Drama, Drama, Dra …

(yawn) oh sorry, excuse me. What was I saying …?

We all like a little drama in our lives from time to time, don’t you agree? I mean without it life would be boring and humdrum. (I know there are some of you who prefer boring and humdrum and I am convinced you have discovered the secret to a fulfilling life. So what is it?  The secret? I mean, if you just want more of the same, something must be going right. Right?)

But as for me, I don’t mind a bit of drama from time to time, especially if it’s in the form of walking down the Red Carpet to accept my Oscar, while wearing a tasteful and universally liked dress. Sure, it can get a little tedious having to dress up for these functions on a regular basis, but a little drama from time to time is welcome.

I’ve always been a bit of a drama queen.

I know. You’re shocked right? Because I’m so reserved on my blog? But it is sadly the case. I’m not a drama queen in the sense that I want to scream at people on my wedding day, but drama positively channeled has always been a welcome thing to me. I have never been more happy than when my dramatic tendencies have an outlet. Take the obvious: acting. I had my very first part in a play when I was in the 11^th grade.

I was a planet.

I could have had a more principal role, but it would have involved staying onstage for the entire play and this is when I was going through my bathroom phobia phase. So I turned it down and went for the planet instead. But once I got up onstage I didn’t want to get back down again. The theatre bug had bit.

For the following production I was fully prepared to participate and we were set to do Guys and Dolls as our musical. If you’ve learned nothing else from watching Glee, you will know that no cool high school guy will be caught dead doing a musical unless coerced somehow. (At least not in my school). Since we were short on coercion, we were quite short in the “Guys” department. But we had about six so we thought we might just be able to pull it off.

When the roles were announced, I was shocked that I didn’t get the lead role of Adelaide that I had auditioned for. (I’m very humble). I later found out it was because the director overheard me saying I never practiced the oboe for the school band so he assumed I would be the same with my part in the play.  If he had heard me singing at the top of my lungs in our living room every day, he would have had to eat his words.

When our theatre troop had whittled down to just two guys, we cornered the director and told him we really needed to change the production because it was just not working. With two guys.  By this time, Adelaide had fled the sinking ship as well so I got the role by default. We decided to do a musical review with snippets from 6 musicals, and that allowed for my creative (you can read bossy, arrogant) nature to take over. I wrote the screenplay to tie all the songs together. I also took over the stage direction since the director was more interested in the musical aspect.

It was … not bad, if I do say so myself. And I had a really good time wearing short shorts and a halter and singing ‘I love you, a bushel and a peck’ in a Brooklyn accent with a full chorus line behind me.

The director was sad to hear that I would not be around to participate in the senior year’s production (where he had assured me I would have a lead), but I had dusted my feet of that town. I was on to bigger and brighter things. I switched to a rival high school my senior year so that I could participate in their superior drama program.

It was quite good, this program. There was a music director and an acting director, a huge selection of costumes and just a wealth of experience to draw the best out of us fledgling Thespians. I was thrilled to sweep in for the Fall production and land the principal role of Béline (the evil wife) in Molière’s play “The Imaginary Invalid.”

There I learned to act in close quarters with the audience seated on the stage with the actors, and how to say things like “that Shakespeare play” instead of “Macbeth” thereby jinxing the entire production. I was directed to curry humor between the lines, as I “consoled” my weeping husband on my knees for his having doubted my fidelity (my arm around him, my hand over his eyes) while my lover was kissing me up and down the other arm.

For the Spring production we put on Oliver, and it was another phenomenal success. My younger sister and brother also appeared in the show as orphans, which made it doubly fun. I was vying (dying) for the role of Nancy because she was the only pretty female lead role. So there was basically no other option as I saw it. Who cared if I had to beat my breast as I belted out “As long as he loves me …” and get murdered at the end. I was ready for the drama.

But instead I landed the part of Widow Corney – the ugly despicable female head of the orphanage – a role that would require padding and makeup to render me more ugly. I was in tears (drama!) when I heard the news of the casting and petulantly said I wasn’t sure I would accept the role. But the director, accustomed to his emotional actors, consoled me that I would still be understudy to Nancy and that I had nailed the Widow role – no one else could play it as well as I could.

The thing is, I purposely sang badly for that part of the audition. I purposefully exaggerated the gestures and the cockney accent to be overlooked as “not right for the part.” Unfortunately it was just the outrageous acting they were looking for.

It turned out that my paramour, Mr. Bumble, was a good friend of mine and we had to control our laughter onstage as we kissed over our padding in the early stages of love and kicked each other down the stairs as the love faded.  I was clad as a washer woman (not unlike what I look like at home now) and he took “double breasted suit” to a whole new meaning.  I had fun. It was fun!

From there I went on to college, where for whatever reason, I opted to work backstage rather than audition. Wrong move for a spotlight girl like me. I just remember that the play was rather dark, and the star (a male college student) came on stage completely naked at one point – a rather nebulous, yet dramatic end to my drama career.

I’ve changed some. Perhaps it’s all the drama unwillingly thrust upon me in real life that causes me to sidestep the spotlight. Sometimes. Don’t get me wrong – I still speak in public from time to time and I am usually the chattiest one in the room, but it seems I no longer actively seek fame and drama, if you don’t count blogging.

This week we got some good news.  Sir’s biopsy revealed that everything was normal.  I cannot tell you how giddy and happy that made me – what a new lease on life to know that at least in this one thing there would be no new drama.  

But then on Tuesday I had another ultrasound that revealed that my uterus was unrepentant in its hoarding habits and we would have to take more steps to resolve this long drawn-out difficult miscarriage.  The doctor suggested we try cytotec again two days in a row to cause contractions.  That night after the treatment we had to rush to the emergency room because I was hemorrhaging.  Again. The intern thought I needed surgery right away, but the doctor in charge vetoed that saying that she thought this final effort had done the trick to resolve the matter.  

Quelle surprise! The doctors disagreed again on how to proceed.  What’s that expression?  “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women are playa’s?”  

Hm.  Almost.

So I’m home now, doing okay. I think. (Knock on wood, cross my fingers, break a leg, that Shakespeare play …).  

It appears that sidestepping the spotlight is not always a possibility when events force us into it. We’re cast in the roles we play, even if we can still choose how we play them.  And it seems we can hardly escape a bit of drama in this tragicomedy that is our lives, even if we should want to.

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