The Play’s The Thing

So Thursday night I threw on a tie/cardigan and stepped into the past sans DeLoren to head back to high school. Ruby teaches drama at a private school in Hollywood and asked if I wanted to come and see their production of ‘Mid-Summer’s Night Dream’. Now I love Shakespeare so much—I minored in it—but I have a low threshold of bad performances of even the good plays much less the 2nd tier ones.

It was weird for me to be sitting around a quad with the girl’s field hockey team while Kirby and I waited for Heath to join us so we could get our tickets. I never really liked or disliked high school that much but always thought I was a bit too mature to have much fun. But after watching all the girls mingle and squeal and gossip I wonder if I was just being a snob. Of course I saw a few girls who were like I would have been with the all black and coffees and making fun of the giggly heifers but they seemed a bit too bored and trying to hard.

Finally Heath showed up and we made our way through the girls as the parents showed up. (Random side note—there were celeb parents there like Sean from ‘General Hospital’. I didn’t swoon.) We took our seats and settled into the gym where the stage was set up. I was impressed by the quality of the set and the obvious money they had at their disposal even though it looked like it was inspired by Demi Moore’ bedroom sense in ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ with blowing fabric similar to her curtains in the scene where she’s all freaked out about the coke. That being said—the show came to a slow start and I loved it.

It’s weird to see a play being done in a high school gym that is not only better done than anything you’ve seen in the last few years in Los Angeles theatre but that these high school kids managed to take a play I hate and make me care and root for things to all work out. I think it’s a huge testimony to Ruby’s great skills as a director (as well as how she really connects as a teacher) that I managed to either forget or ignore all my issues with the play. From top to bottom it was amazing. Even Kirby got into the show and she hates Shakespeare.

As we wander out at the end of the show through the proud parents and squealing teens and bashful boyfriends with their flowers I couldn’t help but be a little jealous. Not of being that young or even still in high school but of what it would have been like to go to a school like that and have a teacher like Ruby in my life back then. Would I have wanted to be an actor, would I learned to love the most dull of the bard’s works? Would I have been less bored and aloof as a teen? It’s an interesting thought.

Though it still kills me that one couple in the play only works out due to magic and trickey. It just seems so unfair. But that’s probably because I can’t use magic to make someone love me.