After being stuck in the chorus in that horrible rock and roll show I wanted to show the teachers I really cared about acting. Not that I was particularly interested in acting, I just didn’t want to be dumped into the chorus of another mandatory school production. I also wanted to be popular. I voluntary signed up to be in the school play. We were going to perform “The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde”. I was not familiar with that story.

I didn’t want the part of the princess since she was the star and had too many lines to memorize. The witch was the co-star and had fewer lines to memorize. We had to make our own costumes and I didn’t have any formal dresses laying around. If I did I would have auditioned for one of the ladies in waiting. They didn’t do much in the play or have many lines. They just sat around the princess and like played a lute for her or something. I really wanted the part of the witch, and I already had a witch costume from Halloween. And I actually did get that part.The boys who played the princes who came to marry the princess had very simple costumes. All they had to wear was rolled up slacks to look like knickers a white button up shirt and a crown. The girl who got the role of the princess was very good and expressive. She was the most popular girl in the eighth grade. It was not that hard to memorize my lines since I only had two big scenes. At first I was having a hard time getting into character. The teacher told me to portray the witch character like the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz movie. I had to go to rehearsals almost every day after school. They kept telling me to bring bobby pins to pin the hat to my head. I forgot to bring bobby pins to pin the hat to my head. I got in trouble for that.

On the night of our performance there were three schools that preformed that night. We were the last school to perform since my school was the school that hosted the event. The first school performed an Anansi story. It was set to very slow music.

The girl playing the princess was wearing a beret that hid her wig cap before the show. I don’t see why the teacher thought she couldn’t use her real hair. She had a bob haircut and her hair was not dyed an unnatural color or anything like that. Perhaps the teacher wanted a blond princess? The teacher herself was blond, bottle blond because you could see her dark roots, and her hair looked like straw. The wig was so awful and cheap looking. It was curly on top and crimped on the bottom. It was so stiff too. She would have been better off using her real hair. She wore a white billowy dress which was the same one she wore at the haunted house where she was dressed as a dead girl. I remembered because I had seen a picture of her in that dress from last Halloween. We had to change in the library during the second performance so we did not see what they performed.

I came onstage very much in character for my first scene. I walked out hunched over and talked with an elderly sounding voice. During my scene I lost my place and I broke character. I strutted offstage swinging my prop cauldron. I don’t remember what my second scene was. I died in the play, but I died off stage. My death was nothing more than me screaming offstage while they banged a drum and the lights flickered.

The bad thing about hosting the event was that once the students from the other school once got their award on stage they left with their families. By the time my school accepted out awards there were hardly anybody there - just our parents, the principal and a few other people.

After the show my mom told me the witch costume I wore looked all thin and tattered, and not as a compliment. She told me the group we didn’t see performing did skits.

The post play cast party was pretty fun though. We had ice cream and brought sprinkles for it. I remember because I got a big container of them and stuck them in my pocket. They were still sealed. The heavy container of sprinkles weighed down my pants. I looked pretty silly carrying them to the cast party. I also made a few friends from people in the cast.

After all that work it was for nothing because I changed school a few months later.