I've been interested in drama since ... who knows when. Way back. Really way back. Probably since I saw "The Pirates of Penzance" back in the first grade. Ever since then, I've dabbled in quite a few plays myself, along with taking five years of high school drama and a bunch of other courses on the side. Here are some quick summaries of some of the plays I've had the fortune to act in ... Free to Be, You and Me The first actual play I was in. I was in other school kinda plays, written by teachers and the like, before, but in Gr. 7, I actually auditioned and got a pretty cool role in this play. It's more a series of skits than a coherent play - it was a big production, which more than half the school in it. The scene I was in was called "The Southpaw" and was written by Judith Fitzgerald - ever read that book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day" back when you were a kid? Well, she wrote that one too. I played a female baseball player (now that was definitely a stretch, since I can barely play to save my life) who got into a fight with her male best friend when he wouldn't let girls join his team. Guess who won the fight? Hee. Well, I got my spot - and spots for all my girlfriends on the team, and we ended up best friends again. It's a really fun play - it got me hooked on performing, that's for sure. Antigone From the fun and fancy of Free To Be in junior high and off to serious high school drama with Jean Anouilh's modernization of Sophocles' Greek tragedy, Antigone. Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, defies her uncle Creon by burying her deceased older brother when it had been forbidden for anyone to do so. The battle that ensues is passionate and gripping, and since it's a Greek tragedy, you can guess what happens. Not very cheery, but very dramatic. I played Antigone's nanny - I actually had some of the stupidest lines in history, and the fact I hated the condescending senior who played Antigone didn't help, but it was a great play in the end, and I had fun. What an entry into high school drama! Still Stands the House I did a few scenes of this Canadian Prairies classic in Gr. 11 drama class. The story of a husband and wife making their living as farmers in rural Manitoba in the early 1900's and the problems caused by their domineering older sister was actually quite a challenge to do - I was Ruth, the hard-as-nails, cold, unemotional sister. The mannerisms of the early 20th century took awhile to master, but it ended up being pretty good, if I do say so myself. No One Has the Right Ah, my first foray into social issue drama, and my first leap into writing and production. When the Metro Toronto Police Department approached the head of the drama department at my school, Jane Deluzio, and asked her to put together a play to fight hate crime, I was one of the first people she asked to join. Being the youngest member of the rather odd cast was kinda traumatizing at times, we put together a touring play, written and staged completely by ourselves (well, with Jane's excellent direction and suggestions, of course) and toured it in high schools across Scarborough. The play ended up being mainly based on racism and homophobia, and was called, as you can see, No One Has the Right. We actually won quite a few awards for this won - whoa, make a difference and gain dramatic acclaim all at once! More Than Words More than Words came about as a co-op education pilot program put together by the Scarborough Board of Education. Lead by Jane Deluzio, my drama teacher who'd also directed No One Has the Right (see above), fourteen students from schools across the city passed through preliminary auditions and came together to put together a two- hour workshop and forty-minute play on sexual harassment to educate junior high school kids on the issue. Well, this cast was the weirdest gang of actors I've ever worked with, but somehow we managed to write, block and act in a play that ended up being performed in almost 100 schools. It was quite an experience - we learned a lot, and we hope the kids did, too. Us and Them I originally thought this was going to be my last hurrah as a high- school actor, but it didn't end up that way. Anyway, Us and Them was a rather unorthodox play - instead of having lines already divided into characters, it had lines, but we had to divide them to suit characters our cast came up with. Directed by Wendy Ryerson, the play ended up with a cast of relative newcomers, and for awhile in rehearsals, looked like it might end up as a disaster, but we managed to pull it off quite decently. It's the story of a Recorder (played by Yours Truly) who watched the world from ... well, above? From somewhere. And what she sees is a repetitive pattern of wars and destruction leading from prejudice. It's told in a very simple way, but the message comes across. Little Women The same day Us and Them premiered, I also had another performance - a scene from the play version of one of my favourite books, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. This was actually an assignment for a scene study unit in OAC drama class, but we ended up performing it. I played Meg - the ladylike, dignified older sister. What a stretch! :) My three castmates and spent a few days tripping over long skirts and trying to be "old-fashioned", but after awhile it started to come naturally. The day of four performances (two of this, two of Us and Them) was definitely a day I won't easily forget! The Stupid Judge, and Russian Tales This is the play I'm currently in rehearsals for - I'm playing the Officer of the Court in this hilarious tale of Shemiaka, the stupid judge, and the people who come to his court for justice. Between Shemiaka's stupidity and the total absurdity of the cases brought to him - including one in which a priest claims to have given birth to a calf - this play is going to be quite something. That is, if everyone manages to get their lines memorized someday ...