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The day Lyndsay Flynn announced to my grade twelve Drama class during the first semester of the 1999-2000 school year that she was looking for help, as well as would be holding auditions soon for her play I didn’t think much of where it would take me. I of course had an interest in working on theatre outside of school. I was missing having extra-curricular theatre and didn’t know how to get involved with community theatre productions. I listened intently to the information divulged by Lyndsay about the play and about auditions and followed through on that information. At the audition I filled out a form that would allow the organizers to know who I was and what my talents were. The audition went well and I was called back to read for a few different roles. The one thing however is that Lyndsay and Kendra thought of me as second choice for any of those roles and I did not get called to be asked to be cast. They knew that I had experience and knowledge of stage work and knew, because of the form that was first filled out by me that I could help them in any area of production that was needed. They did not call me right away to help with the play. Instead they asked me to help organize an improv night that would serve as a fund raiser for the plays financial demands.

A week later I found myself in the hospital suffering from acute appendicitis. I was unable to organize the promotion and production of the night of Improv that had been planed.

I did not return to school, or talk with Lyndsay for another two weeks. It was December and the day I returned to school was the day before winter break. The only reason I came in that day was to talk with my teachers about missed assignments. I offhandedly popped into the Student parliament room to say hello to a few friends who I’d been missing dearly.

Lyndsay and Kendra were there as well as many other friends that I knew from the drama scene. The Improv Night was that night. I had almost forgotten about it until that point. The entire group of people was so glad to see me. They seemed as though they missed me half as much as I had missed them. I missed them more I’m sure, because during the weeks before that I felt so alone and isolated in my illness. Lyndsay asked me if I would stay and be in the Improv show. I’d missed being with my friends so much, and could not say no to the chance at having a social experience after such prolonged isolation from my friends.

I weakly preformed, but I felt alive in those moments on stage with my friends. I’d felt more alive in those moments on stage performing then I ever remembered feeling alive before I had been ill (an illness that had me on the brink of death). After the show was over the cast was going out to socialize at Melanie Pringles. I could have gone home to rest, but I was feeling alive by being with my friends, and fellow performers. I went out with them. I’d only been out of the hospital for a week, and in fact hadn’t left my house in that entire week. The theatre showed me what life was little by little in those experiences of friendship and energy. I stayed out until midnight that night, with my friends, laughing and talking, and living. I had gone out that afternoon to assess my scholastic standings before another two-week break, and the result was that I had found something that called me back to live. The stage and those people who shared it with me in some way or another made me know what I had lived for.

With my participation in that Improv show and the social time after it came calls inviting me to production meetings. I became dedicated to that show, even though I was not going to be delivering lines on stage. I was named the “dedicated crew member”, but grew to have such an understanding of all aspects of the show that they later gave me the title of Assistant Stage Manager. It was a great feeling to have recognition.

After that show was finished running I felt empty because I no longer has something I was so passionate about to commit myself to. I had become good friends with Nicole and Kendra because of my time dedicated to that production, and they later invited me to be an Assistant Stage Manager for The Rocky Horror Show with Hourglass Theatre. That musical gave me more life yet, as I made new friends and was given the gift of being able to be around that creative energy night after night until Canada day came around. It became a part of my life that I will always look back on with joy, and pride. I put a lot of work into that show when it ran in those months last year.

The emptiness I felt after the end of the first production since my appendectomy was nothing compared to how I felt after Rocky was over. It had taken up so much of my time and I didn’t know what to do with myself after it was over. For a month I trotted around with friends, aimlessly doing inane things that teenagers do during the summer months, but what I longed for the most was to stage manage another show, to be part of something again, as I had before. The answers to my prayers came one night in July when I was at The Different Drum Café, a pub in Oshawa. Members of the West-Side Story and Picnic casts were at the pub that night, and I talked with one of the actors. We spoke about theatre and how I longed for another show. I told him about the plays I’d been involved in and my roles in them. He introduced me to the director of Picnic. I gave the director my card, along with names and numbers of reference. A few weeks later I got a call. He wanted me to be his assistant in the production of Picnic. I began working on that production in August and the show open and ran through September. Being involved with the two other shows made me eligible to work with this show, of a community theatre that not a year earlier I’d had no idea how to become involved with.

Immediately after Picnic Lyndsay asked me to be Assistant Director and Stage manager to another production that she and Kendra’s company were going to be performing in December of 2000, The effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds. I accepted. On the cast was Elektra Simms, who had been in Picnic and that first show I’d worked on as well. It was wonderful. A few weeks after ‘Gamma Rays I ran into Elektra’s mom at a grocery store. She told me that the Whitby Courthouse Theatre was having auditions soon for a play, and wanted to let me know, just incase I was interested. I’d never done a production with the Courthouse Theatre and knew that this audition would give me the chance to at least say that I tried to take part in yet another show.

I hadn’t done any acting outside of class, and had been putting my efforts towards the technical aspects of production for a whole year outside of class, and in class as well. I went to the audition that Elektra’s mom told me about expecting to be called back yet again only to be asked if I would please Stage Manage because of all of my wondrous experience. I auditioned for fun that first night with Whitby Courthouse Theatre, not thinking much of things, and using skills I’d learned in class. The result of the audition came about differently than how I’d expected it too. I was called back, not to “please be stage help”, but to read for one of the parts. I went again, keeping in mind that most callbacks really don’t mean that much. I had fun with it. I displayed ease with the stage and a command of the environment. I displayed something that appealed to the casting directors, because the next time I received a call from them it wasn’t to ask me if I would be stage help, or to tell me “sorry”, that I “didn’t make the cut”, but instead when I heard back next from them I was sitting in The Different Drum Café with some friends, and answered my cell phone to be asked if I would please play the part of "Thelma", in Pack of Lies.

Tomorrow is the dress rehearsal for Pack of Lies, and we open Thursday night, April 26. My taking interest in going to that first audition for Lyndsay’s “little play” made it possible for me to say that I am now on stage with a community theatre that a little over a year ago I would have had no idea how to become involved with.

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