There is a long prelude to this that I’m skipping now (and includes a blog I’ve started numerous times, on a missed theatrical childhood the tone of which continues to allude me) but I’ve somehow managed to involve myself in an amateur production of High School Musical.
When I volunteered to help it was, in my head at least, in a production capacity: as prompt or as someone who’d watch through scenes when the amazing Director and his gifted choreographer son had worked their magic…
I’ve got a role… a get on the stage, become someone else, don the costume, the make-up, the accent and do your thing. I’ve been cast as that fabulously over-zealous, needs a more fantabulous word than flamboyant steward of the ‘Chapel of the Arts’ Ms Darbus…I’ve been putting off even reading for the role for weeks; even though I’d been told the part was mine. Do I want to re-inforce the stereotype of the ridiculous Drama teacher? Do I want to unleash the inner Drama queen I’ve spent years keeping under control? And is she worth watching-even at her very best?
I’m terrified, the last time I actually acted for a ‘proper’ (ie not my own pupils) audience is when I was a pupil myself. I am about to be found out? Then when it comes to the theatre those who can do and those who can’t teach? I will be acting on stage with pupils I need to respect me…
Or will this give me that buzz I only caught in class glimmers of since Joseph, I get to spend out of school time with actors whose company I enjoy and whose talent I am in awe of; and surely a glimpse at things from the other side of the curtain can only make me better at my real life teacher role?
I have eight weeks before I have to convince an audience…and hopefully by line I’ll have convinced myself.
