For my first outing (that didn’t include a doctor’s visit), I went to the closing performance of FISH WRAP at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport.
What a thrill! I have loved going to Lake County Theatre Company productions and to go to one that deals with the newspaper industry was perfect.
Not sure that I’d be able to sit through an entire production without a bottle of magic fairy dust to quell the pain (know this: I HATE writing about my pain from a recent back operation, but it is what it is and it’s part of what’s going on with me), and the trip to the Soper Reese was my first public outing in five months. Five isolated months!
So, I was excited, especially to go to FISH WRAP, a play about the industry I’m involved in. Long before it opened, I saw a post about auditions for it and I was tempted to go to them. It’s been a fantasy of mine to be in a play. Since high school, when I auditioned for a part in some play and I got up in front of the class to do a skit. I embarrassed myself so badly that I drowned that fantasy right then and there. I kind of remember playing the part of a maid based on Hattie McDaniel’s maid in “Gone With the Wind.” Stupid me.
Sadly, I didn’t go to the auditions. I also passed on going to John Tomlinson’s (instructor at Mendocino College) Impromptu Class at Mendocino College. Just too darn afraid of not being able to pull it off. Perhaps most people feel that way.
As I sat in the FISH WRAP audience, I wondered which part I could have played. Definitely the part of Imogene, the hypochondriac office manager, played brilliantly by Kathleen Escude. Those types of thoughts didn’t last long as the dialog between the actors was sprinkled with witty bits that were laugh-out-loud funny, and I didn’t want to miss a thing.
I was amazed at the amount of dialog the actors had to memorize. Ariel Carmona, my editor at the Lake County Record-Bee, went to a rehearsal early on where the actors hadn’t quite got their lines down. He was sure they’d make it happen by opening day. I suggested that we go to see the play together as it was all about a small-town newspaper, kind of like the Record-Bee. The actors said their lines perfectly, in fact they owned their lines, their characters.
But how could they do it? How would I ever be able to memorize a script of dialog when I can’t remember what I went into the kitchen for? Laura McAndrews Sammel, who played Judy Alworth, editor of The Independent newspaper, had a large dialog-filled role. I asked her how she was able to embody her lines when she had a full-time job and husband.
Sammel told me, “Memorizing those lines was rough for me this show. First, I haven’t been in a production for over three years, thanks to the pandemic. Second, there was no music! I never appreciated how much I used the cadence to help me memorize.
“It was hard. I cried. In the end, my husband saved the day. He must have read that script to me 200 times.”
Sammel said that it was a great experience, that she “wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything.”
I loved the character that Tim Barnes played, Willard, who was the newspaper carrier. He was perfectly creepy, and smelled so bad to the other people in the office, that they tried to move away from him. Imogene constantly sprayed perfume to counteract Willard’s stench. It was a great role and Barnes played the creepiness to the hilt. I swear the audience could smell Willard!
That was a role I would have loved to play.
When I was in my 30s, I dressed up for Halloween as something beautiful and always stayed in character. In my 40s, my Halloween characters went to the dark side. Nothing pretty about them. In fact, I was once a 90-year-old whore with a very naughty persona who stayed in character the entire night. Won me the first-place $50 prize! No one knew who I was, in fact the next day friends asked me why I wasn’t at the party. I told them I was sick.
So, I like to play a part, just never played one on a stage.
However, I did play the role of wife several times, but those productions closed early!
What’s a girl to do?…muster a backbone to audition for the next LCTC play!
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a columnist for the Record-Bee. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
