Blog: Trust Me, I Played a Doctor

I have been in theatre all four years of high school, but never truly got “into”  it until this past year, with multiple opportunities. Playing Winston in our Advanced Rep rendition of “1984”, having my own frequent Friday (which you can view on the good ole Harbinger online, *wink *wink), going around to elementary schools and putting on a show for the kids and teachers. There was only one thing left for me to do to finish the year off right. Audition for a main stage. 

The show we put on last week was “The Government Inspector” by Nikolai Gogol. It was a satirical play about the Russian government set in a no-name town full of colorful characters and hysterical dialogue.

I went in to the audition with a monologue I found online. I can’t really recall what the name of the play I did the monologue from, but I do remember playing the king of the ocean, not Poseidon, but the other one…yeah that one. I got into the auditorium and saw both theatre teachers sitting at a table not far from the stage, the lights were off and the entire stage was lit up.

Sure enough, once I got to the end of my monologue I heard Cappello laughing, I took it as a sign of “he laughed because it was funny” not “he laughed because it was awful”. After a couple of days, the cast list went up. I looked and I saw my name: “Riley Watson…Doctor”. I asked Cappello who and what the Doctor did in the show and he replied with: “He has some of the funnier lines in the show, everything he says is in bird-speak.”

I took his word for it. After a couple of rehearsals I began to get the hang of the character. As a reference I was shown Andy Kaufman’s iconic foreigner character Latka from the TV show “Taxi” and because of this, I now love the antics of Andy Kaufman.

Once show week came around I wasn’t nervous. I was comfortable with all of the other cast members and they were all comfortable with me. We joked and had our fun backstage, making noises and quoting obscure YouTube videos. I have never had more fun at school until now. It gave me something to do with myself; usually I would go home and just sort of sit for a few hours. But there I would run around, talk, and joke with fellow classmates and cast members and have fun.

Now that the show is over I will truly miss it; it was fantastic by every stretch of the word. But I will always have that memory of being the center of attention in a main stage for only a couple seconds. If there are a couple of things I’ll regret about high school, it will be not being shoved in a locker as a freshman or not making the bowling team (twice) (*loud sigh). It won’t be for not trying out for a main stage show. Being in the show was a true one of a kind experience – it was the kind of experience that can only be understood from firsthand accounts. So, if you are reading, please keep theatre alive and kicking and try out for all the shows you can.