High School Musicals

This weekend I went to see a high school production of "A Chorus Line". It was the first high school musical I have seen since I was in one myself. (Including the disney "High School Musical" movies, which I have worked tirelessly to avoid seeing. No small accomplishment when you live with a tween.) It was a good production, and it really brought me back to my years of high school plays.

...damnit.

Usually I'm not one to reminisce if I can avoid it. But to be fair, the drama program was all I ever really cared about when it came to school. It was also the only place in my heavily acedemic college-prep school that let students be remotely creative. And while drama class was good, and drama club was good, the highlight of the year was the spring musical. It was what I lived for every year, what I worked for, hoping one day I'd finally win the ultimate prize-

*~*~*A Lead Role*~*~*

buuuut yeah, it never happened.

What did happen was this crazy loophole in the system, where somehow I ended up getting credit for my chemistry class by writing a play instead. (To this day, I am still unclear on how this worked out.) After a long, confused road of rewrites, the end result is a short play entitled "Kid in a Cardboard Box". My stab at a satire of my school, and processing my initial experiences there.

= ...?

Now, I never intended this play to actually do anything except get me out of chemistry. But now, gods help me, I am assistant directing it's first production. If I had known it would ever actually be performed I would have

a. probably never written it in the first place
or
b. want it to be performed at the school it was written about.

But since we are basically using it becasue -unlike every other author we looked at- I am not charging my director any royalties, it is up to a brave band of public middle school students to make my play look good. Godspeed, tiny actors.

Still, a part of me wants to have my old fellow thespians come see it. Would they see the reflection of those confusing, frustrating, exciting years, or just a bunch of middle school kids in a play, one in a head-to-toe cardboard box? (No, I'm not kidding. You saw the title.)

So cheers to the actors in "A Chorus Line", and cheers to my budding thespians in "Kid in a Cardboard Box", and most of all cheers to my drama teacher, and all my fellow drama students who made high school just a little bit more livable. Come see the play. It can't be much worse than sitting in chemistry class was.