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Watching Paige in The Winter's Tale (okay, maybe I was mostly watching the senior playing Leontes/Sicilia - high school senior isn't robbing the cradle, right? because omfg that boy) and our subsequent discussion led to me thinking about my high school years again. (That's longhand for 'omg emo ahead')
We went out for supper after the performance and she and I ended up, of course, discussing the fact that the audience doesn't understand any of the spoken jokes. Apparently the audience for Friday's show didn't laugh once, not even with the excellent slapstick that the actors for the Shepherd, Clown and Autolycus had going on. Granted, apparently the show we went to was actually quite a bit better, since Autolycus accidentally dropped one of his stolen changepurses and ended up improving to prevent Clown from seeing it - the kid playing Clown was pretty small, he was actually bodily picking him up off the stage and moving him around, it was, honestly, hilarious.
And now I have rambled away from my original point, which is honestly just more evidence of it.
I am, in all honesty, a closet drama geek. Specifically a Shakespeare geek, really. I don't just like watching plays - I love the process, the work, the energy backstage. Despite all this, I've only ever actually worked on a play once, and it was honestly a rather horrible experience for me. Because I had to work with my peers. And my peers all hated me. I was on stage crew - lots of fun leading up to the show, because I could keep to myself working on props; then we actually started rehearsing, other people noticed I was there, and by the end of the first show I had spent most of the show hiding because somehow everybody had decided that everything that had gone wrong so far was my fault, and that I wasn't doing any work but rather just sitting backstage. I don't know how these things could be simultaneously true (neither of them were; and I was generally doing a damn sight more work than most of the people harassing me about it) but regardless, every time another member of stage crew saw me they would lay into me about how I was bringing down the whole production.
So yeah. Unfortunately, that was pretty typical of any interaction I had with my peers until pretty much my senior year of high school. This was pretty strong discouragement from participating in any sort of group extracurricular activity, although I somehow ended up in band anyway - not that that helped much; I made some 'friends' that ditched me whenever they could and Paige regretted to inform me that even though she came to the high school the year right after I graduated, nobody in the band knew who I was when she told them she was my sister.
Looking back, I wish that despite this I had had the courage to get involved with the drama guild. I had a chance, too; in my sophomore year, some of my band friends shared an English class with me and found out I could understand Shakespeare. Easily. Honestly, I can read just about anything as long as it's in English (I was reading Tolkein for fun and translating The Briar Rabbit for my classmates in second grade). They wanted me to ask about a position as stage director for the Shakespeare play.
I immediately declined. And I still understand my reasons; I knew I would get no support, and trying to get my peers to listen to me then seemed utterly impossible (now I find it incredibly easy; I don't know how much of that has been changes in my confidence and how much is that I'm no longer surrounded by the people who've known me as an outsider from elementary school). I wouldn't even get support from the 'friends' making the suggestion, and honestly I don't even know how serious they were about it since I brushed off the idea so quickly.
But knowing who I am now - I think I would have been good at it, and probably even enjoyed it. Or there is a good chance I would have, anyway. And maybe I would have become myself faster, made a few friends from high school that actually recognize me now - all of two years after graduation. Maybe I would find it easier to make friends now; although it is so much easier to talk to people than it used to be, I'm still astonished that there's this girl who actually seems interested in being my friend. She, on the other hand, seems astonished that I don't have too full of a social schedule to fit her in, which baffles me.
Or maybe it would have gone the other way entirely; it was the very next year that I came to a lot of realizations about myself (including my gender). Maybe if I had achieved some measure of social status I wouldn't have been able to figure those things out, either out of not having enough time for introspection or because I would be desperate not to do anything that would endanger that.
I really don't know, and I never will know. It still seems like I missed out on a lot of fun though. I'm vaguely considering looking into being a stagehand for the plays on campus, but I don't know anything about the campus drama guild or if there even is one. We'll see what happens, eh?
Watching Paige in The Winter's Tale (okay, maybe I was mostly watching the senior playing Leontes/Sicilia - high school senior isn't robbing the cradle, right? because omfg that boy) and our subsequent discussion led to me thinking about my high school years again. (That's longhand for 'omg emo ahead')
We went out for supper after the performance and she and I ended up, of course, discussing the fact that the audience doesn't understand any of the spoken jokes. Apparently the audience for Friday's show didn't laugh once, not even with the excellent slapstick that the actors for the Shepherd, Clown and Autolycus had going on. Granted, apparently the show we went to was actually quite a bit better, since Autolycus accidentally dropped one of his stolen changepurses and ended up improving to prevent Clown from seeing it - the kid playing Clown was pretty small, he was actually bodily picking him up off the stage and moving him around, it was, honestly, hilarious.
And now I have rambled away from my original point, which is honestly just more evidence of it.
I am, in all honesty, a closet drama geek. Specifically a Shakespeare geek, really. I don't just like watching plays - I love the process, the work, the energy backstage. Despite all this, I've only ever actually worked on a play once, and it was honestly a rather horrible experience for me. Because I had to work with my peers. And my peers all hated me. I was on stage crew - lots of fun leading up to the show, because I could keep to myself working on props; then we actually started rehearsing, other people noticed I was there, and by the end of the first show I had spent most of the show hiding because somehow everybody had decided that everything that had gone wrong so far was my fault, and that I wasn't doing any work but rather just sitting backstage. I don't know how these things could be simultaneously true (neither of them were; and I was generally doing a damn sight more work than most of the people harassing me about it) but regardless, every time another member of stage crew saw me they would lay into me about how I was bringing down the whole production.
So yeah. Unfortunately, that was pretty typical of any interaction I had with my peers until pretty much my senior year of high school. This was pretty strong discouragement from participating in any sort of group extracurricular activity, although I somehow ended up in band anyway - not that that helped much; I made some 'friends' that ditched me whenever they could and Paige regretted to inform me that even though she came to the high school the year right after I graduated, nobody in the band knew who I was when she told them she was my sister.
Looking back, I wish that despite this I had had the courage to get involved with the drama guild. I had a chance, too; in my sophomore year, some of my band friends shared an English class with me and found out I could understand Shakespeare. Easily. Honestly, I can read just about anything as long as it's in English (I was reading Tolkein for fun and translating The Briar Rabbit for my classmates in second grade). They wanted me to ask about a position as stage director for the Shakespeare play.
I immediately declined. And I still understand my reasons; I knew I would get no support, and trying to get my peers to listen to me then seemed utterly impossible (now I find it incredibly easy; I don't know how much of that has been changes in my confidence and how much is that I'm no longer surrounded by the people who've known me as an outsider from elementary school). I wouldn't even get support from the 'friends' making the suggestion, and honestly I don't even know how serious they were about it since I brushed off the idea so quickly.
But knowing who I am now - I think I would have been good at it, and probably even enjoyed it. Or there is a good chance I would have, anyway. And maybe I would have become myself faster, made a few friends from high school that actually recognize me now - all of two years after graduation. Maybe I would find it easier to make friends now; although it is so much easier to talk to people than it used to be, I'm still astonished that there's this girl who actually seems interested in being my friend. She, on the other hand, seems astonished that I don't have too full of a social schedule to fit her in, which baffles me.
Or maybe it would have gone the other way entirely; it was the very next year that I came to a lot of realizations about myself (including my gender). Maybe if I had achieved some measure of social status I wouldn't have been able to figure those things out, either out of not having enough time for introspection or because I would be desperate not to do anything that would endanger that.
I really don't know, and I never will know. It still seems like I missed out on a lot of fun though. I'm vaguely considering looking into being a stagehand for the plays on campus, but I don't know anything about the campus drama guild or if there even is one. We'll see what happens, eh?
