I'm stealing from the past once more. . .

. . .for today's blog.  Even though auditions for SUMMERPLAY are much less painful than those ones back at CHS, when 95 kids tried out for 20 parts, I still suffer a little bit along with those who may have been disappointed on the day I post the cast.  I found the following in my writing about A GIRL OF TWO WORLDS,  from which I used stuff before.

AUDITIONS (GOD, HOW I HATE THEM)

          "Most years, the two days I hate the most are the days I post the cast lists for the fall play and the musical.  When I look into kids' faces on those days, I feel like a dentist, which is not what I went to school to be.  For some of them, the message I bear is heartwarming and soul-lifting: they feel like dancing, so delighted are they by my news.  For others, there is acceptance in their faces; after all, at least there are painkillers.  And for a few, there is a sort of "I'm allergic to novocain " look of heartbreak, disappointment, and pain; nothing I can say or do will make this day not hurt.

            "I would never trivialize the heartbreak of not winning the part one dreamed of winning.  I know how awfully it hurts.  It has happened to me.  I have this dream that someday, I will write a play in which all the actors are stars, in which no one has more lines that anyone else, in which every role is of equal importance.  I might call this play EVERYONE'S A STAR."  (Sounds like a reality show.) "I'm afraid though, as Kurt Vonnegut taught us in his wonderful short story "Harrison Bergeron," that such a play would be terribly boring.  After all if every star burned at the same magnitude, then the brightest star would not amaze us on winter's night, nor would the North Star be able to guide us on our journeys."

             In SUMMERPLAY, I strive for repertory company kinds of plays, with lots of equal size roles and few or no stars, kind of like putting a lot of shiny not quite stars together to see how bright they can shine as a group.  I guess it's another one of those "less is more" things, and a different way of getting at what I was striving for more than 10 years past.