My theatrical career
When I was in elementary school, I took classes at The Playhouse, the local theater-and-school. That's how I met mutabbal, my friend of longest standing. Each class culminated in a show we'd developed over the course of the class, performed for family and friends. The year I met mutabbal, we performed "The Practical Princess".
Presumably it was this fledgling theatrical experience which led me to write a play in fifth grade. It was a musical. It was science fiction. It was called The Rocket Vehicle. My fifth grade glass performed it. My early inclinations - musicals, science fiction - were already going strong, although I have never written another play since.
My entire theater career culminated the following year with my musical theater debut in London, as a singing, plague-carrying sewer rat, part of a student chorus in a semi-professional performance called Flo of the Fleet. It was a history of London, told via the history of the river Fleet, now a sewer, and best known for Fleet Street, which crosses it not far from its outlet into the Thames. My involvement was a by-product of being involved in Drama Club at my secondary school. (Our drama teacher played one of the two lead rats.) And I haven't been in another piece of theater since.
I teach, though, which involves a certain amount of theatricality, performing for an audience, and requiring a clear speaking voice. For the first semester I taught my own full-fledged class, I had butterflies in my stomach every day before lecture. I have yet to figure out how to incorporate musicals sensibly into history of technology, however. (There are non-sensible ways. I bet I could put together a whole course based on "history of tech as portrayed in musicals", but would there really be an audience for it?)
Presumably it was this fledgling theatrical experience which led me to write a play in fifth grade. It was a musical. It was science fiction. It was called The Rocket Vehicle. My fifth grade glass performed it. My early inclinations - musicals, science fiction - were already going strong, although I have never written another play since.
My entire theater career culminated the following year with my musical theater debut in London, as a singing, plague-carrying sewer rat, part of a student chorus in a semi-professional performance called Flo of the Fleet. It was a history of London, told via the history of the river Fleet, now a sewer, and best known for Fleet Street, which crosses it not far from its outlet into the Thames. My involvement was a by-product of being involved in Drama Club at my secondary school. (Our drama teacher played one of the two lead rats.) And I haven't been in another piece of theater since.
I teach, though, which involves a certain amount of theatricality, performing for an audience, and requiring a clear speaking voice. For the first semester I taught my own full-fledged class, I had butterflies in my stomach every day before lecture. I have yet to figure out how to incorporate musicals sensibly into history of technology, however. (There are non-sensible ways. I bet I could put together a whole course based on "history of tech as portrayed in musicals", but would there really be an audience for it?)