The first role of a lifetime

If you’ve seen me in the last couple weeks walking around town mumbling to myself, I swear I’m not going crazy.
Unless you count joining a play with absolutely no acting experience an act of insanity.
That’s right, I’m not talking to myself, I’m trying to learn lines for my latest -- and probably ill-advised -- endeavor: acting in a play.
I have a small (yet crucial, of course) role as cowboy Virgil Blessing in the Manistee Civic Player’s production of “Bus Stop.”
It’s not as far-fetched as you think. I’m no stranger to the stage. I’ve played guitar in rock and roll bands since I was 14 years old and have played most of the large venues in the Detroit area like St. Andrews Hall, Clutch Cargos and, just this past weekend, the Majestic Theater.
Plus, I’m a Greek. Well, half Greek at least. My people invented drama. I like to think that my blood traces back to the great dramatists Sophocles or Aristophanes, though my ancestors were probably the folks who followed sheep around Mount Olympus with a shovel.
I’ve never harnessed any of those atavistic dramatic abilities until now, yet I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be in a play.
So far, it’s been a fabulous experience.
The director Jackie Karnisz and the rest of the cast have welcomed me with open arms -- and, thankfully, a lot of patience.
I joined up a few weeks after they already had the ball rolling, when my colleague here at the newspaper, Dave Yarnell, who plays Carl the bus driver in the play, asked if I’d be interested in playing Virgil.
I took a look at the script. Virgil is a cowboy. What American boy doesn’t love cowboys? He is also a cowboy that plays the guitar in the play. I could do that too.
Then, I read the entire play, scribed by William Inge, and really liked it. It’s funny. It’s sad. It’s a story about our American loss of innocence, and the archetypes that played the roles in that grand drama of changing ideals as our country went through its painful adolescence (Civil War, the settling of the West) and young adulthood (Word War I and World War II). It’s also a story about the sexual politics of a society becoming increasingly liberal. Set in 1955, the play’s main character is Bo, a young, eager, post-pioneer cowboy in an era when the West was all but closed. He monomanically purses the slatternly Cherie, a nightclub singer and fallen woman. They are each other’s redemption. The drama unfolds while a busload of disparate American characters confront their own dilemmas while waiting out a winter storm at a diner in Kansas.
Antics, of course, ensue.
Getting involved in the play was a no-brainer after reading it. Virge is basically Bo’s right-hand man. A guitar strumming oracle. A touchstone of comfort for the young cowboy.
It was all fun and games until I started highlighting the lines I had to memorize. There were a lot of them. While stage-fright isn’t something that freaks me out too bad, there’s nothing more terrifying than forgetting what you have to say in front of a bunch of people waiting on you to say something.
It’s the stuff of nightmares, right?
In addition to that, you
But, like I said, the director and cast have been wonderful and forgiving whenever I mess up, especially Clyve Lagerquist, who does a terrific job of playing Bo, and Theresa Pepera, who does an equally great job of playing Cherie. I have most of my lines with them, and they -- as well as the rest of the cast -- have been nothing but encouraging.
So, with that said, the play opens up this Friday at the Ramsdell Theatre at 7:30 p.m. and will continue with 7:30 p.m. performances on Aug. 13, 19 and 20 and 2 p.m. performances on Sundays, Aug. 14 and 21.
Come and check it out.
Hopefully I’ll remember my lines.