It’s all over now, and surprisingly, I’m sad. Somehow I actually have fond memories of this musical, even though it was a stressful mess which destroyed my school grades (previously the best I’ve ever had). Most of this I can attribute to my good friend fake nostalgia. Theater productions have a way of eliciting fake nostalgia, as I end up spending so much time working on them that it’s hard not to form some sort of connection with the production. The weird thing is that the theater group remains not really my clique, so I don’t have too much of a reason to miss it.
What’s really been eating at me is the fact that I’ll never act with any of the seniors again. Every high school student knows that Graduation is a beautiful and tragic thing. It’s one of the blatant major changes in life, an inevitability that everyone is mostly excited for, but a bit remorseful about as well. The theater seniors are ridiculously cool as a whole, and I’m not sure how I feel about continuing on without them. Like it or not, my classmates and I have to lead the theater team next year, and that’s frightening.
But I’m also going to miss them as people. I’m not necessarily great friends with any of them (like I said, it’s never really become my clique), but I can never help my wondering. After one of the musical performances, a senior from last year approached me in congratulation, but I felt that it was more than a formality. She complimented me on my performance, and then went on to genuinely express how much she enjoys watching me act, something she had told me last year as well. I don’t consider myself a crap actor, but I don’t consider myself particularly outstanding either, and once again I was left to wonder why she enjoyed my performance so much. I am left to speculate that it is because, over the course of the year we acted alongside each other (a year in which we often shared the stage but never any character interaction) she was able to watch me grow from a fetus of an actor into a fledgling. And that’s why Graduation is a tragedy for those left behind- Not really friends at all last year, I believe she and I could be very good friends today. I guess this relates back to my pot about all the people you could know if circumstances were different- I can’t help but wonder what my life would be like in a different situation.
As far as judging my own acting goes, I have discovered that watching yourself act is an unforgivable sin. Yes, I am a high school actor, and yes, that does mean expectations are low, but I cannot express enough how disappointed I was when I saw the DVD of one of our rehearsals.
You see, when I’m on stage I feel convincing, in character, and not at all OSK. But what I saw on the DVD was the awkward, blocky, unexpressive OSK of the real world struggling to be something he wasn’t. I can only suspect that this is because when I watch myself I see something which others do not- I see OSK’s motives behind the character’s motives and actions. I see myself trying to be the character instead of being ready to believe that I am the character. I am unable to suspend reality as an audience can.
At least that’s my hope. I know decent people would never say anything bad about my acting, but still, I’d like to think that I’ve had enough positive feedback from my roles that I’m more believable to an audience than to myself. Even so, I’m going to be drilling a lot of scenes in my off-time to get my self esteem up. Moral of the story- Watching yourself act is officially the eighth Deadly Sin.
On an unrelated note, the game creators for 1980s systems were complete perverts. A bunch of the friend group (myself included) spent the night hanging with a guy for whom I have no blogosphere alias, a guy who had pretty much every game known to man on his Xbox. And not just Xbox games, everything you could possibly name from the original Atari, NES, all the way through N64. He even had a few games no one’s ever heard of. Custer’s Revenge, for example, is a game for the Atari 2600 which, as the title suggests, allows the historic General Custer to enact his wrath upon the Indian people. The gameplay consists of moving a naked Custer (with blatant rope-like genetalia) across the screen, avoiding the arrows of the Indian attacks. If you reach the right side of the screen, there is a large-breasted naked Indian woman bound to a pole whom you violate, all in 8-bit. The best part is that one of the people playing managed to get a high score of 69. I’m not even going to get into Beat ‘Em and Eat ‘Em. Check that one out yourself. Let’s just say it’s a good thing that games are actually filtered these days.
-OSK
How did that giant scorpion get on that train?
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