On THEATER

January 28th

That last one was hard to finish. Lesson learned: pop culture lists are easy to start, hard to get up to 500 words. Especially late at night.

On THEATER
Ah, theater. Nurturer of my youth, provider of after-school social time, current employer, object of envy and derision. Of course, that should be ‘theatre’, but that’s my American calendar for you. And all anti-Americanism is put in a different light in the Obaman age.
I met my wife in the theatre. Back in second year university, when I was a member of the Elite Arts and Science Programme, and deigning to join an acting class with the Drama majors, local yokels from Hamilton and Burlington who couldn’t get into farther away, more advanced programs. In Arts and Science, you see, everyone had a 90% high school average or above, but anyone could get into the McMaster Drama program.
But it ended up that most of my friends were from the drama program, as my arts and science buddies eventually factioned themselves away, as personality conflicts developed as was inevitable with a small group of intense people travelling off in all directions. Now I have married one of my drama classmates, and others have accompanied me to Toronto to try and achieve the Dream. Maybe if I had focused on my more arts and sciencey side, I would have been a doctor or lawyer by now, but who wants all of that money? I could go and pick it up anytime. I’d rather stick it out in the theatre, or, I should say, the comedy world. You see, after I graduated from McMaster, the theatre world wouldn’t have me. I got rejected from National Theatre School for Acting once and George Brown College twice, and travelled all the way to London, England to get rejected by Guildhall there. Finally, two years after I graduated I was accepted by the Humber School of comedy. Of course! Comedy was my destiny all along! I had always specialized in funny roles anyway.
Since then I have doffed the mantle of ‘struggling actor’, a phrase which rightly makes most actors want to vomit. Now I am a semi-successful comedian, and even made money a couple of times. I have an acting agent, but really, I’m a comedian.
I work in the box office of the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, and sometimes I feel a little resentful seeing the actors for the shows go by, living the life I had dreamed for myself. But fuck ‘em, I usually say. I’ve moved on now to bigger and better things. I’m a writer too, and a good one. I perform every week, how many actors can say that?
I remember having an encounter with a female acquaintance of mine in St. Clair West subway station. I can’t even remember who she is now, but we were having the standard catch-up conversation, where you haven’t seen someone in years, and you have to consider everything you’ve done since you last talked, and summarize it in a sentence or two. I think I must have told her I was acting and now I considered myself more of a comedian. Or maybe I said more of a writer. She laughed and said that’s what happens to most actors: everyone starts off being an actor, and then they give up and turn it into something else. I laughed and she summarized whatever she had done with her truncated acting career. I turned over what she said for a long time, livid because it was so true. My friend Steve was an actor-turned filmmaker. Krista, my wife was an actor-turned-stage manager. My cousin Peter took a year off to act in University, and was a doctor now. I had become part of the army of former actors, pooh-poohing their formed lives and claiming to have moved on to something better. Still pained to see films depicting the crushed dreams of wannabe thespians, from the nobly comic (Withnail and I) to the derisively comic (Waiting for Guffman).
Still, I’ll prove all the doubters wrong. Just you wait and see.