School plays

[HarmonicGenerator]

Anybody got any memories from their school days of being involved in the annual extravaganza that was a school play or musical? Performing, being 'backstage', scandals and stuff.

I've got vague memories of Nativities and that kind of thing from first school, but the stuff that sticks out are having to learn a tango for 'Mrs Claus To The Rescue', the production of 'Cinderella' where Prince Charming left the glass slipper in the classroom where we all had to get changed (my first improv moment was the stalling until he found it) and our school leavers day in Year 4 where the class was split up and each group made a little play. I remember my friend John, who was the literate one of the class because he'd read Sherlock Holmes, created a mystery called 'The Missing Scotland Yard' which went right over my head. My group did 'Peter and the Pan', a subtle fairytale subversion where Peter Pan got a pan stuck on his head. Music was provided for that by a girl who went on to be in Glasgow band Admiral Fallow. So we had talent.

 

Middle school was where stuff got professional. Year 6 was 'Alice in Wonderland' that had what 10 year old me considered massive production values. I was the Lory, which I think was pronounced like 'Laurie', so I decided to do it with my best Hugh Laurie in Blackadder impression. Don't remember a lot about it beyond my bit (the Caucus Race, which any English undergraduate will tell you is the most symbolically resonant of the original novel, obviously) except for the fact the guy who played the Caterpillar was also on the Year 8 football team and his being in the play was a big deal. Bit like the episode of Arrested Development where STEVE HOLT is in Romeo and Juliet.

 

Anyway, year 7 brought a new music teacher, Miss Cockram (actual name, yet not one which many adolescent brains used to its full hilarious effect) and with her came the confidence that the school could do musicals (we couldn't). She gave it a bloody good go though, starting with 'Bugsy Malone'. I read for it, got a part, rented the film from the video shop to see who I was going to be, discovered it was this fat fuck:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mVZmW59AAgw/maxresdefault.jpg

LEROY. I was a tubby bastard in middle school so I took this as a personal affront. I couldn't be any other part? I had to be the short-sighted fat sidekick? Fuck that, Miss Cockram, I'm out. I walked. 

 

This meant the next year when they did 'Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat', I was never going to be in the running for anything, so ended up with what was basically a cameo as a Hairy Ishmaelite. Bloody weird show, was our middle school production of 'Joseph'. Joseph himself was played by a bloke called David who was going through puberty at the time and each song carried a high risk of his voice breaking partway through. 'Close Every Door' swung on a knife edge from night to night. Miss Cockram also saw fit to add two additional narrators played by two guys in my year dressed in drag, and added a scene where two 13 year olds playing Potiphar's bodyguards did a strip to 'Hot Stuff'. Also the Blues Brothers were in it.

 

So, for the young actors among you, let's hear it. What do you remember about school plays?

[Tommy!]

I was a crocodile at aged 5

Sheppered at 6

Postman at 7

The fat one from Keenan & Kell at 10

After that I did fuck all, at high-school there was no interest in me and despite living a life longing to do it I'm just not going to be good at it, so why make a fool of yourself. 

That said I did win the talent show one year with the lumberjack song, but that was all down to the womans underwear. 

[Daaaaaad!]

5 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

The fat one from Keenan & Kell at 10

Pictures please... 

[Statto]

Growing up in rural Norfolk, my small (roughly 450 kids) village high school had one non-Caucasian student. One year, we did an Easter story play, and the only black kid in school was cast as Jesus. Not massively subtle.

I was Pontius Pilate in that one, and one of the most attractive girls in year 11 was cast as my wife, which as a massively obese year 9 was a highlight of my life to that point.

The following year we did Salome, in which I was cast as Tigellinus. Fearing being typecast as a agent of Roman government, that was the last play I did at school other than a bit part in Richard III (townsperson or somesuch) which came during my GCSEs, meaning I failed to learn my (roughly 3) lines, came on stage during the first performance, repeated a line one of the other characters had said moments before my cue, then stared blankly at the other actors until they carried on regardless.

[Astro Hollywood]

Aged 6, I was the lead villain in Robin Hood and the Seven Ugly Sisters, in a performance Alan Rickman surely used as basis for his Sheriff of Nottingham some years later. I was even photographed in the local paper, scowling with my arms folded, and a curly tash drawn on, giving me an early taste of fame I've been chasing ever since. I still remember the line "More music, more wine!" as Greensleeves played. For years and years, I drew on my casting as evidence I had it. They must have spotted it from an early age; this natural, god-given talent for performance, to be the star among the crowd. This was proof that I was special, and would go onto great things in the arts, or why else would I just have been given the main part?

Imagine finding out in your late 20s that the only reason you'd gotten that role all those years ago was because your mum had gone in and threatened the teacher

(note: my mum's not a psycho, I had been cast in a substantial role the year before, but missed the dress rehearsal through chicken pox and was replaced, hence the parental intervention)

Also, my cousin ran a Christian youth-theatre group (I didn't go to church, but he was (and remains to this day) my cousin, and another of my cousins went too), during which I played the dual roles of Jackdaw and The Fat Man (typecasting for the young me) in CS Lewis' The Magician's Nephew. There was a line where I had to be embarrassed, so nicked the bit from Red Dwarf where Rimmer bites his fist. One night, during a scene where the stage was completely dark, my younger cousin whispered to me that he'd left his trainers on (he was a bulldog), so I had to sneakily hide them in bits of the set, in the dark. What an amazing anecdote. Also, I did some actual street-dance with the same group, in the highstreet, wearing a blank face-mask and doing robotics. Basically, I was the 90's George Sampson.

Our junior school had yearly 'talent' shows. Aged 8, I was Cannon to my mate Drew's Bobby Ball (he had the braces). Aged 9, I did a solo Jonathan King impression, which involved me wearing a cap, my mum's sunglasses, and making my mouth go all wonky while saying "I'm Jonathan King, and I'm a nonce," minus the nonce bit. Aged 10, I did a self-penned rap, The Dopey Disco Rap, that lead to me once being beaten up in seniors about five years later by a group of sixth formers who remembered it and tried to force me to perform it like a monkey.

I was Bruce Forsyth in an excretable Generation Game skit in the senior school arts festival, and once hijacked an entire drama lesson to perform a rendition of Python's Every Sperm is Sacred, complete with giant cardboard sperm props, and a jar full of fake cum.

[Tommy!]

5 minutes ago, Daaaaaad! said:

Pictures please... 

None taken. There may be a VHS of me in my pants with crocodile jaws on my arms chasing a explorer with toilet roll binoculars, but that's all there is from any of them. 

[Carbomb]

Was in my secondary school and counterpart girls' school's joint production of The Crucible at 16. Played the main role, John Proctor, opposite an Abigail Williams played by Sophie Winkleman, who went on to be Big Suze in Peep Show.

[Gus Mears]

I got a fair few of the plumb roles due to my vague acting and singing ability, which has translated to approximately fuck-all of note since about year 10.

Y1- Joseph
Y5- Magic bean seller
Y6- Pied Piper
Y7- Nick Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream, quite proud of that one, was performed at Salisbury Playhouse and I was the youngest member of the cast by a a million (3) years.
Y8- Oliver Twist in the musical version (the final night of which came about a fortnight before my balls dropped, a real boon as people didn't have to listen to my baritone attempts at youthful falsetto)
Y10- One of the sons in Death of a Salesman, the one who had a meltdown about nicking pens or something.

I still have the cringe worthy video cassette Pied Piper, which is largely me in green and yellow tights, skipping around a sports hall and occasionally rapping. No, I'm not uploading it. I did manage to get myself over in my head by including wrestling taunts sporadically. The Hulkster was repping the green and yellow back in year 6, brother.

I also vaguely remember doing the bean seller role as Chris Tarrant on Who Wants to Be a MIllionaire, "No, we don't want to give you those beans". Horrendous.

[Guest]

In what my primary school called the "nursery" (a pre-school year before joining the "infants"), we did a production of When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney. A lad who fancied himself as a tough guy even then was cast in the lead role, which required him to sit in a cardboard box (the titular chimney) until the rest of us reached the end of the song, at which point he'd pop up through the lid in his red suit and white beard with the final words, "Atchoo! Atchoo! Atchoo!"

Unfortunately in rehearsals this hard nut was found to be scared of the dark and couldn't cope inside the box without crying for his mum. And thus - cometh the hour, cometh the man - I landed my big break in that little business we call "show."

[PunkStep]

@Tommy! What did this Kenan and Kel performance entail? I'm hoping it was a courtroom drama based on the findings of a metal fixing inside a fish product...

I was a bit of a thespian at school. I was also a little shit, so my music teacher laughed at me in year 8 when I said I wanted to join the school play when they asked pupils last minute to play small parts. After that, I played Mendel (the rabbi's son in Fucker On The Roof- not going to fix that autocorrect, that's a gem) in my first proper part.

It wasn't a big part but that led to being cast in our school's version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), an Edinburgh fringe and West End comedy. There are only three characters in the show so they split the nine of us into three groups of three playing the characters, each performing three acts. By far the most enjoyable play I've ever performed in, the two guys I performed with were school friends of mine and were funny as fuck. Rehearsals were an absolute blast.

This led to two lead parts, the Stage Manager in Our Town and Alan West in Savages. After that, as was the case for any Drama GCSE students, I wasn't allowed to participate in any school plays during Years 10 & 11 as we had to write, produce, direct and perform in our own productions- which was loads of fun. Much more fun than Savages, which was fucking deep- telling a story about a British officer and Brazilian tribes was not filling a 15 year old me with much excitement. Around this time I also performed as an extra (acting, not dancing) for the European Ballet Company.

I did well in my drama GCSEs, had dreams of treading the boards for a living but mum wanted me to pass my A-Levels first so I had a back-up...so I proceeded to spend the entire 2 years of 6th form catching up on the past 3 years of wrestling I hadn't watched, downloading pictures of Trish Stratus, creating silly music on Dance eJay and playing Pokemon Red. Unsurprisingly, this led to me failing my A-Levels and my mum telling me to 'forget about drama college, you can go and get a job after pissing two years away you little shit'. Oh well. AAAAND scene.

[hallicks]

2 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

This meant the next year when they did 'Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat', I was never going to be in the running for anything, so ended up with what was basically a cameo as a Hairy Ishmaelite. Bloody weird show, was our middle school production of 'Joseph'. Joseph himself was played by a bloke called David who was going through puberty at the time and each song carried a high risk of his voice breaking partway through. 'Close Every Door' swung on a knife edge from night to night. Miss Cockram also saw fit to add two additional narrators played by two guys in my year dressed in drag, and added a scene where two 13 year olds playing Potiphar's bodyguards did a strip to 'Hot Stuff'. Also the Blues Brothers were in it.

I showed this to my musical theatre obsessed wife and she laughed so much - thanks!

[hallicks]

Yr 5 - I was in the lollipop guild in the Wizard of Oz. My mum knitted me blue woollen braces. Painfully obvious years later that, yes, they were laughing at me.

Yr 6 - Keith (the annoying little brother) in Evacuees. For years, people would remind me of my most famous line - "I wanna go to the lavatory."

In my gap year after A Levels, I did absolutely nothing apart from come to the realisation that going to Uni was probably a good idea. Towards the end of it, one of the teachers from my old school called me up to ask if I could be in "Grease" because someone had dropped out, so I was bussed in as a T bird. Decent, mid-sized part with a song, also I had my trousers pulled off and took a bump on the stage. Loads of fun.

And then tasked with making a 3 minute film in 2nd year of Uni, there was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMS6l8hlNGM

[Bus Surfer]

I can't remember how old I was, or what school year I was in, but I fondly remember being 'Tarfa' in our Christmas production of Tarfa and the Trolls in Junior school. 

As I recall, there was a gripping scene where Tarfa was chained up or something like that and had to realise his inner strength to break free. Naturally, I did the Hulk Hogan post match ring celebrations to emote this to the audience. They clapped and Mrs. Cooper cried happy tears. My finest performance.

Other notable mentions:

 

Shepherd 

Ugly Sister

Generic Mob member

Jacob Marley (This is well remembered as I got to snog Holly Simson backstage before hand) 

[Tommy!]

9 hours ago, PunkStep said:

@Tommy! What did this Kenan and Kel performance entail? I'm hoping it was a courtroom drama based on the findings of a metal fixing inside a fish product...

 

It was a shortened version of an episode where someone robbed a shop they worked in if I recall right. There was definitely a hold up in there. 

 

Edit: for an extra dose of surreal not only was everyone white as a bottle of blue top, the lad playing the orange soda one was about a foot shorter than me. 

[BomberPat]

After a couple of years of generic non-speaking roles in nativity plays ("you can be a star! You can be an additional shepherd!"), presumably due to a childhood speech impediment, my big break came when, in Year 5, the school decided they were going to do A Christmas Carol, and I was given the equally non-speaking, but much cooler and more substantial, role of The Ghost Of Christmas Future. I wore a dressing gown and pointed at things.

In Year 6, for some talent contest or other, I "wrote" a short Discworld play along with, probably, my brother and a couple of friends. I barely remember it, but I assume that we just cribbed and dialogue from the books wholesale and cobbled it into something vaguely structured. I can't even remember who I played, only that I wasn't the Luggage, which was my mate Hugh in a shitty homemade costume, scampering across the stage on his knees to the only genuine laugh of the night. I must have had a speaking part in this one, so it amazes me that it's not ingrained in my brain as an even more horrendously awkward moment than it obviously was.

We tried the same "just steal all the jokes from Discworld" bit in Year 7 at Grammar School, and got praised for writing a witty, inventive play...until the Drama teacher/Deputy Head/Massive Scary Bastard actually read the thing and recognised immediately that it was just a scene from a Discworld book with the names changed, and a couple of Monty Python gags thrown in for good measure. I don't think that one was ever performed.

 

Obviously that last one left my theatrical reputation in tatters, so it was years before I took to the stage again, despite leaving the country. As far as I can recall, I never acted at all in my second secondary school, and hated the drama class as much as I hated everything else about the fucking place.

Second year at college I played Riff Raff in a weird, awful production of Rocky Horror, in which the film was actually screened, and actors only came out to act out certain scenes alongside the film. Presumably because they couldn't trust any of us to sing a fucking note.

 

Since leaving education (as a student, anyway), I've played a ludicrously camp Kendo Nagasaki in a five-minute short I co-wrote, and played an evil woodland spirit thing from Jersey folklore for a photoshoot/short film, that mostly entailed me looking like the Judderman, covered in black bodypaint, muck and make-up, with big wooden wings and a headpiece, stood around in my pants in the woods.