Over the years, I've come to disdain arts competitions due to my ever-evolving philosophical beliefs regarding the nature of art. However, competitions are prevalent in our society and, thus, our school systems, so I won't bore you here with my thoughts on the matter. I'm unsure how much the OAP rules have changed in our state over the past 40 years, but back in '82, each school was allowed 10 minutes to set-up, 40 minutes to perform the show, and 10 minutes to tear down.
My ego would not have allowed me to admit it at the time, but my acting skills were mediocre at best, even when one considers the talent threshold at the high school level. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the company of the people in the theatre program at my school so I auditioned for the show, despite growing friction between me and the school's drama coach (and adults in general, to be honest). I thought I'd be a shoo-in for the role of Dill, described in the book as 'short, blue-eyed, and smart' (and if by 'smart' they meant 'smart-ass,' I was all three back in '82). However, the 40 minute cutting/editing/butchering of the play we were using completely deleted the character of Dill, so I was outta luck there. The lead roles were rightfully assigned to actors better than I, then all the bit parts went to upperclassman and those who physically resembled the descriptions of the characters. Where did that leave me? As an "alternate" - the understudy for the 8 male roles in the cast. Probably not the best choice as I had no desire to memorize lines for one character, let alone eight. Turns out I liked the idea of being part of a production more than actually being part of a production, so I ultimately ended up where I belonged. Shrug.
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| Design on the show's cast/crew t-shirts |
After-school rehearsals were a breeze for me as I was never asked to perform. Ever. You'd think the director might prepare for the possibility of needing an understudy by saying something along the lines of, "Let's do a run-through from the top and this time, let Mark play Jem." Sounds like a solid rehearsal technique to me, but no. Occasionally subbing me into a role would have not only frightened me into learning everybody's lines and blocking, it might have instilled in me as to what what my actual purpose was. As it stood, I probably could have pulled off the roles that didn't have many lines such as Boo Radley or Judge Taylor. Instead of being an actual understudy, I was just another crew member, building sets and hauling things around. But I think that may have been the director's intent from the beginning since, as I mentioned earlier, we weren't really getting along.
Rehearsals were normally uneventful because I didn't do much beyond clowning around backstage, but I recall two occasions specifically. First, there was a cast member who had a new-fangled Walkman and would let me listen to it while he rehearsed onstage. The whole concept of these new personal stereos was mindblowing to young Mark at the time, so it was quite a trip and quite a treat to rock out backstage without disturbing the action onstage. And that was how I was introduced to one of my favorite albums of 1982, because in that cassette player he had a tape of the Asia album.
The cast member with the Walkman and the Asia tape introduced me to much more good music over the next few years. We spent countless hours at his place watching MTV or travelling into Houston to buy albums. Amazingly, we've never lost touch over the past 40 years, still text often, and see each other about once a year or so - he's a life-long friend. And to think we originally met backstage in the high school auditorium.
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| The auditorium (left) as it looked in 1982. Built in the '40s, it was a dump and safety hazard in '82 but remarkably still in use today although the surrounding school buildings have been demolished. |
The second memorable rehearsal wasn't quite as enjoyable. The role of sheriff Heck Tate was played by Bruce, a senior who I knew mainly because our families attended the same Presbyterian church. As sheriff, his costume included a pair of handcuffs and, at one dress rehearsal, he thought it would be amusing to handcuff me to the urinal in the men's room, just off stage left. And there I stayed for the duration of the rehearsal as members of the cast and crew would drop by to laugh at me or threaten to use the urinal. Hysterical, right? It could have been worse, I guess - at least I was fully dressed. When rehearsal was over, I was released. To this day, when I talk to members of that cast, they inevitably bring up that night. Did I say earlier that I enjoyed the company of these people? Lemme rethink that...
Over the 7 - 8 weeks of rehearsals, everything eventually gelled and the play advanced through various levels of OAP competition: zone (March 16), district (March 25), region (April 10?) and qualified for the state tournament in Austin on the campus of The University of Texas. Fortunately, all cast members stayed healthy so I was never asked to step into any roles. Unfortunately, I caught a case of the measles during spring break so I spent the following week (March 29 - April 2) at home, the sickest I have ever been in my life: high fever, disorientation, hallucinations, the whole nine yards. Naturally, the director was rightly panicked that I had exposed the entire cast to the disease, but there was no outbreak and things returned to normal fairly quickly.
Bus rides to competitions were long but lively because most teenage 'actors' don't know when to turn it off. Four albums immediately take me back to those bus rides and contest trips: Beauty and the Beat by The Go-Go's, I Love Rock N' Roll by Joan Jett, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC, and Time by ELO. Oddly, "Yours Truly, 2095" from the latter album became a common sing-along on bus rides to and from performances. Imagine 30 overly dramatic teenagers singing a bad ELO song at the top of their lungs on a big yellow bus and you get an idea of what was happening back then. And we all thought "Big Balls" was hilarious.
But all this was secondary to the fact that we made it the state competition. At the time, there were 5 different classifications of high schools in Texas based on the school's student population. My high school was in the second largest classification, which meant that we would compete against 7 other similarly-sized schools from around the state on Thursday, April 30, the fourth day of the state meet.
About two weeks before the state contest, I was informed that I my "application to serve as a member of 1982 State Meet One-Act Play Contest HONOR CREW" had been approved. This fact was met with great surprise, especially when you consider that not only hadn't I applied for an honor crew, I had never heard of it. My guess is that our self-appointed "technical director," a senior, wanted to participate in the honor crew and didn't want to go alone, so the director nominated both of us.
The Honor Crew was initiated in 1977 when the state meet invited Austin high school students to serve on the production staff. For several years, the crew experimented with students from ten Austin area school districts. In 1982, this program was made available to students throughout the state and students from twenty-four districts were chosen in the first competitive process. With little experience and few qualifications, I somehow made the cut to this inaugural state-wide crew. I later found out why it was easy to be selected.
While this was a supposed honor and a means to represent the school at the state level, there was the matter of missing school for an entire week in order to participate in the crew. Normally not a big deal, in fact, what kid wouldn't want to be excused from classes for a week? Three problems, though: 1) I didn't have good teachers that year so being gone for a week was a huge hassle for all involved and didn't do my grade averages any favors, 2) I had already missed a week of school with the measles, but, more importantly, 3) I would miss participating in the high school band's big Concert and Sightreading Contest that would take place at some point during that week of the state OAP meet. To say the band director was furious would be an understatement. To compound the problem, the band director was also a family friend and choir director for our church's chancel choir. This led to a tense meeting with the school principal, myself, my mother, and the band director. The principal wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and said something like, "Well, sounds to me that if you've got 15 trumpets, losing one won't hurt," and his complete lack of musical understanding meant that I was off the hook. Somehow, the family friendship with the band director survived that ordeal.
And so it came to pass that myself, the aforementioned "technical director," and his father, a counselor at our high school who acted as our chaperone, spent a week in late April 1982 at the fabulous Chariot Inn in Austin.
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| Chariot Inn postcard from the MFD archives. There's now a Volvo dealership at the location. |
The above postcard is captioned on the reverse: "IMAGINE...swimming under a waterfall...dining in splendor..." Well, I'd have to imagine it because the only time we were at the hotel was to sleep as the state meet was a 16-hour/day affair. At least the motel was near the UT campus. I have no idea what the counselor/chaperone did during the day after dropping us off on the university campus, but he was a golfer, so I suspect he played several different courses in the Austin area over the course of that week.
On Monday morning, the first day of the meet, we met with the state meet production staff (a.k.a. college drama students) and were not only given assignments but also a number: HSK1, HSK 2, HSK 3, etc. I don't remember my assigned number, but I do remember being assigned to the stage crew, which basically meant moving set pieces then sitting around doing nothing for long periods of time. Initially, I actually watched the plays as they were being performed in competition, but as there were 40 plays competing that week (8 each in 5 classifications), passive viewing got old very quickly.
About midweek, I figured out that our designation "HSK" was an abbreviation for "high school kid" and we were given numbers so none of the college kids would need to bother actually learning our names. Honor crew, my ass. More like free labor.
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| 1982 state meet program |
On Thursday, when our school was scheduled to perform, I was excused from honor crew duties and got to be a member of the company. Eight schools competed that day and the top 3 were ranked; our production didn't make the cut so we had to be content with just the honor of earning a spot at the state meet. The next morning, the cast and crew had a scheduled critique session with the judge, a drama instructor from a San Antonio junior college. Following that critique, I went back to being a crew member, working the final day of the meet. The next morning, Saturday, I rode with the rest of the cast and crew back home, ELO blaring - "I LOVE YOU! SINCERELY! YOURS TRULY! YOURS TRULY!!!"
Oddly, I received three separate award certificates for my work that week: a certificate of achievement, a certificate of recognition, and a certificate of appreciation. That's all well and good - who doesn't love to feel appreciated? - but to me, the main benefit of being on the honor crew was missing a week of school and hanging out on a college campus with college girls.
As for the director, she soon resigned her teaching position and left our little town that summer. She eventually became a Methodist minister. I decided not to participate in the OAP contest the following year, opting instead to spend my time earning spending money by working at the local Burger King. No regrets with that decision. I would go on to participate in a few more productions at various points in high school and college. If memory holds, my last acting role was as Lieutenant Cable in a production of South Pacific sometime in 1986. And, despite seeing the "To Kill a Mockingbird" play more times than I care to remember, I still love that Harper Lee book and have copy of the shelves behind me as I type.
As if this post weren't long enough, here's three quick, related stories:
Our penultimate OAP meet that year was held at a regional state university. Our production required a large set and costumes, so in addition to the school bus, we also travelled with a cargo truck to hold said items. The year prior (1980-81), the drama students at this particular host university had wanted to stage their own production of "To Kill A Mockingbird" but were told the subject matter and language were inappropriate; their request was denied by university faculty/administration. With a warped sense of justice, these college students thought they would exact their revenge for the university's decision by breaking into our truck and stealing our costumes and props. In other words, if they couldn't do the show, no one should be able to. The drama faculty were able to graciously provide substitute costumes for most of our cast and the contest judge was very understanding with our predicament. The show must go on! So, despite the setback, the play was selected to move on to the state meet. The college students confessed before we left town and the costumes were returned to us, but what a bizarre situation.
Like many schools, festivities in the month of May at my high school included a "senior awards night" where academic scholarships and final class rankings were announced. The day of this event in 1982, the drama director told me I should attend the awards ceremony that evening. No further explanation given. Puzzled, I went home and told my mother I needed a ride back up to school later that day. My sister, back home from her first year at college, was 'voluntold' to take me. As I had no idea why I was there, we sat in the back of the auditorium as scholarships were announced. Near the end of the program, my name was called so I, along with the senior who was also on the honor crew, was recognized and given one of the three certificates mentioned above. I sheepishly crossed the stage as quickly as I could, grabbed the certificate, didn't even bother to sit back down and headed straight for the car. I may be one of the only sophomore ever to receive an award on senior night, another bizarre situation.
That year, I had a American History "teacher" who never taught (more on him in this post), so I was often bored in his class. One week during said history class with nothing better to do, I wrote my own satirical dramatization of the production based on "To Kill a Mockingbird" using lines from the play interpolated with things I had heard cast members say. I titled it "To Kill a Director" and, by the end of it, I had poked fun at most every cast member (including myself) and, in the "plot," the director had been killed in the same manner as Boo Radley kills Bob Ewell in the book/play. It couldn't have been more than 3-4 handwritten pages and those pages got passed around quite a bit during rehearsals. The cast not only loved the satire, they would often quote it back to me, and many were upset that they didn't get a bigger role in the "play." So, every time I was in a subsequent production, the cast members demanded I create a fictitious script about the show. All told, I wrote five plays between 1982-84. I haven't seen them in a while, but they should be in a box around here somewhere. If they haven't seen the light of day in several decades, that's probably for the best.
But enough about my academic and OAP (mis)adventures, this is allegedly a music blog, so let's see what was topping the Billboard charts on May 1, 1982.
 | Top LP Chariots of Fire Vangelis |
 | Hot 100 "I Love Rock N' Roll" Joan Jett & The Blackhearts |
 | Rock Album Asia Asia |
 | Rock Single "Heat of the Moment" Asia |
 | Soul Album Friends Shalamar |
 | Soul Single "If It Ain't One Thing, It's Another" Richard "Dimples" Fields |
 | Dance/Disco Single "Murphy's Law" (12") Cheri |
 | Country Album Mountain Music Alabama |
 | Country Single "Mountain Music" Alabama |
 | Adult Contemporary "Chariots of Fire" Vangelis |
