In school and other youth productions, I nearly always got stuck with shared roles. Even when I had barely any lines or only one scene, I still only got to do it for half the nights, while leads and friends got roles all to themselves. If everyone had to share then that’s because you have to split the roles among a million kids. But that was never the case. Often larger roles than mine were not shared. The only way I can interpret this is that I was awful, but they were obliged to give me a role to retain The Loyalty, but they found a way to cut the suffering in half. Which is just great. Just great.
But there was one time, we were doing three shows and I was down to play two of them, and when I turned up, in the back of The Mind I pleaded for the chance to play every night.
And then, over strode the lead, a tall handsome chap who hadn’t spoken a word to me in any rehearsal.
“She’s not in,” he said. “So you’ll be doing the role tonight.”
He turned and walked off.
The Prayers had actually been answered.
The lead turned back, shocked. “By the way, she cracked her head open this afternoon. She’s in hospital.”
(It actually gets worse. The co-role sharer was recovered enough by the final performance to return, but that was the one The Parents were coming to see, so I managed to use this as emotional leverage to get to still perform rather than doing the decent thing and stepping down to let her act. Because I am a weasel.)
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