posted
"I say sir, is it your will to make me a stale amongst these mates?"
As part of my Shakespeare Comedies class, Prof. Dugas think its fun to assign students to groups to perform sections from six of the plays we go over. I was assigned to the "Taming of the Shrew" group, which, assigned by alphabetical order, happened to include myself, another guy, and five ladies.
The section we were performing happened to have five male characters, and two female characters. Meredith, of course, had a great idea: "Let's let the girls play the guys, and the guys play the girls!"
You can see where this is going.
Of course the girls fell in love with this idea, and started talking about how pretty Nick and I would look in wigs, dresses, makeup, bras, and high-heels. Really, this wasn't a bad deal, since in this particular section, the characters of Kathrina and Biance have VERY few lines -- I didn't actually memorize mine until today, earning quite a few odd looks from people as I munched on a BLT in the Brick sprouting off Shakespeare "...comb your noodle with a three legged stool..."
So I got to be Kathrina, the title character. We decided we'd perform it as it would have been done in the 16th century, with "period" costumes -- aka, $30 worth of material from the fabric store.
So, 3:30pm today found me in the 2nd floor hall of Linthicum Hall, in a cheaply made dress (that kept falling over my breasts, dammit!), wearing a cheaper wig, and some very high quality makeup (or so I'm told). Got through my lines (I had four speaking sequences, which, although I didn't get 100%, I did get very well).
Aside from the paraphrased line at the top of this post, mine included:
"Faith sir, and fear not. It is not halfway to her heart, but if it were, doubt not her care would be to comb your noodle with a three legged stool, paste your face, and use you like a fool."
"A pretty peat! Put finger in her eye, and she knew why!"
"What, and may I not leave? Shall I be assigned hours as if I know not what to take and what to leave?"
I also got to throw an apple at Meredith (Hortensio) when she said her line about the rotting apple. We were supposed to have a plastic apple, but no one could find one, so we bought a real one ... she told me to aim for her ass, but during the performance, she and Michelle (Gremio) moved further from the door, and I wound up hitting the back of her knee (oh well). It got a laugh.
Anyway, it went pretty well (although several of my current and former professors who saw me in the hall burst out in laughter).
(PS - me and Nick stood firm, and weren't subjegated to high heels, bras, or fake breasts).
posted
Reminds of a Spanish skit I had to do in high school. I wound up dressing like a fat Madonna with bad fashion sense. I had to sing, as well. The teacher recorded it on video, too.
I'm never attending a reunion for fear that this tape will surface.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I had the role of a 10 year old orphan boy in my schools production of Nicholas Nickleby as a Sophomore.
The problem with that is that I'm not really BUILD like a 10 year old boy. Our director, who is a wee bit on the fruity side, if you catch my drift, tried his darndest to conceal my.. um.... distinguishing female sttributes, but alas no article of clothing could quite pull it off. The result? I was sent to the dressing room on opening night with the worlds biggest ace bandage and the orders to just put my arms up high and spin while someone wrapped the thing around me....
It didn't quite pull off the trick, and it was highly painful to breath, and I was sore for over a week, but such is life....
-------------------- "You are anal twattypoo who has ruined my good mood" PsyLiam to TSN May 01,2006.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Hmm... sounds interesting. Now let's see the pics and compare them to mine.
-------------------- "It speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow, it's not all going to be over with a big splash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans." -Gene Roddenberry about Star Trek
Registered: May 1999
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posted
No online pictures exist of Tom playing an eight-year Norwegian boy in an Ibsen play last year. Thankfully.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well, well, life imitates art - at the end of the production, one wonders if there was a competition to see who got to remove Princess LOA's bandage. 8)
posted
Hm... I wonder why I never thought of the "Princess LOA"/"Princess Leia" pun before. Especially since... but I'm not allowed to tell you about that.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
No, TSN, what I'm saying is we didn't have to get baloons stuck down our shirt. I was making a joke with the earlier line ... however, if we HAD had breasts (real or otherwise), the dress would not have been able to accomodate them.
Our reasoning was, if the girls didn't have to tape down their breasts, or stick socks in their pants, we weren't going to wear balloons.
See, in my freshman year of high school (about eight years ago), my history teacher got a perverse pleasure out of assigning regular "video projects," where we were to perform 5 to 10-minute skits of some play or story relating to the current material.
We were covering the ancient Greeks, and my got stuck with play about the murder of Agamemnon. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember that I was in an all-male group assigned to a play that had a number of prominent femal characters in the story. Naturally, I got stuck with one of the parts requiring a wig and a dress. Figures.
Understandably, though I understand the amusement that people may find from such a situation, I am not laughing.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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