Rehearsal!

I’m at rehearsal for the Fall Fest play as I write this. We’re working on “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s American classic. Rehearsal for this play has been different than any of the other plays I’ve been in at Bethel (which is all but one since I was a freshman, and the one I wasn’t in only had one part for a white male, and it went to a senior, as I was a freshman at the time), mostly because the cast is so big. Many larger plays are impossible to produce here just because there aren’t a huge number of us that are even interested. But John McCabe-Juhnke has decided to plow through, and he somehow got enough fantastic people to audition.So here we are, a couple weeks from production week and I’m sitting in the aisle of Krehbiel Auditorium making jokes about French Toast with one of my castmates.The last show I was in at Bethel was considerably smaller. Only three people showed up for the auditions, myself and two others, so the original production had to be scrapped and a new one with only three characters chosen. That was an experience in itself because it allowed John, who directed that show as well, to pick a play that fit the three people already in the cast very well.That show was a blast, more so after the fact than during. The production for last year’s spring show was short, stressful, and altogether awful during rehearsal, but a rush to perform onstage in front of an audience.This Fall Fest production considerably different. I’m playing a part I think is against type, I’ve already had to cut off most of my hair (it is shorter now than it has been since I started growing hair as an infant) and on top of that it’s smaller than most of my other roles. But that’s mostly by virtue of the size of the cast.And I’m having a ball. I’m meeting a bunch of new people and getting to know them pretty well just chatting in the aisles while a particular scene we aren’t in goes on onstage. I’m the only one in the cast with any sort of professional theatrical ambitions, but I am by no means the star of the show, as much as I’d like to be. The star of this show is that intangible, thriving, oft-mentioned and -mocked idea that permeates the entire atmosphere of Bethel: Community (bet you didn’t see that coming!). Which, coincidentally, is what makes theater happen as well.So you should come see Our Town if you find yourself in the area the first weekend of October. It’ll be awesome, I promise.