For reasons I don’t remember, although I suspect a woman or some kind of art credit was involved, I signed up to take acting classes when I was at university. One of my teachers was Charlotte MacFarland and what I remember most about her class was that she was great at bringing out what few talents some of us had and that the final exam consisted of going to a party where we could eat and drink at our pleasure.

When you’re a student, this seems like the greatest idea for a final exam ever and it would have been, except that we had to go in character, as the character we’d performed in our final monologue, and we had to stay in character for at least an hour (maybe two, I don’t remember). Again that could be great, except in my case I chose to do the “To be or not to be speech” from Hamlet which meant I had to go to the party as Hamlet.

Let me assure you, Hamlet is not the guy you want to be at a party–you have to wear black, be depressed, run from ghosts, talk to skulls, call women whores and try to kill people named Claudius (actually, now that I think about it, that’s pretty much what I’m like at parties anyway).

Other acting classes were also invited and, at the party, I apparently impressed a graduate student instructor/director who was casting a play and he invited me to audition. Auditioning for a play is a strange process involving cold reading characters and interacting with strangers and every now and then some of you are sent home and others stay, hoping not to be sent home at the last minute. To cut to the chase, I was cast in multiple roles.

The play was As Is which is one of the first plays to deal with the AIDS crisis and it’s effect on the LGBT community. I therefore had the unusual experience of impressing my mom by telling her I’d been cast in a play and then freaking her out by coming out to her, so to speak, that I was playing a number of homosexual men and that a kiss was involved. (See, I told you there were kissed cowboys.) Actually, I might not have mentioned the kiss. I may have left that as a surprise.

To her credit, my mom attended the play and stayed for the entire performance, although I’ve heard from friends in the audience, the kissing scene didn’t go over very well. It wasn’t easy, at first, on my part either, but once you get in character, and don’t have a choice, it gets easier. The director was also keen on acting exercises designed to build trust among the cast. Oddly, we all trusted each other enough to smooch on stage, but a lot of us didn’t like each other outside of the theater.

After that, I acted in several small plays at the Purple Masque Theater and played Egeus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which means I was the only un-funny character in the entire play. I also did some back stage stuff, including being Light Board Operator for one play. (Note to any future Lighting Designers in the audience: Don’t Change the LIghting Cues At Dress Rehearsal One Night Before The Play Opens!)

Acting was always fun, but it was never a passion. I walked away from it as easily as I walked toward it. I did save a few techniques and voice excercises here and there that I use in my higher level English classes. I also learned to project my voice pretty well, which helps a lot with junior high school classes.

I didn’t kiss any more cowboys though–although there was that drunk Japanese guy at a beach party once, but that’s another story that also involved a little red-haired girl.