Oh Tennis Ball…I cower before thee!
Okay so I went to a stage reading last night. For those of you not aware, a stage reading is essentially a playwright’s attempt to showcase before an audience, his/her written work in its barest form…no costumes, no production values, minimal rehearsal preparation. Sounds interesting right?
Wrong.
Imagine the most beautiful man/woman/mammal in the world. Got the image in your head? Congrats…you’re going to go on a date with her skeleton…no muscular system, no nervous system, not even her endocrine system. The liver is the frigg’n slut of the human body and you’re not even going to get to second base with it. That’s what a stage reading is. Now I know some people like to see the skeleton but I prefer to at least see some semblance of the final product.
There are of course exceptions which I won’t bore you with but again…it’s still a skeleton but somehow they made it dance, sing or put a hat and boa on it and made it talk like Calista Flockhart. Amusing and interesting but still…not quite right.
Cue last night.
The only reason people go to these things is if they’re in the industry or a friend of the production (the latter for me). So I’m there to be supportive because as a wannabe writer, I like to see my colleagues out in the trenches, exposing themselves to public ridicule and disparagement.
Which I’m happy to oblige.
This play wasn’t so much bad (although my good friend who actually had to read the lines used much stronger language) as it was ridiculously contrived and overly sentimental. Full of saccharine but advertising itself as all natural. That’s not the worse part. I’ve seen plays and movies like this. TNT and its much ballyhooed "New Classics" has made it their goal to force feed me movies I carefully avoided like Stepmom, While You Were Sleeping, and the very very scary Pay It Forward with cute demon spawn Haley Joel Osment. I’ll relate my fear of Pay it Forward another time. Anyway, these kinds of things are annoying but harmless.
But then there was that tennis ball.
As I said above, a stage reading is just actors reading right from the script. There’s barely any kind of movement involved and if so, its very rudimentary. But someone decided to add a prop. This prop was a tennis ball.
This tennis ball stole the show.
It rolled around on the stage floor.
It bounced off the wall.
It got thrown from one actor to another.
It never forgot its lines.
It was pleasantly spherical and its lime green fuzziness was quite comforting.
In everyway possible, this green tennis ball in its 10 minutes of stage time stole the show and upstaged the actors in every way. Hell. It made me forget what anyone was saying. The show was all about this tennis ball…
…and the tennis ball wasn’t even billed in the playbill.
OH Tennis Ball…truly you are the king of kings…a thespian like no other…I cower before thee…and to all you actors, directors, and writers…woe be to you in underestimating its awesome power. You cannot tame it…cast the glorious tennis ball at your own risk.
That is all.
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Oh and the play was about some old white guy trying to teach and reform a young urban (translation: black/hispanic) boy. Hmm. That’s quite original. I hope to see the finished product some day.
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Random Sang Trivia: Sang was mugged at the age of 12…it was over a quarter.
