Sunday Buffet

This week I was playing video games with my sons, and the 7-year-old kept losing.  In frustration he shouted, “It’s time for Jurassic measures!”  I assume he meant drastic measures, but I also like to think he meant Jurassic as in he was about to go prehistoric on us.  Can anyone confirm if this is a popular thing young kids are saying?  Are they referencing geological periods as benchmarks for levels of anger or violence?  If they are, our teachers must be doing something right.  Well done, teachers.

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Performing my one-act play, A Minor Case of Murder, was immensely satisfying.  I had performed this one act for small groups before and the reaction was positive, but the more I rehearsed it, the less funny it seemed.  A joke can seem immensely funny the first time, but after you’ve rehearsed the same lines thirty times, nothing seems funny.  What a relief to be on stage and hear that first laughter and applause on our first night.  There are a couple recurring jokes that build on each other, and if the audience doesn’t laugh at the first one, you know it’s going to be a long, long, long thirty minutes on stage.

I was fortunate to get two outstanding lead actors.  My wife felt fortunate that one of those two actors was the actor who played Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night.  You may remember him as the actor my wife kept giving two compliments for every one compliment she gave me.

Scheduling rehearsals is always tricky since we all have regular jobs, and the two lead actors also have small parts in a movie shooting now, and it was stressful to get everyone together, but somehow it all worked out.  We’ve been invited to perform again, and I hope it will also be one of a collection of my one-acts to be performed in the fall and possibly in multiple cities.

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Here’s an insider’s secret the theater community doesn’t want you to know: Actors are fond of saying there are no small parts, only small actors.  What they don’t tell you is there are also literally small actors.

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Check out this week’s caption contest finalists here.  Make sure and vote early and often.

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Both my sons performed in small plays at school on Friday.  I wasn’t planning on going, but both sons reminded me they had come to my play.  I tried to argue that the tickets to my play had been comped, so the efforts weren’t comparable, but they informed me I didn’t have to pay for my tickets to their play either.  They finally agreed to reimburse me for taxi fare and I attended.  My 7-year-old son expanded his part of narrator #6 by changing the line “the mighty wind” to “the mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty, wind.”

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There’s no such thing as a stupid question, except, “What’s a question?”