We joined a home school club when I entered ninth grade. We met once a month for writing class and I procrastinated in completing my assignments. In addition I remember meeting several others from that group at the county fair where we created a scarecrow together and won first prize. It was organized by someone else, so all I had to do was show up, stuff hay in the scarecrow and sneeze myself silly because of my hay fever allergy! And collect my share of the prize money at the end of the week.
The most memorable part of being in that group was the annual play. Every spring they put on a play and the first year we joined it was decided that we would produce a Greek Tragedy (where everyone dies) for the older students and a Roman Comedy (where everyone gets married) for the younger. I never considered myself a thespian of any note, but somehow I got roped into being in the Greek Chorus that year alongside my sister. Things went fairly normally. We started out with monthly rehearsals and lines to memorize which I did fine with. Apparently dispensing good advice in a creepy manner suited me. Things ramped up as the date for the production got closer and we started having longer (2 hours!) rehearsals which led up to the day before the play when we had our dress rehearsal.
The dress rehearsal was a trip for many reasons. When I signed up no one told me I would have to wear clown/mime make-up. Yes, that white mask was required to make us look ghost like. In my opinion it just made us look sick! When we had to take the make-up OFF we had to use baby oil and my face broke out. Then we donned our white sheets which were our costumes. On stage we sat on stools in center stage where we sat for the entire time. The stools were hard, the sheets were warm, but the worst part was the spot light. Everything got exceptionally hot at that point. We were admonished not to move a muscle no matter what else happened.
What happened was my asthma kicked in. All of a sudden my stomach felt funny and even though I tried not to think it I felt like I had to throw up and/or faint. Normally I would have dashed to the bathroom, but I had been told to stay put. Of course I did throw up, and no I didn’t move until someone came and got me. I was told that being sick WAS a valid reason to move and I got cleaned up a little in the bathroom. Someone found a fan that would not only help their ghosts not to faint or throw up, but would also make us look more ghost-like due to blowing white sheets.
The day of the production was a bit of an anti-climax. Everything went off without a hitch, except of course my costume still smelled like throw up. After that I decided that I enjoyed watching plays much more than actually being in them.
image courtesy of Wikipedia via Booyabazooka