Musings of a (would be) Drama Queen

Note: Sorry for the length on this one, but sometimes when it rains, it really pours.

I don’t know why I thought of it today. I woke up and it was just there in my head. I suppose it crosses my mind more than I would readily admit, but some of the details are lost to time. When I was a senior in high school, I got caught up in the Speech and Debate club for a brief time. Before you go thinking that I walked around hauling a briefcase with debate topics and resources, let me be clear. My original event was Prose and Poetry. The idea of debating anything was way far off in my evolutionary cycle. I just didn’t have the stomach for cold, factual debating.

So I chose something that required creativity and expression. Plus, this event was listed as a reading interpretation, so I was actually required to have it printed out in front of me. It was like a crutch in the beginning to help keep any stage fright at bay. It almost felt like cheating to have my script in my hands. Of course, I quickly had it memorized and then it was more of an effort to appear as if I was reading it at all. Apparently I was well suited for it because from my very first event I placed first in my category. I continued this streak for my first 4 events. In the fifth event, I placed second and then shortly after I quit and moved on to Drill Team.

It sounds as if I was driven by the winning rather than the experience and maybe part of that is true. Winning is fun and quitting after placing second was an easy excuse. However, the timing was also such that I faced a choice I wasn’t ready to pursue, so I didn’t. That’s what this story is about. The turning point.

When I won my very first competition, it was really incredible to me that reading a simple children’s story and clever poem could possibly outshine some of the more dramatic subject matter that I competed with those months. My only real memory of the competition was a girl who read something about the Holocaust. It was mesmerizing as far as I was concerned, yet she still managed to always rank just behind me.

Before becoming involved with this club, I was also taking a public speaking class in high school. As I recall it wasn’t a mandatory class, but I think perhaps I may have been railroaded into it by my very extroverted father who though it would do me some good. Like many such events that would come to pass, he would once again be proven right eventually. Also “helping” me from both an academic and perhaps Pygmalion-type perspective was the teacher himself. It often felt as though Mr. Campbell had taken a special interest in my (apparent) public speaking abilities and pushed hard to have me join the Speech and Debate team on which he served as advisor.

Frankly, the guy was a little creepy. I will swear to this day that the man was flirting with me. If I think about the dynamic between older men and young teenage girls, there is really no surprising new information to report here. Plus, if nothing else, growing up with a single father and some of his friends gave me an awareness of this dynamic at an early age. Apparently I come from a long line of basically harmless flirts. It’s practically a genetic characteristic like eye color. So whether it was genetic coding or the questionable ethics of a high school educator, Mr. Campbell and I established an easy rapport. Perhaps this was how he finally got me to join the club.

Immediately, he wanted me to select a category that would allow me to compete at a national level. Ugh. Even thinking about it now makes me want to throw up with jitters. I may be willing to bend to a stronger will than mine, but I rarely break if it’s something I really don’t want to do. My line in the sand was Prose and Poetry. This category was only recognized to the State level. I didn’t see a problem with the choice because I never dreamed I would be successful at it. It felt like a safe compromise. I thought I could go to a couple of competitions, hope I at least placed, add it to my college applications and be done with it. But I won. And then I kept winning.

As I mentioned before, winning was fun. I think it pleased both my father and Mr. Campbell to see me succeed in an area that I didn’t believe I could. However, there is always some sort of payment required for success. Mr. Campbell increased his campaign to get me to switch topics so I could continue to complete well past the state finals which were still several months away. It would have been one thing to just have him as the club advisor, but I was also taking one of his classes. Escape was impossible. In fact, one of our speech assignments in class was to do an interpretive monologue, either humorous or dramatic. Coincidentally, he was trying to get me to switch my event from Prose and Poetry to Humorous Interpretation. Hmm….

So going with the “bend, but not break” theme, I chose to perform a dramatic interpretation rather than humorous. Call it passive- aggressive, but just saying “no” wasn’t part of me at the time, and certainly not to a teacher. Plus, (and this is critical to the story) humor seemed too easy for me. Maybe it’s because I think my whole family is funny and humorous storytelling is similar to breathing. That alone led to me feeling that I was often type cast into humorous roles in just about every play or musical I performed. It felt like no one wanted to take a chance on placing me in a more dramatic role. Humor was more of a sure thing. I can understand the motivation, but I was never happy with it.

So, since I had made my choice to go for drama, I went for it in a big way. The piece I chose was from the alleged autobiography of an actress named Francis Farmer. The piece touched on her destructive relationship with her mother and her brutal treatment in mental hospitals. As far as drama went, this was it. I remember performing this in class. Actually, I mostly remember the end of the performance. This was where I had to go into some level of detail of the apparent rape and torture of staying in a mental hospital. As I performed this I realized that I was about to lose it in a big way and start crying. I think that fact alone brought me “out of character” and let me hold on enough that no tears ever fell.

Once I was finished, I remember 3 things very clearly. The first was the silence. Did people not realize I was finished? Was I really that awful and no one was paying attention? Did I pick the wrong topic? I had a brief feeling of panic. The second thing I recall is seeing a friend of mine in class wiping her eyes. That was surprising to me and in a moment of clarity I realized that the delay in reaction was likely a good sign. Sure enough, only a few seconds (that felt like years) passed and I received the customary polite applause. It was funny, but as I went back to my seat I realized that no one was really willing to look at me. Then again, it was high school and I almost bawled like a wounded animal in front of these people, so having them look at me wasn’t high on my list either. Still, their reaction, while interesting, was not the reaction I was looking for in the end. The only comment I can recall from Mr. Campbell on my assignment, aside from telling me I HAD TO perform this as my next event, was a simple piece of feedback: “Next time, let the tears fall.” I got an A.

I never performed it again. I performed my Prose and Poetry event for one last competition and placed second. I was clearly in a state of crisis. I quit the team and joined a bunch of my girlfriends on the drill team. I can think of any number of reasons why I did this, but pinpointing the true reason required some soul searching. Maybe I felt like I had already accomplished what I set out to do: getting recognition for carrying off a dramatic role. Maybe I was just being a fickle teenager and decided to squeeze in one more high school experience before I graduated. Maybe I was turned off by the feedback I received from Mr. Campbell. I think he was moved by what it could bring him in terms of glory rather than moved by my performance.

It was all of these things to some degree, but I think it was mostly how I felt when I performed it. I was lost in the character and it hurt to perform it. Given the subject matter, that would seem like an obvious reaction, but I didn’t think I could continue to perform it knowing this. Perhaps it also gave me a better appreciation for humor. Humor doesn’t hurt, it heals. Faced with the choice of comedy which didn’t feel challenging, and drama which would probably shred my soul to pieces, I made the choice to give up theater altogether. I miss it every day.

I looked up the Francis Farmer book on Amazon today. I wonder if I am ready to read it now.