Reading Salvial_Ten's journal

Yesterday was our One Act Play competition. It wouldn't have been any big deal at all if we would have had more than a week to prepare, and if we wouldn't have had three replacements in the cast that didn't get their script till two days before competition. The play was called the Phony Physician.

I went into the event thinking that we'd embarrass ourselves, not have any fun and of course get fifth place of five competing teams. But boy was I wrong at lest on two acounts. The trip to the city that we competed in was a near two hour drive, most of which I slept through. We then got there and got our whole six tree set unloaded (the trees are about medium sized decorative plastic things). We also had this wonderful plastic hatchet from a four dollar fireman play set to use as an axe, a milk jug to use as a cider jug, a broom, and our lovely costumes. Most of which came from thrifts stores (w00t for the cheap stuff!).

10:00am: Practice

After a morning of lounging and walking about boredly in the basement turned dressing room we went up stage for our practice. We were the only team there that was still reading off our scripts and people were looking at us with that whole "What are those idiots doing!" look. Because though we were reading directly from the page we were still fucking up pretty badly. It didn't help that we had issues setting up our minimal props, then couldn't find our designated marking tape.

11:00am - 3:30pm: Downtime and Costumes

We ran over lines at least twenty times between rounds of the wonderful card game Bull Shit. We even got our director playing, he only one a single round. We also played a card game called Egyptian Rat Screw, I haven't the faintest idea why it's called that but it's quite fun all the same and requires very little skill or intelligance.

About 2:30pm we decided it'd be a good idea to start getting our costumes on and make-up done because the first play started running early and we were third in line for performance. My costume cracked me up because a) I was wearing a mans suit, B) I got the entire ensamble for under twenty bucks, and every part of it was one or two wears away from being brand new. Aside from the slacks which still had the original price tag on them.
And lastly c) I really did look like a guy, which is a bit sad seeing how I am not at all a guy. By the time I finnished with my make-up I looked like a transvestite prostitute.

My friend Josh forgot that he needed black slacks to go with his suit jacket so he ended up in the pants I had on before getting into my costume, which amused the living crap out of me because they were butt hugging hipster like black canvas pants with about eight pockets on them as well as zippers and a brass loop thing on one leg. We almost had to pin him down to get stage make up on him. Another friend of mine, Robby, had to have the flannel and work boot get up of a lumberjack on, with make-up on him I couldn't help but sing the Monty Python "Lumberjack Song" to myself. The nurse and crazy girl looked fairly normal though, and Erika who played my buttler just really didn't look the part at all, nor did Lizzy the chick who was to play the nurses husband.

4:00pm: Showtime

The girl playing the leading person in the first scene had only had a script for a day and a half prior to competition, nor had she ever been on stage in her life. She got out there, said part of her first line so low I could barely hear it from the side of the stage, didn't look at the audiance, then froze up staring at Robby like a dear caught in the headlights. A five minute silence insued. Robby decided to just go on with his lines and try to prompt her into saying something, ANYTHING. Somehow, we managed to get the first scene over with. Leaving us with a whopping ten minutes to do the other half of the play.

This is where I come in. My opening line had me stomping to center stage screaming "Nurse!" at the top of my lungs, which made everyone aside from myself jump. Heh heh heh. The nurse and I had a nice conversation that went along withe the script about my daughter's (the 'crazy' chick) health. Then my servant and the nurses husband came in with the cider drinking "doctor", whome then told me to put a cider soaked hanky on my head. I did of course because I played a rich idiot. After that is when we all forgot our lines and ad libbed the rest of the play. The highlights being when my daughter called the doctor a sick man for hitting on the nurse and at the end when we were all fairly screwed so I busted out with "Perhaps we should end this now!". And so the nurse said the last line of the whole play and we all but sprinted offstage for a good laugh. For despite not following the highly comedic script we all got the audiance to laugh.

We did get last place, but we all had fun and got a free dinner from the school. Unfortunately, we're gonna have to perform it for the school too. Blah, I really just don't want to wear that suit again.

--Jami

You fail it.