Blog: Articles filed under Black Light Theatre

Gather round, children, and hear a story from me as I rot my teeth with lemonade, licorice, and Coke.

Tonight we had another Black Light performance, this time at Hillcrest High School. Initially we were going to perform in the afternoon too, but that one got cancelled, leaving only the night one. As soon as I got home from school, Wanda picked me up and we drove to Hillcrest, arriving at around 4:30. From there, I helped set things up. One caveat: Hillcrest has a monsterous amount of stairs! Being built on the hilly part of town, there’s several metres of steep steps up which we had to bring our equipment (and then back down later that night). We had a dolly—which wasn’t very helpful with all those stairs.

I helped set up, and then as more people began to arrive, we tried to get things organised. Natasha ordered TacoTime for us…but they screwed up the orders and hadn’t even started to cook the food by 5:30—and we were on at 7! We ordered pizza instead, and it was pretty good.

First we did a rap of “Where is the Love?” (the Black-Eyed Peas version, and probably one of the only “rap/pop” songs of today which I actually like), followed by “Pong”, which consisted of green pool noodles and a tennis ball. Then came the littler kids’ “Radio Play”, in which there’s a series of vignettes, one from each musical era—‘50s, ’60s, ’70s, etc. I had some sign parts in there and such.

After a brief intermission, we got set up for the older kids’ play, “Freak Show Circus”. I play Kyle, the bi-polar kid—the play itself is about mental illnesses among teenagers, especially bi-polar disorder, eating disorder, OCD, and depression. I had to walk a “tight-rope” as a circus representation of the inner war within myself.

The performance was excellent—Hillcrest’s stage is way better than the one at the college. I could actually see, too, because I wore a belaclava and I used two little sponge things in between the mask and belaclava. This allowed me to wear my glasses during the performance without squishing them into my face.

The technical side…not so much. Our stereo (actually the school’s on-site thingy) broke. Luckily, some of the voices—Cortney, Kate, Shawna, et al—went out on stage and encouraged some “audience participation” whilst we attempted to find a fix. There were some Brownies in the audience, and they came up and did the Chicken Dance and got “interviewed” and such. It was almost as if we had planned it.

We found a stereo to use, and the rest of the play went off okay. I won’t say “without a hitch”, because there was a lot of “hitch”-ing, but in the end no one caught on fire and no one is taking us to court (yet), so I think it turned out well.

Now I’m going to go to bed, because I am beat. Everyone was awesome, so thanks for another great time, guys (as if anyone from Black Light actually reads this ). Sleep now.

So I joined this informal sort drama group known as “Black Light Theatre,” which does their performances in, not surprisingly, under black light. Several of my friends were already in it, so I decided I might as well join and have some fun.

I got drafted to play a “voice” (as opposed to a puppet) because the person who previously played the voice had moved away. So now I’m going to be an “angry dad” (the play, I gather, is about family issues). The atmosphere is quite informal, as obviously I‘m diving right in. Meanwhile, we’re working on a new play, this one about mental illnesses in adolescents at high school. That’ll be interesting… .

Thanksgiving long weekend! Pie, pie, pie! Turkey! Cranberry sauce! Stuffing!