Living With GBS

This is the third in my series on Life with GBS, if you haven’t read the first two then you should.

The next weekend, I got the call that I got a part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream if I wanted it. At this point, I was terrified that A whim had gotten me way over my head. I had not done this, and it was completely foreign territory. However, without thinking I said yes anyway.

 I got the roles of Snug the Joiner that is a very shy and insecure person that is part of a group of mechanicals that is putting together a play at the palace. And in the play, portrayed a Loin that is probably the origin of the Cowardly Lion. The second role I got was the fairy Cobweb. At first, I was really worried that the second role was going to be too much since I never even tried to memorize lines before.
As the following weekend came and we were supposed to have the first read through the cast list was published. As I read through it I noticed, I was not on it. At this moment I was overcome with relief that I was not over my head with having to pull off the biggest performance of leaving my comfort zone in years. On the other hand, my anxiety that everyone hates me kicked in and I was devastated. So, I messaged the director and asked if there was a typo not giving an indication of how I felt. To my relief it was and the list got reposted.

For the following two months I had rehearsed and memorized my lines. To my relief, the cast was very friendly and welcoming. The first mistake I made memorizing the lines was not learning the cue lines that came before it. Then learning the acting and where to be and where to move that was not in the script helped a lot with the lines I learned to go with their placement.

As we approached show time there was a night after rehearsal that most of the cast met at Pepper’s Pub and we had a great conversation and meal, and then went to hit up the dance floor at Callahan’s. One thing I learned that night is that performers are a different breed and that even though I had been working on improving my fitness by keeping up with them was really hard.

Note– This is the second of multiple posts in the series of my coping with GBS.

This journey can begin in many places, so I will start where things started to change, the trip began, and I was shit on. Before this event every week was just like the week before and there was very little interesting going on. Somewhat crippled by my anxiety.

I had posted on Facebook that I was going to audition for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on a whim. I had at this point never really auditioned for anything like this. So as the day came, I was dreading doing the audition, but felt deep inside it was something I had to do. I even took the preparation of actually listening to the audiobook of the play, or just part of the first act actually. To be honest I had never read a work of Shakespeare in its entirety before this. Reading a complete book has rarely ever happened in my life.

As I entered the room there were several others there that reading the material and debating their take on the characters and knew them all like they were best friends. It was rather intimidating being the first interview but I knew I wanted one of the small roles and was going to try for it anyway. I went upstairs and read the closing part just to read something, which was followed by a short discussion why this piece was so important to the whole play. In reality, I could have cared less about the interpretation and was trembling to just get out of there. I then left to grab a coffee and ran into so friends and we’re standing around talking.

It was while having this conversation that my fate changed. I was shit on! There was a gull that was flying over-head and right on my head it got me and dripped a bit. Newfoundlanders say that being shit on by a bird is good luck, but for me , it was the beginning of my fate with luck.