(Retrospection)These two pictures were taken just after our high school performance of "West Side Story". As you can see, I'm doing the "Ah, Mom, are you really going to take my picture here in front of everyone," pose.
I played one of the Sharks (I forgot what my name was supposed to be. It was a none speaking role so I didn't even know I had a name until the play bills got printed). At our predominantly Dutch school there weren't a lot of us who looked very Puerto Rican, so the make-up department made due by attempting to spray paint my hair black and trying to darken my skin a bit. I guess you can judge for yourselves by looking at the pictures how effective this was.
To give the final scene more of a somber attitude, the costume department wanted to hide all the bright colors we had been wearing throughout the rest of the play, and we were all given old sweaters or shawls to wear overtop. Some of us protested that a street gang member would never be caught dead wearing these old lady sweaters, but these complaints were ignored. (I suppose when you're doing a production of "West Side Story", realism isn't the first thing you're worried about.)
Thinking that my friends would find the sweater amusing, I tried to employee the old tactic of making fun of myself first so they couldn't say anything. "Here I am, a streetgang member, wearing a sweater. Can you believe it? What can of street gang dresses like this?" Etc.
I probably overdid it because they thought the fact that I was going on about it was funnier than the sweater itself. They suggested I go on the road with it as a Comedy routine. "My name's Joel Swagman and this is my sweater..."
I had been a big fan of the musical "West Side Story" ever since my music teacher showed us the movie in 7th grade. I think I've outgrown it now, but for years afterwards I loved it. (Why I always love cheesy retro stuff is another question. Like most people I have a hard time rationally justifying my guilty pleasures.)
When our school put on West Side Story my senior year I decided to I should give it a try, even though I had never tried out for a school play before. Acting wasn't my strong point, but I loved the play and decided I had nothing to lose by giving it a go.
Knowing that I wasn't any good at either singing or dancing, I tried out for one of the 4 non-singing/dancing roles. In my head I had a great vision of myself giving a really dramatic reading, but my body and my voice didn't cooperate and I knew I hadn't passed. At the end of the audition, those of us who had tried out were asked if we would be willing to have our names put in for consideration for the singing/dancing parts as well. Almost all of us said yes. I mean, why not, what did we have to lose?
So, I got in with a part that required a bit of singing (as part of the chorus, no solos), and a bit of dancing, but no speaking lines. Actually given how badly I did in the audition I was surprised I even got that. (There were rumors of politics going on in the audition process. People who were already had ties to the drama department got preferential treatment, and I had been a member of the Forensics team --in the informative speaking event).
Since I was already on the Swim Team, I was doubly committed during the 3 months of practice. There were a couple other guys who were in the same predicament as me. Everyone had to sign a contract saying that we would put play practice as our first priority instead of other extra-curriculars.
In the past this could potentially have been a disaster with the old swim coach. But there had been a changing of the guard the previous year, and the new swim coach was an alumni of the drama department herself and was more than happy to accommodate our schedule.
After school I would attend play practice from 3 to 5, and then swim practice from 5 to 7. And as this was my fourth year slugging it out through the gruelling swim team season (without ever having risen to any sort of athletic prominence on the team) I was more than happy to miss extra swim practice when play practice ran late. If play practice would run over by a half an hour or 45 minutes, everyone would be standing around complaining, except for me. I would be gleefully looking at my watch and counting all the time of swim practice I had already escaped from. The rest of the cast wanted to kill me sometimes when I would act too happy that play practice was running overtime.
There was one major swim meeting in which we were in danger of losing our status as undefeated inside our city league for 6 years. The coach (understandably) needed everyone there for the whole meet, and so we had to plead with the drama teacher to let us off for that one night. She gave us the standard guilt trip, and then acquiesced. (Incidentally we still lost that swim meet).
I had a lot of fun doing the daily play rehearsals despite my minimal role (or maybe because of it: I spent a lot of time just goofing off with friends when I wasn't on stage). And I made so many good friends that I didn't want to see the whole thing come to an end. But of course like all good things, eventually it did.
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