The Play Revisited

Yes this play was weeks ago. A buddy of mine has been writing his own murder mystery plays for a community fund raiser for several years now. Actually the first play was produced by my office for some cause or another. That program fell apart and my buddy took the idea and ran with it as his agency's fund raiser. Since he had agreed to be in one for my group I knew I had to be in one for his. Quid Pro Quo and all that rigmarole.

The thing is, this little bitty community theater kind of works like organized crime. Once you get in, it is impossible to get back out! No matter how bad an actor you are! Like Michael Corleone, every time I think I am out, they pull me back in again!

So a few weeks ago I put on an embroidered western shirt under a fringed jacket with a ten gallon hat and stumped around a room full of friends and neighbors as Filbert Fimpleman, King of the Cowboy Catsup. As part of my back story, I would mill around the audience as they ate dinner and try to shill the goods, which was the catsup bottles on their table. My pitch was that it was the traditional cowboy recipe where the tomatoes were roasted over an open prairie fire. And since we all know there is a terrible lack of trees on the prairie, the authentic cowboy roasting fire for authentic COWBOY Catsup had to be made of cow and buffalo chips. "Mmmm if you close your eyes and think about it, sometimes you can actually taste the cow chip flavoring."

Yeah, when I am in a murder mystery, people ALWAYS WANT me to be the guy who gets killed.

The Plays The Thing

So tonight we performed. Last night was the one and only semi dress rehearsal that included blocking. It was terrible. A lot of it was my fault, the script I thought was in the back seat of my car turned out to be a grant RFP we have decided not to write. My bad!

So the rehearsal went bad and we never had a good idea of how the play would look. It had been written by a community member so this would be the first and maybe only performance. Than around noon today I get an email on my Blackberry. "We decided to change the blocking so that most of the play will be wandering through the audience. No need to rehearse, we'll wing it."

So we do the play. I wander around the audience and try to make myself hated to the point everybody wants me dead. It is a murder mystery and I die first. So I wander around, pick on people, try to publicly embarrass as many as I can before the beginning of the play.

So we do it. We finish. There is laughter. Afterward I walk around and visit with friends in the audience. There is my friend Micah, whose wife was in the play. He does not look amused. When I ask if the play was all he expected, he makes a disgusted snort and agrees that it was.

Thinking I might get my needed positive affirmation elsewhere, I wander over to a group from our church. I sit down asking if they enjoyed the show. I am greeted by stony silence. Finally, the old retired minister in the group advises, "Don't quit your day job." The wife of one of the actors leaned in and seems to support the assessment.

The old adage is true. Dying is easy, comedy is hard. Community Murder Mystery Theater is Way harder.