What was your part(s) in the school play(s)?

I'm Asian. I played Abraham Lincoln in 3rd grade, because I was the only one who could remember the lines. I guess I was in the vanguard of " woke casting."

I was the Lion in the Wizard of Oz in the 2nd grade. Even as a kid I was a bear. I really wanted to be a yellow brick road because those kids had a fun costume. Mine was too hot.

In 6th grade, I played Scrooge. I flubbed one of my lines on the second night. People still said I was convincing.

First grade: a bluebird. I got to lead the sunbeams in from offstage, which meant holding the hand of my crush. I still remember learning my lines from my copy of the purple mimeographed script.

Fourth grade: Candy Sweet in a play about dental hygiene. I got to carry a big swirly all day sucker. 🍭 Ahem.

I played a teen who threw a party with a big bowl of pills. All the guests collapsed at the end of the scene. It was like an after school special on steroids. There was a part for everyone in drama class. I could tell the play was written in the 80s because there was a scene with qualudes which were long since obsolete. Of course there was a part about a girl who went crazy thinking she had spiders under her skin and she had to be committed.

Various - Forever Free: A Drug Free Musical

I played the lead in Maeterlink's The Bluebird. It was my first, and last, stage appearance.

The world rejoices.

5th grade.

I was the telegram deliverer in our live-action "Billy, Don't Be a Hero."

I was fine in practice, but when the actual time for my cue came, I flaked out and stayed seated in the auditorium.

4th grade: secretary-general of the UN (in a dashiki!)

7th grade: Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

8th grade: Charlie Brown

12grade: Lt. Col. Henry B. Blake, commanding officer of the 4077th

I was Richie Cunningham in Happy Days: The Musical.

I was the body in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum in the sixth grade. It was pretty basic. As the cardboard blade (pendulum) got close, I had to roll off the table into a mattress (pit.) No rats.

Mr Asano in A Majority of One. Alec Guinness in the movie, co-starring Rosalind Russell. Jewish widow hates the Japanese, takes cruise, falls in love with Japanese businessman. Eighth grade.

Horace Vandergelder, the well-known Yonkers half-millionaire as a senior in high school. My Dolly Levi had the biggest tits in the class.

Alan Strang in Equus. Full nudity at my progressive private school.

7th grade we were given an assignment to as a group present something having to do with history to the class.

One of us wrote a play. We were all assigned parts. I played a western ranch owner with 10 kids begging for my life because they were going to hang me. No reason was given.

After that my best friend came out as Sugar Pops Pete. No explanation and what this had to do with history no one knows till this day...

The class was utterly confused by our play. It was beyond ridiculous. In looking back it was hilarious.

The title role in our kindergarten chamber theatre production of “Nobody Listens to Andrew.” The last lead I had until grad school. No wonder I turned to solo performance!

You really don't want to know.

Kindergarten = the letter C in Christmas

First grade = a lion tamer

Third grade = elf

Fourth grade = Sally Bowles

Fifth grade = I sang Jingle Bell Rock in the school’s Christmas show

Freshman = extra in Grease

Sophomore = bg talent in Caligula

Senior = wrote a Bewitched skit for Homecoming. I was Dr. Bombay.

I joined the Drama Club in high school but all I go to do was work on props & scenery. The play was The Glass Menagerie and all the parts were filled with kids who had acted before. I still had fun being behind the scenes and going to rehearsals.

R16, your post delights me. Knowing that somewhere a 4th-grader played Sally Bowles gives me hope for this world.

Required listening

6th Grade - Mother Superior Sound of Music.

7th Grade - Miss Mazeppa Gypsy.

8th Grade - Vera Charles Mame.

A very progressive all boys school.

10th grade. Egeon in Comedy of Errors . I chose the part because I only had a two scenes beginning and end. Got to wear a wig and beard so no one recognized me. Spent the whole play in the wings feeding lines to my buddy who grabbed the lead but didn't realize he had to memorize twenty pages of Shakespeare.

Can't remember the grades but I was an extra in a sheet in Rinse the Blood off My Toga which was a parody of Julius Caesar we did in History class. I improvised when I saw the sight of the slain emperor, pretending to upchuck.

Also in a Shakespeare I was a lion with speaking lines.

The Stage Manager in "Our Town"

Tom Winfield in "The Glass Menagerie"

12th grade - I was Beverly Carton in “The Man who Came to Dinner” and Mr Hassler (the factory owner) in “The Pajama Game.”

Amateurs! I was Uncle Max in The Sound of Music in 8th grade, Tom in No, No Nanette in 9th grade, Mendel In Fiddler in 10th grade, Mr. Babcock in Mame junior year and Billy in Anything Goes senior year.

Whose cock did you suck, R26?

All of them, apparently.

In 4th grade, I played King George III in a play about the birth of America. I got to walk around the stage in a cape and a crown, with my nose in the air and wagging my finger at people dramatically, as if I were issuing orders to my subjects. I easily could've been mistaken for your average DLer.

…or for Jonathan Groff

Daniel Boone, shit, or was it Davy Crocket.... It was some sort of American history panorama. I was hunting something, probably people. I thrilled the crowd of 5th graders by jumping up on the window ledge and crawling along it. It was the manliest I've ever felt.

Parents enrolled me at a Jewish Youth Drama Group because they didn't want me home after school (I'm Asian, but my father remarried a Jewish woman), and we put on, "12 Angry Jurors". I was Juror 5, and I sucked, and not in a good way. I hate acting.

Kindergarten - an angel admiring the baby Jesus in the manger (as I recall, the wings were heavy)

7th grade - Zaneeta Shin in the school production of MUSIC MAN

8th grade - Consuelo ('I know you do!') in West Side Story

R14: that was my favorite book!

1st grade: I was in one of many Laugh-In skits for Halloween. I danced with a group of kids on stage, and when the music stopped, we'd freeze, except for each couple assigned a joke. Hilarity ensued. Then, the music would play and we’d continue dancing, until the next joke. My joke was something about using pantyhose to put out your hot pants when they’re on fire. It was the ‘70s, things were very different. I wore my Woody Woodpecker costume from K-Mart.

6th grade: Schroeder, in excerpts from “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” I replaced a kid who refused to do it.

10th grade: Charlie Brown, in the actual show, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown."

I've never been in a school play.

Then again, I'm a lesbian.

R36. So you worked stage crew, right?

2nd grade - I played the piano for the play. I was a little prodigy.

Patent officer. 6th grade. “The Electric Sunshine Man” musical.

One of many Wicked Witch’s monkey-minions. 8th grade. “Wizard of Oz”.

And then I retired from acting.

I kept my parts private, thank you.

The Boatswain in H.M.S. Pinafore. I never learned the verses to "A British Tar" and faked it. I also hated singing the solo of "He is an Englishman". Before we opened the show our teacher took us to see an adult version of the show and I stole their Boatswain's gestures.

My favorite part of the score was Josephine's aria ""The hours creep on apace" and I would always watch from the wings as the girl sang it.

2nd Grade - Emory in The Boys in the Band.

Certainly not, R37. I had better things to do, like read a copious number of books from the local library, smoke copious amounts of pot, and hit on copious good-looking women. I even had a girlfriend (and this was in 1975).

Such was my misspent youth --or was it...?

We did a special performance of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" from My Fair Lady and I was Henry Higgins. I invented this bit where I gave Eliza one coin after first handing over wads of paper dollars produced from my pocket to Pickering. However the actor playing Pickering stood in front of me and blocked the audience's view of the bit. Also I recall the girl who played Eliza commenting that she was afraid of leaving a trail of red behind her and not knowing at the time what that meant.

I was a wise man in a nativity play. Grade 1 I think. All I remember is that I walked in front of the other kids instead of behind them when I had to walk on stage from the sidelines and the teacher-director was FURIOUS.

My first grade put on a production of "Dido and Aeneas". I was the First Sailor.

My brother was a ghost in Ruddigore but pissed off the director because he refused to remove his glasses. He said he couldn't see to run around as a ghost without them.

r45, what does the trail of red mean?

That her friend Flo had arrived^^^

[Italic]Arsenic and Old Lace[/italic] in 8th Grade, where I played the murderous Jonathan.

What?! That is in the play?

R5 is still blowing my mind. Valley of the Dolls in high school?!

It’s a joke

I was in Acacius Page's class. We took off our clothes and played Fish Families. What could be more wholesome or natural?

I played a brick in the wall in "The Fantastiks"

It was this terribly modern operetta about a lady astronomer...

I played a brick in “The Wall.” The teacher was a huge PF fan.

Rudy in "Bent", Emory in "Boys In The Band" and Molina in "Kiss Of The Spider Woman".

Was it a gay school?

5th or 6th grade: one of the do-gooders Scrooge tells to sod off when they ask him for money for the poor in "A Christmas Carol."

After that, nothing until high school, when I was a member of the pit orchestra for senior plays.

Rock #2.

I was a featured player in my all-boys school production of "Oh! Calcutta." It was sponsored by Bryan Singer.

2nd Grade- Head Bog in "Dash McTrash and the Bog People", an early 80s play about environmental issues for elementary schoolers.

9th Grade- Virge in "Bus Stop".

10th- Blore in "Ten Little Indians" One of the plane crash survivors in "Island of Dr. Moreau".

11th- I was student director for "Haunting of Hill House". Roy in Act III of "Plaza Suite".

12th- Charlie Brown in "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". The hot football/ basketball player who played Snoopy and I had an on again/ off again thing. I could write a book about the bullshit that happened my senior year and how our mentally unbalanced choir director fucked up that show. It put me off "Peanuts" for the rest of my life.

I went to an all boys school. Played the Virgin Mary in the school nativity play

R64, Charlie Brown and Snoopy were fucking?! I knew it!

R66 , We never actually fucked, but there was some heavy duty flirting going on, and an attempted kiss. Some days he came in very hot (think Exposè's "When I Looked at Him" which was on the radio at that time), other days he was very cold. Snoopy was also flirting with Schroeder, Linus, and the advanced chemistry teacher!

Snoopy was a whore. Was he hung?

[quote]I could write a book about the bullshit that happened my senior year and how our mentally unbalanced choir director fucked up that show. It put me off "Peanuts" for the rest of my life.

You definitely should. Not everybody's overcome a loss like that.

Senior year: fluffer

[quote] Played the Virgin Mary in the school nativity play

Cast against type, I see.

R68 - About average, nothing special. Very nice athletic build. Nice muscular butt. We boys shared a dressing room and Snoopy was an exhibitionist, walking around in his briefs, so I took advantage and stole some long looks which are still burned in my brain 34 years later.

R69- For now, the Cliff Notes: The choir director claimed I tried to "steal" the production from her and as such set me up in both humiliating and emotionally hurtful situations so she could stand back and laugh for revenge. It was all in her head(Crazy, donkey-assed bitch!). She was fired two years later for making passes at male students.

Schroeder and I had been friends off and on since Kindergarten. He had turned evangelical (mainly because of his deranged mother) and became friends with a group of three girls. The four of them, along with Linus had joined in the choir director's machinations. I had trusted him. I chose not to speak to him after graduation. Five years later, he was dead. His mother insisted he had died from hemolytic anemia, which is too many white blood cells. However, I learned a few weeks after his death, his white blood cell count was LOW and he had died in HIV/ AIDS center of Indiana University Hospital of Indianapolis. I also learned, four months earlier, he had been trying to track me down, talk, and give me the purple and black striped shirt I had painted for him for the show.

Snoopy was involved in a local pot and cocaine dealing ring which operated out of a pizza joint. He joined the Marines and was given a dishonorable discharge by December of the same year we graduated. He ended up as an assistant high school football coach and was fired after accusations came out he was trying to have sex with some of the players. In the early 2000s, his body was found in an abandoned factory which was about to be demolished. He had been shot several times and had laid there for several weeks. His sister and parents lived in another state and had contacted the police in his area, but they had been no help. Once he was found, the police just shrugged and said that old industrial area was known for drug deals.

There's more, but this is the short version.

I have a harder time still dealing with Schroeder's death and what he might have wanted to say to me, than Snoopy's death and sex we didn't get to have when we were young.

When they cast me as a pot plant I knew my acting days were over. I’m not joking either. I stood there looking like an idiot for 20 minutes.

R72, you should write about that. It would make for an interesting segment to a memoir or a screenplay.

If we wanted to hear the full story, we would have purchased the self-published edition.