May 26 2007
Plays and Drama
Hello, Gentle Readers! It’s been so long since we had a Soap Opera Sunday! So, seek out your inner drama queen, and let’s go!
(The only thing Soap Opera-y about this one is that it contains all the angst and emotions of the high school world. No torrid love affairs, I’m afraid.)
My Freshman year of high school, I had a great group of close friends–a boy named Mark was an integral part of that group. He was funny, talented, intelligent, and (to my little fourteen year old eyes) drop dead gorgeous. Which, I suppose, is where the problems started. I liked him. A lot. And it was no secret. And, apparently, it was not reciprocated.
My passionate devotion to Mark burned him out. Slowly but surely, he began distancing himself from our group of friends and became, well, rude. And that caused me to freak out at him, which caused further distance and rudeness, etc. By our Sophomore year, we were barely speaking to each other (but speaking PLENTY behind each other’s backs, natch).
The trick here is that both Mark and I were also passionately devoted to one other thing: Theater. And we’d both climbed the totum pole to the top, so we often had to work together, but we weren’t nice about it. Every time the spotlight shone on him (which was all the time) I gagged a little, got nasty and gossipy about him, or furiously jealous. Whenever Mark saw me, I was at my snippiest, snottiest worst–which is so funny, because I wasn’t really like that at all. Just around him. I just kept making it easier and easier for him to hate me.
It was so strange, to know each other so well and share happy memories and hilarious inside jokes, and yet feel so strongly negative towards each other.
By the time we were Seniors, Mark had his groupies, I had mine (Mark had, shall we say, a lot more adoring fans than I did….which, of course, bugged me too). Everyone knew that we weren’t very fond of each other, but almost no one knew that once upon a time we’d been best friends.
And then the inevitable happened. We were cast in the school play as romantic leads opposite each other. “Fine,” I thought. Sure, we’d be working even more closely with each other than we’d worked before, but we could get through it.
But this was different. Due to many factors (which are too long and boring to explain) this play was very emotionally charged and extremely stressful. Both Mark and I were feeling the pinch and, not feeling like we could lean on each other to get through it, we instead grew extremely antagonistic. Fortunately, we didn’t actually have that many scenes together, and when we did have scenes together, there was nothing too lovey-dovey. The words were lovey-dovey, but there were no *ahem* actions involved.
mushy the words that we were saying were.
During our final dress rehearsal, our director said to us (after weeks of rehearsals, and nary a word prior) “you two are going to have to kiss at that part.”
The theater, which was full of people, went completely silent, before it erupted into psychotic giggling. Everyone in that room knew how we felt about each other.
I couldn’t breathe and I think Mark was about to throw up.
(Part of the ridiculousness was that never in my life had I been surrounded by so many boys–in the cast and the tech crew– who would have fallen all over themselves to be the one kissing me. For some reason, it was almost as if someone had hand-picked every boy who’d ever had a crush on me up to that time and put them in the cast and crew. And yet I was slated to kiss the one who found me utterly disgusting.)
I don’t remember what we said or if we said anything. But we never looked at each other or acknowledged to each other what we’d just heard. And we CERTAINLY never PRACTICED.
The next day at school, complete strangers were coming up to me saying, “Hey! I heard you and Mark are gonna have to kiss each other in the play tonight!” And they would heckle me and giggle and go on their way.
So, that night—Opening night, I wasn’t nervous about anything besides that kiss–that unpracticed kiss with a boy who loathed me–a kiss that all our friends, and even our non-friends, were sitting in the audience to witness.
I remember that right before that scene, I grabbed his arm backstage and shoved a breath mint into his hand. (Yes, I’m still snickering about that.)
We performed the play four times. I remember each night’s kiss distinctly, after all these years. Our first night’s kiss wasn’t remarkable. We were just in a hurry to get it over with. Our director’s notes after the second night were that it was “WAY TOO SHORT AND PASSIONLESS” which was SO true. You’d think we’d just given each other a hi-five with our lips or something. And so the third night we took it slower, as we’d been told to do, and it was… delicious. At least in my memory it was. I don’t actually know what Mark thought of that one, but I suspect that he was perhaps even more disgusted with me because he could sense that I was allowing myself to enjoy it a little bit. Haha. Anyway, the last night was the best. By far.
Because the whole school showed up to take a picture of it.
Clearly printed on the programs were the instructions not to take pictures. It didn’t matter. There we were, taking the “kissing position” and all we heard and saw were *clicks* and flashes. Hahahaha.
prominently featured in our yearbook. Hahaha.
In the moment that all those pictures were audibly snapped, I could feel Mark starting to laugh, which made me want to start laughing. Both of us realized how absolutely RIDICULOUS this whole situation had become, that there was so much real-life drama between us that people were turning up just to take pictures of us STAGE-KISSING!!! The audience didn’t know that we were both on the brink of busting up laughing–we covered it well and moved on with the scene as normal. But we knew it about each other, and that was enough to undo a lot of the crazy years of anger and disgust. We now had something to laugh about together–ourselves. Stupid as it sounds, it was a really healing moment.
It was a turning point for us. For the rest of the school year, there wasn’t exactly comradery, but neither was there hatred, disgust, gossip, and jealousy. We were just co-existing. It was marvelous in it’s total unremarkableness.
Nowadays, I don’t know where he is or what he’s up to, though from time to time I hear things about him. Apparently, he pursued the professional acting thing–hey, if anyone can do it, Mark can. He really was that good–way, way better than I was. And, obviously, I made very different choices for my own life. But the point is (point? did someone accuse me of having a point?) that oddly enough, there’s nothing but kindness and respect between us now, on both sides. I hope that wherever he is, life is treating him well and that he’s happy. And I can say with 100% confidence that he hopes the same for me.
Moments in time, there’s always that can be said for that.
Oooh oooh! I took one of the pictures! *snicker, snicker* and it was probably the one you used here. Hahaha.
Good times.
Oh, this is a grand installment in the soapy reads Brillig!
I was once in a play with a boy who loved me, whom I did not love.
He proposed to me (if you call saying “Jennifer I will marry you” an actual proposal) shortly before opening night. Yeah, that kind of declaration made things mildly awkward between us.
I couldn’t have made the stage kiss at our wedding scene any shorter if I actually suffered from no lips syndrome. High five of the lips is right. Which is so NOT what he wanted.
Oh, my.
4 nights of the play and then multiple performances in competition as a “duet act” on the speech scene that year, I think he finally got the hint that we weren’t going to date. (BTW, the whole proposal thing was made with us NEVER HAVING GONE ON A SINGLE DATE nor EVER EVER EVER KISSING IN REAL LIFE)At any rate, he gave up on trying to get me to go out and fall in love with him. Meeting his parents once was awkward as they said “oh so you are the one” and I was like “AAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!”
But now that I have taken a goodly portion of the commenting section of your blog I will stop my ranting now and tell you that I really appreciated yours. The story was hilarious as always.
Do tell though, what was the play?
Lovely story, just lovely.
You are such an amazing story teller…I could feel the angst of it all!
It’s funny how “big” things like this seemed back then, and how funny and insignificant they are now.
I think we all wasted a lot of time & energy back then “loathing” certain people, sometimes for no identifiable reason whatsoever.
Ahhh…high school.
So what are you saying? He’s gay?
Hehehehe.
Nice kiss. And I maintain my standing opinion that YOU are one crazy broad!
OH my gosh, I totally forgot that you used to love him! Hahaha! However, I never knew that you two used to be BF’s and then hated each other…and then were buds again. I think I only knew the two of you as being friends. I think Kate told me that you thought he was cute, but I certainly didn’t know the history. I remember seeing this play at least twice - and you were fabulous!
The story was good on its own, but to have PHOTOS! Oh my god, that is good stuff.
I was a letter writer myself. I would write letters of love and devotion, letters of hatred and betrayal, letters for all occassions. I got so good at it that my friends would come to me and have me write “break up” letters for their boyfriends.
I look back at my teen years and grimace. Sometimes I shudder. Somtimes I do both.
I just decided I love soap opera sunday. I wish I had the cajones to share that kind of personal history. Well-written and engaging. Thank you… from one former “theater fag” to another.
I used to work backstage (even made it all the way up to stage manager by my senior year of high school) and I would totally have kissed you.
Um.
This story was fun! I love theater nerds!
Nocturnal,
Indeed.
Kateastrophe,
Yup. This is, in fact, the picture that YOU took. You little rebel…
Jenn IH,
(And yeah, our director thought that “Victorian” dress would be cool…)
HAHAHA. Oh my gosh, what a crazy story!!! I can only IMAGINE how awkward that was, to have to play romantic to someone that you wanted to run away from! Yikes! Boys…. sigh. Oh. And the play was “Merchant of Venice.” I was Portia, natch, with Mark as my Bassanio.
Lady MacLeod and Kimberly,
Thanks ladies! Glad you enjoyed!
Whiskeymarie,
I know! That’s the best part! EVERYTHING in high school was SUCH A BIG DEAL!!!
C-Teri,
Oh, it would make me feel so much better if he’d been gay, because then his total disinterest in me wouldn’t feel like such a personal attack. Alas, no. Straight as can be.
Jewels,
You’re so funny. And very kind, because I think you weren’t all that fond of me yet during the run of this play! Weren’t we still fighting over that one boy back then? Hahaha.
Swistle,
Haha. Thanks. Yeah, Soap Opera Sunday began when I started cleaning out my basement and finding all sorts of funny love letters and pictures. The pictures really are what make the story!
Viciousrumors,
Somehow, with a pen name like “vicious rumors” I beleive that you did write a great breakup letter! Hahaha. I so would have employed you back in the day.
Goldy,
Well thanks! Yes, soap opera sundays are those special times on my blog where I get to open up and tell you all the ridiculous things about myself. Aren’t you so lucky?
Jessabean,
Right back atcha, babe. hahahahaha.
Okay, I had to go google your use of the word “natch” since I am not one to be in on any cool new lingo. And you know what I found out? It’s not new at all. As in really really old. The reference article was written in 1999! But better than that, it says in the list of examples (and I quote):
“‘Let me know, won’t you?’ She smiled. ‘Natch’” (Saturday Evening Post, 1950)
Uh… did you see that? 1950?
Sheesh. Wher’ve I been?
By the by, the Dutch word for of course is Natuurlijk, or “naturally” as it is translated.
That kind of makes me hip and cool to know that right?
As hip and cool as someone just now catching onto lingo from the 50’s can be?
Hahahahaha. I don’t know if that makes you un-hip, or me stuck in a different era all together! hahaha. I do like Natuulijk. In German it’s “naturlich”–I suspect they sound almost identical, thanks to your previous Dutch pronunciation lessons… We’ll just stick with that from now on then, shall we?
Anyway, sorry about ALL THE TROUBLE my “natch” put you through. What a burden I’ve thrust upon you, my dear Hollandy Jenn.
Wow - what fun!! Do you ever do any acting these days??? (I mean it’d be SO easy with four kids in tow, wouldn’t it?) do you have any secret actressy aspirations?
I admire anyone with enough nerve just to step up on the stage. Actually KISSING in front of the world… that’s just plain supernatural!
Hey- I just commented on your blog while you commented on mine… guess you’re up late and I’m up early!
Rebecca,
No, I really don’t. I honestly wasn’t very good. hahaha. I love it, really I do, but I don’t see myself involved in it any time soon–if EVER.
Jennifer,
That’s so funny! I never expect to be online at the same time as my European friends, but it seems to happen quite often! Glad to have caught you!
What a great little story.
I just found your blog from the ‘next blog’ link on my blog.
It’s amazing what blogs you can stumble upon from that little link!
That was a fabulous story very well told.
And he WAS hot.
Ahhh, I miss theater. I was never the “leading lady” but it was still fun.
Great story, dear. I loved the breath mint part!
(Pssst, I like your new bloglights, too!)
Great, story!
So how cool would it be if Mark became a famous actor and you had this fabulous story to tell about kissing him back in high school.
They’ll want to interview you for all the tabloid television shows and then our little Brillig will be famous too.
Nice story.
I love Soap Opera Sunday!
Such a story - beautifully told. Couldn’t wait to get to the end.
Dear Brillig,
What a great story! My friend Jenn (in Holland) has been raving and I just had to check you out. Now I know what she means. Can’t wait to go through some of your earlier blogs and share the fun. Keep on bloggin’!