Break a Leg

When I was in high school and college, I was part of the choir and drama departments. I tried out for choir in--I think--11th grade. The choir teacher told me I had a good voice, but I needed to strengthen it, so she put me in the chorus instead. Well, come to find out, my schedule was screwed up, and I landed in both chorus and choir, back-to-back second and third periods.

Being in choir strengthened my voice ten times over, more so than chorus ever did. Chorus was kind of that elective that people take because it's easy, you can pass without making too much effort. But choir, that was different. The "hardcore" singers, the ones that were there to sing and perform because they wanted to, were the ones in choir.

During 12th grade, we put on what we named "A Broadway Review" (how original, hunh?). We performed as a group several times, and some of us performed solo too. I sang a song called "Nothing", from "A Chorus Line". I think that was my first time singing (out loud) in front of anybody. Strangely enough, it didn't scare me particularly. Maybe because I could only see the first two rows of the audience during both performances!

It was some of the most fun I had in my entire school career.

And drama! Oh, man, did I love drama class! A place where you could be someone else for a while. A place that encouraged you to emote with the best of them. A place that brought together all the different "groups" of students and taught us how to be one entity: actors, if you will.

We put on skits in class for each other and for the teacher; we'd go out in the hall and practice lines, drawing stares from the ones who weren't "drama kids"; we put on full-fledged plays for the school and community. We had a fucking blast.

I mostly played character roles because of my affinity for accents. Plus, my, um, weird sense of humor was starting to show itself. So I won a role where I played a Swedish maid--oh my cow, it was great fun! I could pretty much let loose and be as overdramatic as I wanted, the teacher loved it. (So did our audiences, thankfully, and bless them all the more for it.)

When I got to college, it was just natural for me to enroll in the drama department there. It turned out to be a combination of both drama and choir, my little heart was in Paradise. We put on a musical in my freshman year: "Fiddler On the Roof", which I now loathe and despise since we watched the bloody film about 2 dozen times in class and then performed five times in a row over a weekend. Lucky me (read that with sarcasm), I had two roles, one of the villagers, and, as I fondly called her, Dead Grandma Tzeitl (spelling? who knows). She appeared to Tevye, the main character, in a dream. Of course there had to be a darkened stage, dry ice, and glow-in-the-dark makeup for yours truly. And, my costume was a nightgown. And, I used an appropriately ethnic accent, if you catch my drift.

I had to make five costume and makeup changes during each of the five shows. The skin on my face did not enjoy this.

But the rest of me did! I miss those times, the feeling of belonging to something, somewhere. The rehearsals, the performances, the people I worked with, the audiences. The satisfaction of entertaining a few people for a few hours with nothing more than words and music.

Pretty heady stuff. Makes you feel...

...like you matter.