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Putting this here for lack of anywhere else to put it.
When I was a younger Jay, I was involved in theater productions all through school. Elementary school didn't really have one, but there was an after-school youth theater that did musicals that I joined and did two productions with. I had a good time.
Middle school didn't offer much for 6th or 7th graders, and then in 8th grade we moved to Texas. And I started really noticing things.
It was frustrating working hard to put on productions in middle and high school that no one came to. Granted, my first two years of high school, I was living in Texas, where everyone goes to football games instead of the theater productions. And the next two years of high school, the drama department only held open auditions for the musicals. If you wanted to be in a non-musical production, you had to be in a drama class. And despite my best efforts, I couldn't get into one for 12th grade.
That especially pissed me off. I'd changed my upcoming 12th grade schedule before the end of 11th grade, filed it with my guidance counselor, done. A week before the school year starts, the computer system at school crashed and they lost everyone's most recent schedules and they had to go with older versions. And my guidance counselor the year before had resigned (or been made to), and been replaced. BUT! She's married to the drama dept. head, so she should be sympathetic, right?
Nope. I was S.O.L. And I was stuck in the chorus, watching someone else who could barely remember his lines, was a terrible actor, and couldn't sing (mind you, I'm no great singer either, but I'm better than this guy) got a named part.
My 12th grade year, my friend Bruce (who was actually only in 10th grade) decided to try to field an improv team for high school improv competitions. Being that I'd discovered "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" a couple of years before, and Bruce and I loved to bounce lines off each other, I tried out for it. Didn't make the cut because I was having a bad day that day.
Making matters worse for Bruce was the school decreed that only seniors (12th graders) could run groups like this. The senior who ended up in charge of the team had no interest in running it, and the team suffered for it. Bruce had experience with running improv teams (his church had one that did shows for fundraising), and finally got permission from the drama dept. head to form his own "renegade improv team" to take our school's place at the competitions. Bruce happily did so, cherry-picked the two best people from the school team, and asked me to join. Which I happily did.
The last competition of the year, we came in third. So yeah!
After I graduated from that school, I did a year of post-graduate study at the Mercersburg Academy, wanting an extra year to mature and pick up some extra AP credits. (Not that it did me any good, given my educational career since-- but that's another story.) I was sure to take theater classes and participate while I was there, and it was a great deal more enriching to me.
Why? Because Mercersburg required (and maybe still does) a certain number of "culture credits" to pass the term. You acquired these by attending (or participating in) theater productions, seeing performances brought in by the school, going on trips to museums with the school, etc. So there was incentive for indifferent high school students to actually go to our shows.
It was very rewarding to be stopped by random students on campus to hear "Great job in the show last night."
I regret that I've fallen out of theater since then, but my schedule was so wonky the first ten years of my professional life that I couldn't have made it work. Perhaps now that it's stabilized with my IT desk work I can get back into it.
When I was a younger Jay, I was involved in theater productions all through school. Elementary school didn't really have one, but there was an after-school youth theater that did musicals that I joined and did two productions with. I had a good time.
Middle school didn't offer much for 6th or 7th graders, and then in 8th grade we moved to Texas. And I started really noticing things.
It was frustrating working hard to put on productions in middle and high school that no one came to. Granted, my first two years of high school, I was living in Texas, where everyone goes to football games instead of the theater productions. And the next two years of high school, the drama department only held open auditions for the musicals. If you wanted to be in a non-musical production, you had to be in a drama class. And despite my best efforts, I couldn't get into one for 12th grade.
That especially pissed me off. I'd changed my upcoming 12th grade schedule before the end of 11th grade, filed it with my guidance counselor, done. A week before the school year starts, the computer system at school crashed and they lost everyone's most recent schedules and they had to go with older versions. And my guidance counselor the year before had resigned (or been made to), and been replaced. BUT! She's married to the drama dept. head, so she should be sympathetic, right?
Nope. I was S.O.L. And I was stuck in the chorus, watching someone else who could barely remember his lines, was a terrible actor, and couldn't sing (mind you, I'm no great singer either, but I'm better than this guy) got a named part.
My 12th grade year, my friend Bruce (who was actually only in 10th grade) decided to try to field an improv team for high school improv competitions. Being that I'd discovered "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" a couple of years before, and Bruce and I loved to bounce lines off each other, I tried out for it. Didn't make the cut because I was having a bad day that day.
Making matters worse for Bruce was the school decreed that only seniors (12th graders) could run groups like this. The senior who ended up in charge of the team had no interest in running it, and the team suffered for it. Bruce had experience with running improv teams (his church had one that did shows for fundraising), and finally got permission from the drama dept. head to form his own "renegade improv team" to take our school's place at the competitions. Bruce happily did so, cherry-picked the two best people from the school team, and asked me to join. Which I happily did.
The last competition of the year, we came in third. So yeah!
After I graduated from that school, I did a year of post-graduate study at the Mercersburg Academy, wanting an extra year to mature and pick up some extra AP credits. (Not that it did me any good, given my educational career since-- but that's another story.) I was sure to take theater classes and participate while I was there, and it was a great deal more enriching to me.
Why? Because Mercersburg required (and maybe still does) a certain number of "culture credits" to pass the term. You acquired these by attending (or participating in) theater productions, seeing performances brought in by the school, going on trips to museums with the school, etc. So there was incentive for indifferent high school students to actually go to our shows.
It was very rewarding to be stopped by random students on campus to hear "Great job in the show last night."
I regret that I've fallen out of theater since then, but my schedule was so wonky the first ten years of my professional life that I couldn't have made it work. Perhaps now that it's stabilized with my IT desk work I can get back into it.
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