That Thespian Guy

I would like to apologize to my two loyal followers for not updating my blog in the past two weeks, but I've been really busy with an endeavor that doesn't really fall under my online persona of "That Guy." You see, I was acting in a community theater play and tech week and performance weekend have a nasty way of draining time and energy. But after the curtain closed and the set was struck, I just felt too moved by the whole experience not to write about it. And since this blog is my one corner of the internet I get all to myself I decided to make the most of it.

About a year ago, two ministers from my area decided to pen a musical about the life of the apostle Simon Peter ("The Rock"). They already had the music from a previous project and thought it would fit into a musical. After a few readings and iterations, the play Boulder Faith was born (click the link for the detailed origin story).

I had participated in a staged reading in which I played the apostle James and was told a number of times that I should come out and audition for the show when it was put on for real. At the time I dismissed most of these comments as idle lip service and smiled and thanked the people giving them.

But about two months ago, auditions rolled around and I couldn't keep myself away. After a few jokes with the directors, a little ditty I sang along to with my guitar, and an abridged dramatic performance of Raphael Casal's First Week of a Breakup I got a callback and ended up playing the roll of Simon Peter's younger brother Andrew.

Rehearsals were absolutely no fun at first. As we all struggled with lines and harmonies, patience wore thin and I, for one, wondered what I had gotten myself into. Especially because the scenes with all the apostles involved a lot of fast paced lines overlapping themselves so the tempo of a scene was SUPER dependent on no one missing even a single cue.

Well, we never got to a point where we never missed any cues, but we did get to a point where we were all comfortable enough with the various scenes so if(when) we did flub a line we could just keep moving. We all became artisans of the stage mistake and it served us very, very well.

In the end, we hit most of our cues, found our light and nailed our harmonies. The show had a one weekend run and all three nights we received standing ovations. And at one point I was even accosted by the local choir director for not singing in high school.

But even beyond the glorious reception, I am grateful for the experience to share a stage and grow close to so many brilliantly talented people. The cast feels like a second family, and I wouldn't trade this experience for the world.

Thank God.

-That Guy

PS: Yep, That Guy believes in God. Deal with it.