Play Practice

So somehow I got roped into doing this play.

It's the total opposite of a Cecil B. Demille production (ie. a cast of thousands) in that it only has something like four actors.

Me. I play the Madame in the brothel. It's my house, you see,

The Prostitute.

Jack. As in Jack-the-Ripper. After all, it's Halloween. And, okay, it's set in Paris, and we all know Jack-the-Ripper wasn't working in Paris. But it's a slasher-serial-killer-butcher-with-a-knife-type dude.

That's it.

Okay, there are some cops who come in at the end, but you have to come to see the show on Sunday to find out if they get there in time to save the damsel-in-distress.

All neatly wrapped up and tied with a bow in 20 minutes.

So what's my point?

My point, and I do have one, is that the tender sweet young thing playing the Hooker with the Heart of Gold and the Dude Whose Name I Can Never Remember playing Jack are really, REALLY good.

Then there's me.

I haven't been in a play since I was an extra, in the chorus of our high school production of My Fair Lady in  . . . oh . . . Nineteen and Seventy-EIGHT.

They didn't even give me a line.

Okay, in eighth grade we did a sort of bastardized version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

I had a line in that.

You wanna know what my line was.

Really?

Are you sitting down?

"Here's the bucket!"

That was all they trusted me with.

Tonight, we rehearsed the play, running through it with the director about three times, and then the three of us just sat and read our lines in another room a bunch of times, and then we went home, and the girl (she really is just a girl) playing the prostitute and I end up walking to the Metro together, and I asked what her day job is, because starving young actors usually have a day job, and she says,

"Oh, good Lord, I'm an English teacher. I've never done this before in my life." 

And then she says. . . are you ready? She says,

"But you're a professional actor, right?"

Ha hahahahahaha ha!

Ha!

In a Complete Change of Topic: Skittles is back.

Hurray!

One of the other kids in the group has les poux.

That's lice.

Ha hahahahahaha ha!

Ha!

Was that wrong of me? Seriously.

I checked her head. She's fine. But I think there is Justice in the Universe when kids who mock my kid get lice.

There. I said it.