Our Town

One of the pinnacles of my high school theatre career, this show drew some of the biggest crowds since Brighton Beach Memoirs. Judy and Mike had the leads, but Steve, Barney, Desiree... well, basically the entire department played fantastic backup roles. I had Stage Manager (the part, not the position) and some of the speeches just about killed me. They were longer than anything I had ever done, and a lot of the information had to be precise. Paraphrasing didn't occur nearly as often as many would have you believe, but I know I caused the biggest mistake in our entire run of this show.

Mike really poured his guts out (no pun intended, Crohn's boy) over this one, and had most everyone in the auditorium crying when he did the grave scene. Judy never looked better than in her white dress, wanting to talk to him, but not being able to because she was dead. Me? I was just a narrator.

We got a lot of people pulled into the show because of a mandatory English class assignment, but we received more than one compliment in the hallways after the performances. I was personally singled out in mine to have questions answered about the show. And forced to read some of the passages aloud. I don't mind on stage; most of the time, I couldn't see well enough to define a face in the crowd. In class, it's a completely different thing. I read it so poorly that I think I actually inspired dread in some of the kids who hadn't seen the show yet.

Sticking out in my memory is the wedding scene, which calls for the stage manager character to perform as the priest at the wedding. As other people delivered their lines to the crowd, we were doing a mock ceremony. The vows I gave to Judy were "Do you promise to give him blow jobs on demand, to strip naked whenever he wants some, and to Jello wrestle with him on a nightly basis?" while Mike's vows were along the lines of "Do you promise to spank her when she's bad, treat her as a sex slave, and entice her to climb in bed with other women?" I also moved my hand in the shape of a pentagram or upside-down cross for the more observant members of the audience.

The memory burned into my brain, though, is the fatal end of the first act. I had two identical entrances with identical exits, one after the other, while Mike and Judy were "upstairs" cheating on homework between the upstairs windows. I was supposed to go out first to bring the audience to nighttime, a few scenes take place, and I come back out to close the act. One night, I forgot that I hadn't done the first entrance yet and closed the first act. As soon as I stepped offstage, I realized what I had done. I was already in a depressive slump, and this just about drove me to the razor blade. I was never a very stable person; I'm still not.