Skip to main content

Back on Stage

 


I enjoy doing community theater, but with Covid and other life events, it has been five years since I have been on stage. That is about to change as I am in a production of The Tempest in October. I love Shakespeare, so it was a good one with which to get back on the train. But I had some niggling concerns going in. It has been five years, and I am five years older. Would my older brain still be able to memorize lines as easily as I had in the past? Was my voice up to the challenge of projecting on stage? The memorization has gone okay, but the voice has been an issue. The voice must be trained. Like an athlete that trains their body for a sport, the voice needs practice. The muscles have to get in shape, in particular, the muscles of the diaphragm, which are not used as much in normal speech. My director keeps telling me, “louder” and he is right. My voice is not quite there yet, but it is getting there.

The character I play is Gonzalo, and I have a confession to make. Despite having seen this play a couple of times over the years, I did not remember who Gonzalo was. Prospero, Ariel, Caliban, Miranda, Trinculo, and Stephano: those characters I remembered. But Gonzalo? Not so much. Now that I am playing him, I appreciate Gonzalo. He may not have the flash of Prospero, the magic of Ariel, the monstrousness of Caliban (and Antonio), the slapstick humor of Trinculo and Stephano, but Gonzalo is genuinely a good man. He is sort of the moral center of the play and I like to think that it is his example that teaches Prospero to forgive.

Shakespeare wrote plays based on other material from other writers. This is the only Shakespeare play apparently not based on another work, although it does seem to follow some formulas of other plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream in particular. This is probably the last play that Shakespeare wrote by himself, and it is a fitting cap to a remarkable career.

So, I sit here a little nervous but mostly excited to be back on stage and to be a part of an ensemble of actors who have been working very hard, pulling together to produce a work of art. O brave new world that hath such people in it!

Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Child of the . . .

  What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school.   It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bureaucrats

  I am one of those nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Yes, that is my job. Though I actually have a name; I even am rumored to have a face. Bureau is the French word for desk, so you could say bureaucrats are “desk people.” In short, I work for the government. I sometimes have to deliver unpleasant news to a taxpayer. I sometimes have to tell them that the deed they recorded won’t work and they will have to record another one with corrections. Or we can’t process their deed until they pay their taxes. I can understand why some of these things upset people. The thing is, we don’t decide these things. It is not the bureaucrats that make the laws. The legislature writes the laws. We are required to follow the law.   If you are going to get mad at someone, get mad at the legislature. Or maybe get mad at the voters who voted the legislature in (That’s you, by the way). The same thing happens when the voters vote in a new district, or vote for a bond, or a new operating levy for an ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Telephonicus domesticus

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone from 1877 bears about as much similarity to the modern smart phone as an abacus bears to a PC or Mac. There are just about as many leaps in technology in both cases. It’s funny how a major jump in technology happens (like the actual invention of the phone). Then there are some refinements over a few years or decades until it gets to a useful stable form. Then it stays virtually the same for many years with only minor innovations. The telephone was virtually unchanged from sometime before I was born until I was about forty. Push-buttons were replacing the rotary dial, but that was about it. (Isn’t it interesting though that when we call someone, we still call it “dialing?” I have never seen a dial on a cell phone.) Cell phones were introduced and (once they became cheap enough) they changed the way we phone each other. New advancements followed soon after, texting and then smart phones. Personal computers were also becoming commonplace and wer...
Post a Comment
Read more