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23 January 2009
High school musicals - what part did you play? →[More:] Me? The sheriff in Finian's Rainbow.
Not in highschool, and we wrote our own plays. Season one, the navigator and co-pilot of a stranded airplane on a remote island where the natives had never seen an airplane. Don't remember much more about that play other than the lead (the Pilot) forgot his lines in our big "establish scenario" opening scene the first night, so I ended up doing both parts as if it was a monologue, and the last night we had a show the coconut which was thrown in on stage broke sending the entire cast of nine-years into a giant giggle-attack and a spontanious singing of the song "Far, jag kan inte få upp min kokosnöt" (Dad, I can't open my coconut - it's an old revue song)
The second play had four detectives in it or something, and I was a maid. In one scene I sang about cleaning and swiped everything under the carpet. I have no idea what that play was about. :))
I apparently played a mexican farm worker in a community theater piece called "The American Dream" in 1995. And I remembered nothing about it. Until a friend of an ex found me on Facebook to tell me about it. Woo.
Grandmother in "Into the Woods"
Domina in "Forum"
Ensemble in "Once On This Island", "Godspell" (won a "Marley" award for that role- my performing arts school did their own version of the Tonys every year) and "Working" (featured solo)
Didn't do any at school, but at summercamp I was a variety of important characters such as:
Indian #3 in Peter Pan
Woman in Hat #6 in Hello Dolly
and who could forget my turn as Small Boy in Pippin?
We were allowed to check off boxes of how big of a part we wanted, but there was never a box that you could check to say "please don't put me up there, just let me paint the scenery."
I was Miss Southern Belle, as I mentioned earlier, and I also wrote most of the skit for our group in the senior show, which was only partly musical (not my part, which you would understand if you ever heard me croon). Here I am:
from my HS yearbook. Just a note, though I am pretty damn old, the dress was '50s or '60s vintage, not current! And our yearbook actually had color photos, but lots of B&W (actually, sepia) because it was supposed to be artsy. :)
I did children's theater, not high school theater. In high school, I was "Second Violin" in nearly every show (except the disasterous year we did Music Man, and the First violin played the lead so I had to take his chair. I sucked way too much to play lead violin.
In children's theater, I starred as:
* Momma Sheep in Charlotte's Web
* Momma Bear/Goldilock's mom in "Christmas With the Three Bears"
* The King of the Monkeys in "Jungle Book" (that part was pretty fun, actually)
There's a trend here - I must have been the biggest kid because I got all the "adult" roles.
Chorus - "Mame"
Ensemble/soloist & Dance Captain - "Godspell"
First Courtesan/Dance Captain - "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum"
I too, are serious actor, dammit. Well, funny actor, mostly. Straight (in the vs. musical sense) actor.
Yet before I finally accepted I Do Not Sing Well At All, I was paid to be in three musicals. They were all dance heavy shows. One was "A Day In Hollywood/A Night In The Ukraine" which was a tap show then a Marx Brothers show. I played the Maraget Dumont role in a fat suit in the Marx Brothers half and the review raved that I "took inept singing to new comic heights." Actually, that was my best effort.
I was in a "son" in Fiddler on the Roof, in high school. Later on I worked as a stage hand Music Man and Kiss Me Kate. The main attraction for doing stage hand work was getting to help make sets, which meant power tools and as much beer as i could drink. The guys who ran set department were all much older then me, sharp as tacks and very funny, so it was fun work. At the time, I was in the Navy, so any excuse to get off base and do something normal was a welcome break.
We didn't do musicals at my all-girls school. Instead we had serious concerts. I was in the the Madrigal Group, where we'd sing songs that had been written in the 15th and 16th centuries (beautiful songs, in fact - I still love madrigals). There was also a Gilbert & Sullivan group who used to sing stuff like "Tripping Hither, Tripping Thither" (it was exactly like this!) and "Three Little Maids".
I was also in the main choir too, which is where I learned to love Vivaldi's "Gloria" and "Full Fathom Five" from Shakespeare's "The Tempest", a strange and rousing choral version in a minor key that I've never heard since (maybe chrismear might know the piece?)
I did wayyyy too much theater in high school (something like 10 out of the 12 shows I could conceivably act in; they were always hurting for guys and I had a decent to good voice at the time). My senior year I played the Baker in Into the Woods.
I was also Sitting Bull in Annie Get Your Gun, but that was probably not the best casting decision. Awkward skinny white 16 year old =! this guy.
I was Chava in Fiddler on the Roof, the one who marries the goy (naturally). It was summer camp, though, not high school.
Mostly I played clarinet in pits. I think I've mentioned this before, but my strangest pit was for an all boys middle school production of The Music Man. Twelve year old boys sure can sing high (but do not look good in dresses).
I was Queen Aggravain in Once Upon a Mattress and Carrie A. Nation in The Drunkard. (A 19th century melodrama "updated" with a Barry Manilow score! Yikes!)
Oddly enough, I can't remember any other roles in musicals, though I'm sure there was at least one more. My teenage years are a little... hazy.
I don't do musicals. I'm a serious actor, dammit.
Yeah, yeah, and I was a sixteen-year-old Blanche DuBois, too, but sometimes it's good to belt out a showtune.
disclaimer: it is rarely good for me to belt out a showtune.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
