The Moon and the Star Wars

Posted on Apr 09, 2007 at 10:40 a.m. by Melodie

All right, I hope this isn't bursting anyone's bubble of how a Guthrie actor behaves, but I share a dressing room with seven other guys and a Playstation 2. See, during tech week, the hours can get long and you may be called for a majority of the day and never see the stage, so Kris Nelson (known as Jingle-Heimer in the Mayor's circles) was good enough to bring in his PS2 and a television. And since we've been good little boys and not missed any cues, we continue to play it during the run of Merchant. Of course, what always takes precedence is the actor's preparation: minutes of focused breathing, vocal trills and articulation exercises, and character obstacle realizations and discoveries so that every nuance----too far, right? Yeah, I already said how many minutes of stage time I have. OK, my warm up is a Ricola and a few practice burps.


But to the cheese in the Mayor's bonnet--recently, the game being played in the dressing room is Star Wars Battlefront, where you live out the Star Wars movies in full battle mode, and play all the characters like Bubba Fat and JA-JA and Commander Anacin or whatever. I HATE this game. The buttons are too confusing, there's a lot of gun fighting (which the Mayor frowns upon) and everyone else in the dressing room LOOOOVES it. So much in fact, that when they're all on stage, I can't even change out that game because they have to save it to advance to the next level, etc, etc. AND they all GEEK over the action in it and reference characters from the movies I haven't seen (because I heard they were awful) and I won't be surprised if they all come in with their Star Wars action figures and reenact the Battle of the Rebel Force G-23 on the carpet. They even taunt me with my lack of knowledge with questions like "Who do you want to be," (snarky laughter) "Anakin or Darth Varder?" (group nasal snorting). If you know why that's funny, I pity you.


Is it obvious my cheese is in a curd here?

Jim Lichtscheidl