Our Town at 75

Despite my settled niche on the comfortable side of the footlights, I have once or twice trod the boards. (Treaded? Traid? Tried.) When I tried out for Our Town in high school, as everyone did, I had no real ambition or expectation of playing Emily, as everyone did.

When our acting teacher wandered down the line-up of junior and senior females, he immediately spotted the enormous potential in me to play a townsperson. An old one. Bespectacled and pale-haired, yes, I no doubt looked like Irene Ryan to the casual observer. I was cast among those nameless folks expected to sing in the church choir in Act II and sit in the cemetery in Act III. I wasn't really nameless. In the program, my character was identified as Second Dead Woman. I had two lines:

"I always liked that hymn. I was hoping they'd sing a hymn."

"T'ain't no time for him to be here."

The first line was pretty easy. The second line, my motivation was a bit ambiguous. Was he here in the middle of the night? Was he here in the middle of the busy season?

No matter. My principal shortcoming as an actress was lack of vocal power. No matter how loudly I thought I was hollering out my lines, the director said he couldn't hear me. This actually proved beneficial during the choir scenes. Heh.

My other shortcoming as an actress was the inability to see in the dark, particularly right after the blinding lights go to blackout. I never made it off stage once at the end of the play without bumping into every single folding chair set up for the dead people in that stage cemetery.

No matter. I am very comfortable in the audience. And now that I've finally found the one and only perfect seat in Ford's Theatre, I will enjoy their production of Our Town.

My tribute: OURTOWN @75 (with "It's in Every One of Us" performed by Clay Aiken, plus program and production art through the years).




Love, hosaa
remembering something in my bones....