my roles....

 Seeing the Shakespeare scenes yesterday made me think about my various roles in Shakespeare's plays and I want to share a few memories.  Our previous director at First Presbyterian Theater loved Shakespeare, and produced one of the bard's plays per year.  Happily, I was able to get parts in some of them.  The first was my role as Romeo's mother.  I had five lines.  There's a bit of a back story here.  Before I auditioned for the play I was substitute teaching for an English teacher at a local high school.  One class was studying Romeo and Juliette and I was really into it.  At one point I was explaining that Juliette was no dummy.  She insisted on marriage before she let Romeo into her bedroom.  Just as I finished expounding on this I glanced down and realized that a girl in the front row appeared to be about eight months pregnant.  I was so embarrassed.  After Romeo and Juliet came Henry IV.  I played the nurse in the king's death scene.  Again about five lines.  Then there was Anthony and Cleopatra where I played the soothsayer.  I delivered lots of warnings and pithy advice and also delivered the asp to Cleo.  There were others but you get the idea.  Sadly, I had landed a really good role in a Shakespeare play and we had just started rehearsal when Covid struck and everything was shut down,  By the time that was all over our director had left and, while we hired an excellent new director, he doesn't do Shakespeare.  I have been in many other plays over the years and enjoyed them all, but there's something about Shakespeare.  By the way, if you ever want to see truly excellent performances of Shakespeare's plays go to Stratford, Ontario.  The summer theater actors there do an amazing job.