Meme: 5 questions

[gwendolyngrace]

Last week, here_be_dragons asked me to answer 5 questions.


1. What is the ultimate stage role you would like to perform?

And right away, it's impossible. There are SO MANY roles I would love to play, male and female:

Marian Paroo, The Music Man
Carrie Snow (or Julie Jordan-Bigelow), Carousel
Aldonza, Man of La Mancha
Edwin Drood, Mystery of Edwin Drood
Cervantes/Quixote, Man of La Mancha
Baroness (or Maria), The Sound of Music
Anna Leonowens, The King and I
Lucille Frank, Parade
Mother, Ragtime
Snoopy, Snoopy (I'd love to do a production of both Snoopy and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown with the cast playing the same characters (when applicable) in both shows)
Velma Kelly, Chicago
Peter Pan, Peter Pan
Charity Barnum, Barnum
Rutledge, 1776
Cat in the Hat, Seussical
the Entertainer, Pippin
Percy, The Scarlet Pimpernel
Belle, Beauty and the Beast

and straight shows, too....

Valmont, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind
Viola, Twelfth Night
Cyrano, Cyrano de Bergerac (I actually have done this, but scenes only. I'd love to do the full production)
Tracy Lord, The Philadelphia Story


Well, you get the picture. Most of them I'll probably never be cast in. Sigh.

But for an *ultimate* role? Probably Cervantes/Quixote, Percy Blakeney, or Mother.


2. You've landed that ultimate role. You get to cast the rest of the show (no limitations here; you can choose anyone you like). Who will be onstage with you?

Hee. You know my secret plot, right? If I ever win the lottery or suddenly come into a lot of money? I'd produce a Broadway production, picking out a star vehicle for myself, and screw the union. So fast it'd make your head spin.

I'm still hemming over the show (see above), and that would determine the casting quite a bit. Depends on when this happens. Before I'm 40? Which show?

It's hard. I've had an easier time picking my out my Cabinet for my various "I'll run for President" schemes.

With no limitations, it gets easier, because I'd bring back some people. But then they'd probably start decomposing, so ew.

Among living performers, well.... Ack. This sounds awful but I think I'd have to hold auditions. Since this is a vanity thing, there would be spots for actor-friends, of course. ;^D

Nope, I'd have to decide on the show first. And then figure out who's good enough to be great in the role, but not so great as to overshadow me. :D

After my triumphant success, of course, I'd go on to do shows with my heroes, like Barbara Cook, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, George Hearn, Ian McKellen, etc.

3. What is your very favorite childhood memory?

I don't have many childhood memories. I've blocked most of them out. In middle school my friends Melissa, Courtney, and Gretchen and I had these incredibly fun overnight parties, where we'd watch movies and play Atari and quote Monty Python. And late in Junior High I had a friend with this amazing black room in her basement, and she always used to give the best Halloween parties down there. After midnight, we'd sneak out of the house and wander around the neighbourhood in our costumes, then come back and read tarot cards and hold seances. That was pretty fun.


4. You can go back in time and stay there for one week, with no consequences of any kind (you can't be harmed, and you can't change history). Where and when would you go (and, of course, why)?

Damn, woman, you ask probing questions. Hm. I think I'd like to go all the way back, to see for myself how things started. Barring that, I'd go back to the week immediately preceding the first performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream to watch the Bard during an Elizabethan tech week.

5. What was the first piece of fiction you ever wrote?

Oh, yikes. Technically, it was probably some god-awful story I drew pictures for back in nursery school. (My mother has a box of this stuff that I intend to burn as soon as I can pry it away from her.)

But I would say that the first things I consider true writing probably came about when I was between 8 and 12. I made friends with a girl down the street - Disa - and we discovered role-playing and fanfiction together, before either of us ever knew what those terms were. We used to "play" on the phone for hours...which meant that we were spinning out Mary-Sue derivative role-playing scenarios based on Star Blazers and Robotech and early D&D and fairy tales and so on. I had blank books that I used, not for journaling, but for writing down these fantasies we would create together.



Yeah, that was a whole lot of embarrassing information that most of you probably didn't want to know. LJ Comments still seem to be finding their way more often to my Junk file than not, but if you comment, I'll try to come up with questions at least as pithy as Wendy's.

Comments

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of not looking for questions at the moment (though I bet you could ask some really interesting ones) but can I just say:

5. Damn, that's cool. When boys that age - and, indeed, often many years older - do this sort of thing, it always ends up being a dice-rolling combat-fest. You went about it the right way around. Of course there are exceptions to every gender stereotype, but I like your way of putting the game before the rules. You both won!

[gwendolyngrace.livejournal.com]

Hee... Well, I did play with a bunch of guys during high school, and yeah, it was always roll-playing instead of role-playing.

But I have to agree that my foundation in this way was a great proving ground for diceless role-playing systems.

Mostly I think it was just my acting and writing style finding some early practise.