch called Theatre.
Where does this go next . . .
ReplyDelete--soon you are dealing on the street--anyone want tickets to my show?
--before you know it you are choosing to live in a little apartment with three other people and eating ramen every night just to feed your habit because that habit interferes with all the well-paying jobs.
--you straighten up for a few years and work at a place with benefits and a 401k plan, but one morning while you are being a good citizen and reading the newspaper, your eye strays to the column labeled "Auditions."