Acting

In addition to Gaming and Writing, Acting is another one of my creative outlets. Since Kindergarten, I've always liked hamming it up for an audience. There's a video tape of my dad's parents 50th wedding anniversary somewhere that has a record of me acting my age. I also volunteered a lot at my church to participate in VBS productions when I was in the Youth Group there. In college (the first time around), I took Vocal Production for the Stage as my public speaking requirement. While in that class, I auditioned for and got a part in the instructor's production of Toys for Men and Nice People Dancing to Good County Music, two sequential one-act plays that use the same characters. It ran for three nights and on the third night, I got the greatest compliment of them all.

See, the part I got was of the teenager character with a bad, snotty attitude. On the third night of the play, I had to hustle from my part-time job as a security guard for a lamp store (I'm not making this up!) to get to the theater on time. I gave the best performance of the three nights and afterwards changed back into my security uniform before leaving since I had no other change of clothes. On exiting the green room, there were two elderly ladies in the hallway who gave me funny looks. One asked, "Were you in the play just now?" to which I answered very politely and professionally, "Yes Ma'am. I played the teenager." She got a sour look and told me, "Oooo! I could have slapped your face." This, of course, meant I played the part exactly right, so I smiled as big as I could and said, "Thank you Ma'am. That's what I was going for." We all laughed and I was riding high on that compliment for the rest of the week.

I've since pursued other interests like pursuing bad relationships, paying bills, and raising a family since then, so I haven't had much opportunity to act until earlier this year. Around March of 2021, my wife (I'm newly remarried if you haven't read up on that yet.) got me in contact with a friend of hers who got me an audition with The Dinner Detective productions. They host comedic interactive dinner theater murder mysteries. I auditioned and was accepted into the Louisville Cast. I've performed about once a month since being hired, and I'm having a blast. I've been the murderer twice now. I do get paid for each performance, but since I'm not making myself available for EVERY performance, it's more like a hobby than a career. But it scratches that itch to perform. I'll take it for now.

-9/2/21-