![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo1960-61- approx. My Dad brings a portable reel-to-reel tape-recorder home. A toy to keep the kids amused through the Christmas holidays.
I say portable- but it's the size of a small suitcase and housed in lovely polished oak (or mahogany or something)
So my sister and I record a couple of forgotten one-act plays by George Bernard Shaw. The Inca of Perusalem is a satire on Kaiser Bill, in which a lovely, intelligent English lass persuades him of the error of his ways. I like it because it allows me to show off my manic German accent.
I have wispy hopes of becoming the next Alec Guinness.
They blow away once we hit play-back.
Oh well. I'll be the next W.B. Yeats instead.
I guess it's this early exposure to Shaw that convinces me that loonies can be argued out of their looniness by logic and good-natured wit.
I still believe it- against all the evidence.
I say portable- but it's the size of a small suitcase and housed in lovely polished oak (or mahogany or something)
So my sister and I record a couple of forgotten one-act plays by George Bernard Shaw. The Inca of Perusalem is a satire on Kaiser Bill, in which a lovely, intelligent English lass persuades him of the error of his ways. I like it because it allows me to show off my manic German accent.
I have wispy hopes of becoming the next Alec Guinness.
They blow away once we hit play-back.
Oh well. I'll be the next W.B. Yeats instead.
I guess it's this early exposure to Shaw that convinces me that loonies can be argued out of their looniness by logic and good-natured wit.
I still believe it- against all the evidence.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 02:08 pm (UTC)The one time I was co-opted into a choir- for my school's Christmas show- I was told to stand at the back and mime.
But I did fancy myself as an actor. At prep school- aged 12-13- I played Mark Antony and Macbeth in successive years.
"O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth
If I am meek and gentle with these butchers..."
My public school had a deeper well of talent to draw from. I played a couple of jeune ingenues (lovely 18th century frocks) and then, after my voice broke, had to settle for minor supporting roles. By the end I was specializing in old men. I did a lovely high-pitched, quavery voice.
Finally, as Antigonus in The Winter's Tale, I got to enact the most famous stage direction in all Shakespeare and "exit, pursued by a bear."
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 02:24 pm (UTC):)
Delightful!
I bet you could act. I bet you could!
Marc Antony AND Macbeth! Most impressive.
I was Spring in the fifth grade play. I wore a raincoat.
Never mind.
I bet you could. Your photograph shows it clearly: wit, intelligence, a sense of droll irony.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 02:32 pm (UTC)Thank you for you faith in me, but I have my doubts. Much later performances in Church pantomimes and the like were ignominious. Even though I was the vicar- and people were required to butter me up- my comic performances
rarely raised a laugh.
I'm a ham. I know all about underplaying and value it in others, but I just can't get the hang of it myself.