Pretend is what actors do. They pretend to be fictional characters, or real people who have existed, or other species, space aliens, gods, demons, even anthropomorphic versions of non-human creatures. & of course most everyone wants to be an actor. It seems like such fun!
Certainly
I thought I'd be a good actor. I could memorize stuff! & I took "Theatre Arts" in the ninth grade. Despite the fact that the teacher was a terrifyingly rotund basket case who spoke way too much about her personal life, I persevered. I thought I had it in me.
The school had a thespian group, I don't remember what it was called, & I joined. An early triumph was an "improv" exercise in which I, just by constantly throwing myself back onto the stage, got allowed to do "improv" at a rival school with two old actors & someone else from my grade. I was terrible at it. I wasn't funny & I didn't know what I was doing. But try telling
me that!
Auditions for the first play of the year, which was
The Serpent - whether it was the Jean-Claude Van Itallie play or not I couldn't say - were a disappointment, though I stuck it out with the club. I landed a minor role in the spring play, which was
Mother Courage (!). But the new co-drama teacher planned badly, & we young "actors" were constantly standing around, arriving on nights in which we were scheduled to rehearse to discover that the previous night's rehearsals were still going on. I lived at the time very far away from the school, & despite having a large family, I often found myself walking home at eight o'clock at night, getting home an hour later, hungry, tired, angry. I quit.
Looking back, I wish I hadn't. I was improbably self-important. But I said goodbye & didn't get involved in the theatre arts at my high school again.*
Until. My friend Terri, who happened to be the person with whom I did the "improv" stuff three years earlier**, & who stayed the course & starred in many of the school's performances, encouraged me to audition for the fall play of my senior year. It was
The Crucible (the oddball drama teacher who wanted kids to do Brecht having been run off after her second year). I got a similar role as three years before - about three lines. Still bizarrely self-important - & perhaps remembering how much time it would suck up - I declined the role. I think I hurt Terri's feelings - perhaps she went to bat for me with the drama teacher who had other kids who deserved a chance (because, you know, they were in the classes & the group) more than I did.
But Terri's feelings aside, that decision I don't regret as much. & while I discovered that I couldn't put on the one-act Woody Allen play
The Query during the talent show, because each act was limited to five minutes, I did get to play several roles in our senior English project, which was an examination of power using texts we had read that year, using as a framing device a made-up children's program called
The Mister Professor Show. I was the title character, & I wrote most of it, although there was improvising aplenty. I also played (an incomplete list from what I can remember) Hrothgar from
Beowulf, Creon from
Oedipus, Joseph the servant & Linton Heathcliff from
Wuthering Heights, & Lady Macbeth from
Macbeth, in which I wore drag, & played her like Blanche in
Streetcar. This performance is actually saved on videotape, although it's not that good. I know, I've tried to get people to watch it. Mainly they're freaked out to see me in all my high school whatever-it-is-that's-the-opposite-of-glory.
There was one great bit. One of the girls in our group - I think her name was Jenny - had a bunny suit she wore as Grendel. When Beowulf (played by a fellow named Kenny) slays Grendel (off screen), he emerges with the bunny suit, telling the camera that he killed Grendel. We used the same gag when Macbeth was killed - Macduff (possibly also played by Kenny) comes in with the bunny suit announcing that he had killed Macbeth. I thought that was pretty funny.
After that - not a lot of acting work for me. I was involved with a girlfriend's performance art in college, & was in a "trailer" a friend at work made to try to get funding to make a movie, but once I got into radio, that was my performance "outlet." & if you ponder how terrible I am at that, you can imagine how bad an actor I would be!
Interestingly, the radio would lead me to my last acting opportunity. A few years back, some kids at WRFL approached me while they were making a film (the finished product would ended up having most of the people at the station at the time), telling me I'd be great as the lead's dad. It kind of broke my heart to realize that, yes, I was now old enough to be cast as someone's dad. But I was flattered enough that I said, sure! I went one night to a disgusting efficiency near the university &, in three hours, filmed a scene that takes up about twenty seconds of screen time. & I was not good at all. It was sobering.
The filmmakers didn't edit the movie - it's three hours long - because I think they feared disrespecting all those who contributed by cutting them out - & they haven't "released" it, either - but seriously they could easily cut my part out. It's dreadful. The film could then by two hours fifty nine minutes long!
Such is the history of Gary pretending as an "actor." Ah well. I can still pretend to be a reasonably good deejay on the radio!
* A fun note: when I went to see the play, I discovered all three of my lines (which I of course had memorized the first night) were not given to anyone else, but were shouted from off-stage.
** We didn't become friends then - I was kind of a dick to her during the "improv" show we did at the other high school. It would take being involved in something called Whiz Quiz in twelfth grade to make us friends.
