Please don't take this as advice for unattractive teenage boys, but drama classes are full of cute girls in which most drama class guys take little interest. You may; however, take it as confession of how an opportunistic and unattractive teenage boy found the arrangement convenient and tried to take advantage of it. Beyond that, I think it's also an acknowledgment of how drama class was perhaps the most education like endeavor undertaken in the 12+ years of my otherwise useless public school career.
Not bragging, but I got every part in every school play I tried out for. The only time I ever took a minor part was when serving as director. I'm pretty sure it wasn't due to any natural talent for acting as much as to a gift for Machiavellian social manipulation, and the tireless efforts of my first patron, Mrs. Black, the drama teacher.
She said she wanted to help me develop my natural talent, but I believe I inadvertently secured her affections with a cobbled together costume and a recital of Jabberwocky the day after we met. I had always found the poem amusing, so when Mrs. Black announced our first assignment was to deliver a solo performance containing a poem, I set to memorizing Jabberwocky at once.
I had it down before I got home that day, so I spent some time rehearsing in the mirror. I effected several characters from Eyeore to Scooby Doo, but nothing worked until I came up with my own character, Father Ip, the insane priest. The voice was nothing special, just a kind of monotone slightly-Irish rhythmic scream. The costume was the thing.
The Fr. Ip character was born the instant I screamed "Twas brillig" into the mirror while wearing a floppy black hat I got from my sister. The only problem was that I looked a lot like an unattractive teenage boy version of Fr. Guido Sarducci from Saturday Night Live. My efforts to address this were where things took a turn.
Please don't ask where I got any of this other stuff. It was just on hand, OK?
The first addition to the hat was a cape made from a huge section of tattered black parachute material. I just rolled the top edge over my arms to form sleeves, and cut a cape that attached to the arms and ran across the back where it made the bunched-up fabric behind my neck look like a hunchback. Next, I set the cape aside, pulled a nearly opaque black nylon stocking over my head, and pulled on a black turtle neck sweater over it. I did another couple run-troughs and I was even beginning to scare myself a little, but the costume needed something, and I suddenly realized what. I cut a small rectangle out of a white t-shirt and stitched it to the turtle-neck collar. It looked like something they cut from The Exorcist to keep from upsetting people.
My hands weren't working. Father Ip clearly needed Father Ip hands. It occurred to me that I was over-working this, but I was into it. I cut six sections from the curved frame of a dingy old high-back wicker chair my mom had put on the burn pile. I taped them together in sets of three and hacked the ends with a file until they looked kind of like sloth hands---from a genetically disadvantaged sloth. I just poked these through the ends of the sleeve tubes so they became part of the cloak. The center "toes" were longer on the inside so I even had a nice handle to articulate them.
Things took yet another turn for the worse when I tried to walk it back to the humorous side. Over the course of several years, I had accumulated a dozen or so of those cheap plastic vampire teeth that kids fold up and put in their mouths on Halloween. I remember having asked myself why the hell I was collecting plastic vampire teeth, but when I laid them out flat on the stocking, all was revealed. I spent about an hour gluing them to the stocking so they formed a ring of wide open vampire mouths all the way around my head at the level of my nose.
The final touch started with gluing tiny strips of a sliced up red ribbon in and around the mouths so they dangled out over the teeth. Since there just happened to be a long piece of black fake fur tacked to the wall, I cut it into three belts, glued them in bands above, below, and through the mouths, then pulled the red ribbon shreds through so they dangled out over the fur---a generous application of clear epoxy to glisten the teeth, some fur, ribbon shreds, and epoxy on the sloth toes, and the thing was done. The epoxy kind of melted the ribbon material and made it look long strips of slimy meat.
Imagine a skinny hunchback priest with mangled sloth hands, no eyes, and long strips of flesh dangling off two rows of slobbery teeth that wrap all the way around his furry head. No matter how scary this sounds; it was worse.
I didn't get any pictures, and my description falls short in conveying the truly disturbing effect of all this. To give you an idea, I almost decided to scrap the costume and just go with Scooby Doo-wocky because what I had come up with somehow struck me as wildly inappropriate for a high school drama class---but it was just too great. I did another take for the mirror, then put the whole get-up in a shopping bag.
After dinner, while I was doing one last dress rehearsal, I realized I could get the whole costume on in about three seconds, so it had potential for a great quick-change effect. I practiced a few times in a crouched-behind-a-desk position until I had it down to a single fluid two second motion. Then I put it away because; seriously, every time I looked at it I creeped myself out a little more.
The next day, I told Mrs. Black I was ready to present. She said the assignment wasn't due until Friday of that week. She obviously didn't think I had given the project enough time, but asked if I wanted to to a trial run in front of the class. I stood up and started walking to her desk for a side-bar about the costume, but she also stood up and motioned for me to "take the stage" as she walked into the classroom.
On the way into class, I had dropped the Fr. Ip costume behind her desk with some other stuff she had back there, so I guess she didn't know it was there when she went out to sit in the audience. Just as I crouched down and opened the bag, Mrs. Black said, "Hey! get out of there. What are you doing back there?"
Too late.
By that point, Father Ip's instant manifestation was fully substantiated, and as Mrs. Black finished her question he leapt onto her desk with arms splayed and began to scream-chant:
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
At the word "Bandersnatch" one of the sensitive guys ran out screaming, and by the time Fr. Ip got to the Tumtum tree a girl and another guy had joined the exodus. I sensed a few more sneaking out quietly. And OK, I'm only including this next detail because it made a significant contribution to the extreme surreal nature of the whole affair; one of the kids was so disturbed that she lost control of her bladder and surround herself with an enormous puddle. I didn't know about this until I was told afterwards because the fang stocking had drastically restricted my vision. Somehow, the near blindness made me feel I had to just keep going till the bitter end.
I almost stopped at "snicker-snack" because someone had gone into a fit of laughter that sounded life threatening. But again, I couldn't see much so I just galumphed on. Meanwhile some self-appointed stage hand killed the lights and turned on a projector to spot light me and eliminated my vision completely just as I began screaming "One two! One Two!"
I leapt down in front of the desk where I was hoping the floor still was and took a few blind steps into the classroom while shrieking "And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to MIIIHHHHHHEEE arms..."
I crescendoed my way up to "Callooh! Callay!" but at that point, the laughing fit victim really did sound to be having a pulmonary crisis, so I just flourished out my arms and took an overly dramatic deep bow while reciting the remainder of the poem quickly into the floor.
I was surprised when cheers erupted from those students I hadn't managed frighten away (or literally scare the piss out of) and even more surprised when I pulled off the stocking and found out that the laughing person was Mrs. Black. She seemed to be recovering, so I beat a hasty retreat.
I thought the whole Fr. Ip thing was a bust and decided to polish the Scooby Doo version for Friday. Mrs. Black eventually got control of herself, but not enough to give me any feedback. I stuffed Fr. Ip in my locker and tried to put the whole thing behind me.
In a classic example of why normal guys don't do drama class, the next morning I was met by a jock on my way into school. "Hey hey... do the 'jabberwhatsit' thing." he demanded. I said I would prefer not to, but he insisted, so I told him to follow me to my locker. On the way, he gathered a few other jocks and jockesses for the show and when I got Fr. Ip out of my locker I said, "OK, turn your backs." I didn't really expect them to do it, but they did. I slipped into Fr. Ip so fast that it probably wasn't necessary.
I realized I must have stumbled onto something universally and deeply disturbing--the sudden transformation of a completely non-threatning geek into a screeching carnivorous monster with long pointy claws.
Nearly blind again, I sensed more than saw the jockocracy backing away from me while I heard them muttering random blasphemes and calling on Jesus for mercy. I didn't expect this reaction at all, but it was much more pleasant than the ass kicking I
had expected, so I just kept shrieking. I really didn't expect it when a few people joined in on "One, two! One, two! And through! and through!" And of all the things I didn't expect, the riot of cheers erupting from the hundred or so people that had assembling in the hallway while I was screaming Jabberwocky with a stocking over my head was the one unexpected thing I expected least.
I don't know if it was Fr. Ip, or just a standard schoolhall upchuck, but some guy vomited, and in the pandemonium that ensued I ditched Fr. Ip in my locker and hurried off to class.
I didn't really consider the anonymity afforded by the the costume until after lunch when my biology partner asked if I had seen the "Jaberwocky guy" in the hall.
"Yeah, that was cool!" I said.
Hey! Maybe nobody but the jock and the drama kids knew it was me!
I thought I was safe until last period when the vice principle pulled me out of class for a talk. I figured he was either going to ask me to tone it down on behalf of the janitorial staff, or refer me for another psych evaluation, but when we got to his office, Mrs. Black was there and together, they stretched my capacity for the unexpected to its limits. They wanted me to do Fr. Ip's Jabberwocky for something called a "Teacher's In-service" the following week. This was scheduled for a day the rest of the student body looked forward to as a holiday. Mrs. Black assured me that it would be worth my while.
She gave me a ride home from my encore performance at the teacher's thing and she repeated the bit about it being worth my while. I had no idea what she meant, but it soon became apparent. Mrs. Black gave me top marks in everything regardless of my participation level. She fixed me up with girls, took us off campus for lunch, ironed out my issues with other teachers and students, gave me rides any time I asked, and made sure I got any part I asked for.
In yet another unexpected turn of events, random girls suddenly started to asking
me go out with
them! Not just drama girls either, but normal girls---a cheerleader even! I suspected my patron, so it was a major ego boost when Mrs. Black denied involvement.
I got the lead in our first play which was Our Town (of course), the next one, Arsenic and Old Lace, the next two after that, Midsummer Night's Dream and something else. Then, people started getting annoyed and spreading unwholesome rumors about me and Mrs. Black, so I took to directing and taking understudy parts. In the final performance of my public school drama career, I took the role of the titular character in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, which I did as a calmer version of Fr. Ip wearing a toothless green stocking and a Santa hat. It was the most fun I ever had doing a play because we went "on tour," but it was also clear that my acting muse had departed. Over the course of fifty odd performances I dropped or mangled every line---sometimes all of them in the same performance!
But looking back, no other public school experience, except for maybe band, required me to memorize that volume of information, or repeat it so many times. Drama gave me presentation and performance skills I have used to this very day, but I've never done anything theatrical since. I think it's because I'm afraid to ruin my legacy.
