Stage Crew

We’re underway! The first weekend of the 12th Annual Best of PlayGround festival is over. Two more weeks to see a set of seven fine plays. We had decent crowds, great response, and so far no reviews. Given the content of my play, The Boy Who Did Not Listen To His Mother, I’ve inevitably been drenched in a wave of nostalgia for the days of high school theatrical productions. I was in a few shows, threw a few pies in the Variety Show, warbled through some Gilbert and Sullivan in The Mikado, and most of the time functioned as the sound manager of the stage crew. No surprise to people who know me as Sister Mary Media. The drama club or stage crew or anything connected to theater in high school is such an amazing cauldron. As my play suggests, it really DOES attract people who don’t fit in anywhere else but who are highly aware of not fitting in — and don’t particularly want to. But they find each other. And usually the teachers involved with shepherding this little flock of black sheep are pretty cool — like art teachers and music teachers. In my case, Mr. Jousse drove a little Alpha Romeo convertible, listened to jazz, did impressions of the other teachers, invited us to his wedding, had us over to his house to talk about the art he bought. His canvas was large, and taught us to think that way too. He let us know that “fitting in” amounted to a form of incarceration, that our imaginations were not to be suspect and constrained, rather embraced and expanded. I still remember when Tom Hanks thanked his high school drama teacher at the Oscars. They really are the best!