i was the narrator.
Every. Fucking. Year.
is it my fault that i was the only kid who didn't read aloud like stephen hawking? no, but they still made me the sodding narrator. just once, i would have liked to be mary, just once. was that too much to ask?
apparently so.


bitter? moi?
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 21:33, 2 replies)

Back in the day
when I was but a wee nipper, and multi-ethnocentric New Labour thinking had not infiltrated that innocent and time honoured tradition that is known as the primary school nativity play, my class was rehearsing 'Hark the Herald Angels'. The teacher was struggling to keep the troops in order as our pre-pubescant 'singing' voices screeched their way through the blasted carol for what seemed like the fiftieth fucking time.

The excitement of holiday and Santa visiting soon had caused us all to lose our patience long ago, and kids were shouting, squealing and generally being a nuisance, jumping around with their hands up time and time again to enquire about far more interesting topics, such as when we would finally be allowed to watch the end of term film. Or better still, when we could stop repeating this bastard carol. With all of this excitement, I needed a wee.

The teacher, who I shall call Mrs A (for I cannot remember her name), was shouting

'Quiet! QUUUUUIIIIIEEEEEET!!!!!!!'

to calm us down. This had little effect. After a couple of minutes glaring angrily at the 70 or so year 4s before her, she snapped, hollering at an ear splitting volume,

'IF YOU DON'T ALL SHUT UP AND PUT YOUR HANDS DOWN NOW, THERE WILL BE NO FILM, AND THERE WILL BE NO HOME TIME. YOUR PARENTS WILL BE TOLD TO COLLECT YOU AT 5PM!!!'

This grabbed everyone's attention. Quiet descended upon the hall.

'Thank you', exclaimed Mrs A in a somewhat relieved tone.

By this stage, I was dying for a wee. My young bladder was close to bursting point. And I was too afraid to be the one to break the hard earned quiet, let alone speak up in front of everyone to ask if I could go for a wee (remember the days when you had to ask permission to have a slash?). Willy burning now and a feverish cold sweat was breaking on my brow. In hindsight I should have legged it and explained later, but Mrs A was cross and obviously anyone who put their hand up would miss the Muppets and have to stay late.

In a panicked state by now, I could hold it no longer. Using damage limitation techniques I pressed my hands as hard as I could into my groin, hoping to reduce the pain. It didn't work. Piss came gushing from my tiny todger at a rate that would have has Red Rum impressed. The pressure from my bladder forced it through my hessian sack onto the palm of my hands, which duly deflected the torrent into two high velocity sprays, one to the left, one to the right. All over the unfortunate souls who stood there. THE SHAME!!!

I cried. I really cried. So I ran from the hall. Mrs A shouted. I ran all the way to my mum (who, praise the lord, was the library assistant). Good ole' mum drove me straight home for a change of trousers and the rest of the day off. When I returned (about 3 days later because of the embarrassment) I recieved a very friendly lesson in life from Mrs A that there were certain circumstances when it was OK to speak when told not to and that she would say no more about it.

Didn't stop me having to live with the ridicule for the following 5 years or so did it you old fucking bitch!

Length? About 3 feet in either direction.
(Sir General ***WoW***, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 20:22, Reply)

Picture the scene...
I'm rudely awakened from my rum-induced deep sleep by a call from my aunt. She informs me that she has planned to go and see her friends daaaahn saaaarf mid next week, and my uncle will be away on a business trip. "cheers for letting me know. have fun" I said, wondering why she felt the need to tell me at such an ungodly hour. She wanted me to do her a favour, she hadn't realised that the two trips clashed with her 9 year old son's Nativity play, we shall call him N, for that is his initial, and wanted me to take him along, with his little sister, whom we shall call S, for that is her initial also, so I could sit in the audience and pretend to be a parent for the evening, taking photos, clapping and pretending to be proud. The kids always liked me, I was the cool older family member who was always joking about with them and playing computer games when we were round at my parents place, so off I popped, drove round to my parents house to pick the kids up, (why my mum couldn't have taken them is beyond me) and we went over to the school. N ran off to get into his costume (i think he was the arse half of the donkey or something similarly crap like that.) and I took my seat with little S on my knee. (it's probably worth mentioning here that S had a habit of creating embarassing public situations for her mum, because she seems to have inherited the same loose connection between her brain and her mouth from her mother as my sister did from our mother.) The nativity commenced, and was going smoothly, until the angel gabriel ran down the aisle between the two blocks of seats. it was a little 9 year old girl, dressed like a pretty, sparkly little angel, covered in sequins and tinsel. and her girly prancing was accompanied by the little devil on my knee, singing at the top of her voice...

"nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh...

...Batmaaaaaaaaan!"

I laughed my arse off. Dont think the rest of the audience found it so funny. Boring old twats.
(InkyFingers, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 18:42, Reply)

down with the king
We did "Joseph and his fucking mint dreamcoat" once at school. The auditions, if you could call them that, were done in our class by our teacher. I hate musicals so much they make my knob itch, so I had no intention of joining in.

The role of the Pharoe or whatever was given to the class gobshite- theres one in every class, a loud fucktard who for some reason is popular for being just a loud fucktard.

Our teacher put a few tables together and got him to sing and dance on top of them. It was more than I could take. I hated the fucking mong with vengence and he was now singing at the top of his cunting voice and dancing like a gayer on speed.

I shoved the table at the end away from the others and he fell off.
Concussion and a trip to the hospital.

I was a cunt I know but, it shut the bastard up though.
(Mr.Dog was in love again on, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 17:54, 1 reply)

This will be our little secret *shudder*
In infant school, I played one of the few lead roles in the school christmas play.

Long story short, my teacher stuck his cock in my eye. He raped me in the face.
(mmmkay, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 16:12, Reply)

worst
QOTA everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
(goorf, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 14:47, 9 replies)

I used to get dragged kicking and screaming....
... to Church (of Scotland) every Sunday morning, the Boys Brigade every Friday night and (horror of horrors) Choir practice every wednesday. Grandma Badbob was an elder of the church yesee(a semi-senior position in the CofS, kinda like a helper elf) and was very insistent that I be brought up a good and proper protestant, even though my mum had resisted the pressure to have me christened.

Anyway, i digress. As part of the duties in the Choir (where up until the age of 13 I was considered a bloody good singer and decent actor, even being invited to sing with the seniors) we were required to put on a show of sorts every Christmas, and in this particular year we were instructed to perform an abridged version of Joseph and his Technicolor(tm) Dreamcoat.

I got landed with the lead role, and for those unfamiliar with the show, there is a song which lists all of Josephs siblings, and believe me, there are a few (his mum and dad were like rabbits).

For weeks leading up to it, I struggled to remember the names, my 13 year old mind struggling to deal with having just learned self-pleasure, the joy of girls boobies and the fact that singing was becoming increasingly difficult.

So, the big day arrives.... Sunday before Chrimbo, the show takes to the stage (well, the open space between the congregation and the minister). I belt through the songs, struggling with the high notes and then the song of many names arrives.

My mind is a blank!

I completely make it up.....

Names sung included the biblical names of Pete, Dave, Timothy, Ahmed.....

I thought it was funny... the minister was wetting herself, the congregation applauded, my Gran was apoplectic! Her face was livid.

When i suggested in the new year that I should leave the choir as my voice had given way, there was no argument. This was followed by an orderly retreat from all Church events and groups over the next 2 years.

When I was 16, I told the family that yours truly was an Atheist (and also considering Communism) over dinner. There was little comment.

I thank Joseph and his many brethren for getting me out of organised religion.
(badbob82 actually has mates called Rex and Wendy, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 14:08, 3 replies)

My primary school
did a variety of bizarre and in some cases truly awful plays. Over the years I've been typecast (being somewhat on the small side) into various "ahhh isn't she cute" roles when I'd rather have done fuck all and my mum could have kept her tea towels. These included:

- for some reason, one of the "people walking around with invisible planks of wood on their shoulders while the putting-the-tent-up music from Dumbo plays".

- We also did a nativity involving a scene with the theme from The Exorcist.

- A play of Mrs Wobble the Waitress, a delightful kiddies' book about a clumsy woman who wobbles and drops everything... including soup. Onto a "customer's dog". Played by me in a ratty dog costume and made worse by the fact my mum told me "it'll be more realistic if you go 'owwwwwwww!' when the soup lands on you."

- Reciting a poem I've been unable to locate anywhere (and trust me, this is for the best) that went "bang bang bang said the nails in the ark". My bitch of an English teacher entrusted the line "and the little tiny shrew" to me, expecting me to recite it in a chipmunk voice. This did not happen.

- Being made to dress up as a priest in an Easter production of Jerusalem Joy, a lovely play about the life and death of Jebus (played by Heather, the weird kid from the year above). Then being yelled at in every rehearsal for not being able to reach the top note. Why did you give me the part, then?

- And the one I still get reminded of now: The Wizard of Oz. We did a slightly different stage version that involved, among other flagrant acts of typecasting, a then ten-year-old Maladicta cast as a munchkin (and not any munchkin, a member of the Lullaby League).

The other part was something else. You know how in the film, the witch gets pwned by a bucket of water and melts? In the original musical that our psychotic music teacher (who was only in it for the bouquets she'd get for "all her hard work") had acquired, possibly off the back of a lorry, the witch falls into a cauldron of shrinking potion she has prepared for Dorothy so she can nick the ruby slippers and destroy the universe or something like that. The witch was played by a girl in Year 11 before she went into the cauldron.

Guess who played her after she climbed out again? And who was still being referred to as "the little witch" the day she went in to pick up her A-level results?

- I wasn't allowed to be in the next production, Oliver!, because "I wasn't orphan-y enough". The only two people in the year not in the cunting play were me and Boring Sarah. Boring Sarah was boring and morbidly obese. Go figure.

Other than that, in every other cunting play, assembly and Nativity thing we did, I always had to be the fucking narrator because, as other b3tans had mentioned, I could read and some of my six-toed peers couldn't. The most memorable of these was a particularly stupid assembly about "saying goodbye" (introducing kids to the concept of death through the medium of crap puppets) called Badger's Parting Gifts. We had to read through this fucking book so many times because some of the kids involved were too thick to remember their cues that I can still quote most of it verbatim. I have an irrational urge to locate all remaining copies of the damn book and burn them.

No apologies for length, in the current economic climate I can't afford therapy.
( Maladicta, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 13:25, 2 replies)

Looking back, my nativities really sucked....
From the time I was 7, I got to be Mary in every Christmas play.

The year we did a normal one? Yup.

The year we did the one with the lower school, except it wasn't really a nativity because it was just the older kids stood in a church reading bits of the Bible while the little ones acted it? Yup.

And the year we did the really weird, musical one? Complete with weirdy operatic-type score for Mary and the Angel written by some woman the school had hired that kept babbling about breathing? Oh yea, you betcha. I had a tape of backing music for that one too. (Despite the fact that that was also Christmas through the ages and I was originally supposed to be Jane Seymour. The silly cow who was supposed to be Mary demanded to switch because she didn't want to sing.)

And before that, I go to be an Australian kid the time we did "Christmas Around the World!" on the logic that I have Australian family, so only I would do (or something), which involved sitting in a freezing cold church hall in December. In shorts and bloody t-shirt. (Cuz thats Australian, not just bloody mental...)

And when we did "Christmas Through the Ages!", I got to be a druid. Definately one of the cooler roles. I got to wear a robe and a fake beard. 6-year old me was pleased :) Especially as it involved standing at the back of the stage with the older kids and singing dirty versions of Christmas carols.

My first year though, I was the angel Gabriel. Or one of the angels anyway. My mum cut up her wedding dress for the costume and everything. And then I got told (about a day before the actual performance, if not that very morning) that "Oh, we've got you down as a shepherd, one of the pretty blond girls is the angel, not you. Wear this tea-towel instead."

My mum was not best pleased at that one.

For the Easter plays though (Catholic school, we got to act out the death of Christ at 10! ^_^) I never once got an interesting part. I either got to narrate, be one of the crowd or do a solo of some god-aweful hymn.

Coming soon: my High-School nativitys (except they weren't really)
(TuftyBee should have been working on, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 11:59, Reply)

Chinese New Year
I once played a girl celebrating Chinese new year and I had to wear some other girls silk pj's and She cried about it as She wasn't in the play.
I was about 8 and it was odd doing the play in front of the whole school as there was not one Chinese pupil in the school.
I had to say chun hei fat choi which means Happy New Year and I've never forgotten how to say it, the only piece of Mandarin that I know.
(Soaps Roller derbying your way since, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 11:29, 2 replies)

Typecasting
Going to a city school in Belgium, we didn't have any Christmas plays.
We did, however, have a long tradition of putting up shows on open house day, typically with the sproglets from each year doing their own little bit.
More often than not, this meant incredibly elaborate dance sequences, choreographed by the teachers, who seemed to determined to make their class outshine the rest.

One particular year, our theme was "Grease", which of course meant all the boys dressed as T-birds and the girls as Pink Ladies, you get the idea.

This involved a musical number set to Rock Around the Clock, wherein the boys walked on stage one by one in their greaser outfits and acted all Brando-ish with combs and stuff before going into a little dance.
Being the weird unpopular kid, it was then decided that one of the "cool" kids were to steal my wallet while I did my entrance, as part of the act. Nice.

Then the Grease medley followed, in which the class was divided into three groups: Boys, Girls, and Nerds Who Got to Stand At The Back And Snap Their Fingers While The Other Two Groups Did The Rest Of The Routine.
This last group was created especially for me(the weird dumpy one), my best mate (skinny, bespectacled, and closet gay), and the fat kid.

Bitter? Moi?
(Caustic Armadillo consists at least 30% out of custard, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 11:27, Reply)

my mother
was a primary school teacher, and every year she had to organise the nativity play. mostly they stuck to the original script, and everyone was happy.

until the year they decided it would be a good idea to do the 12 days of christmas, with a child dressed up as every gift.

my poor mother spent about 3 months of her life making costumes. and in the event the partridge got tangled up in his constricting cage of a costume, couldn't move and fell flat on his face at the end of the first round, so it was more like a felled log than a pear tree.

the 5 gold rings fell out with each other and one of them sobbed vociferously throughout the performance.

and santa didn't turn up, so my dad got roped in at the last minute. he was hot. his beard itched. he doesn't like other people's kids at the best of times. there's probably a whole generation of kids in manchester who grew up thinking santa was more like victor meldrew.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 10:59, 2 replies)

my friend evie
was a "drunken barber" in one of the inns. only the sheep were a lower caste. evie only had one line, but she practised it to death, slurring away in front of the mirror in hope of being promoted to a shepherd or even an angel. finally we were ready to start rehearsing the whole thing.

the curtain rose on the shabby inn. a rowdy drunken customer weaved his way in front of joseph, seemingly taking exception to his beard. finally, he turned to face the audience, waving his hands in the air, and proclaimed furiously:

"oh, i'll touch him alright. OPENS HIS SCISSORS! "

many years later, we were both in a christmas play in sixth form. (well, when your only extracurricular activities are drinking and snogging boys, you have to do something to put on your ucas form!) evie was really nervous because she had to sing a verse, and we were doing a snippet of shakespeare. so nobody has any idea what the tune should be, and evie had been told to make something up.

evie will never be on pop idol, but she doesn't sound like a drowning cat either, so the singing wasn't too bad. until she got to the end. and blithely carolled: "and exit stage left..."

she was also unfortunate enough to have to read that last scene in "othello", when someone looks at all the carnage and the bodies, and says mournfully, "oh bloody period."

you can imagine how horribly wrong THAT went.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 10:53, Reply)

Snowflake solo
In second grade at Corpus Cristi - we had a Christmas play. I was chosen to read a long poem before we snowflakes danced around the Christmas tree singing a song.

They gave me the mic and a read the poem well. Then, still holding the mic with its rather long cord, I danced around the Christmas tree until all of the other snowflakes were tied to the tree with my cord. I was completely oblivious until I came to the end of the wire and looked back.
( teknikl, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 10:48, Reply)

Moving on from my 6 year old bitterness...
And fast forward to the school pantomime, a production of Babes in the Wood. I was 14, and by now I'd proven myself in enough plays to be trusted with the biggest role in the play - the Nurse.

Yes, 14 year old, overweight, bespectacled me played the panto dame. Classic lines ensued, such as:

"Ooooh! What a conniption!"
"Train journeys just haven't been the same since me piles dropped"
and "OWWWWWWWWW!!! There's an arrow in my bum! Who shot me in the bum! SHERIFF?!?!? I'LL HAVE YOU!!!"

I must mention that I went to an all girls school.

If the lines I had to say weren't humiliating enough, I then had to, as the Nurse, fall crazily in love with the Sheriff of Nottingham. Who was also a girl. To illustrate our love there was a half hidden clinch behind a tree (I'm guessing my drama teacher based it on the Jim Davidson version) and a very touchy-feely song and dance, which took us about 300 practices before we managed to do it without laughing.

Oh yes, and there was the bit where I was 'woken up' and had to wander onto the stage in a pair of granny bloomers.

Those were the days...
(judeski walked on water and ran through fire, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 10:00, Reply)

Writer's strike
When I was eight my school did a "Victorian Talent Extravaganza!", involving every student in the school dancing, pretending to be a strongman, or reciting "Macavity the Mystery Cat." For some reason I landed the part of the Female Compare, meaning for every act I and Male Compare had to introduce it in "authentic" Victorian speech. The teachers had obviously got rather excited when writing the script. So excited, in fact, that it was virtually impossible for an eight-year-old to say.

I remember screwing up the line "A veritable Victorian extravaganza of vivacity and veer!" in every single rehearsal. The day before we performed it, the teacher got fed up and yelled, "Oh, just say "And now the next act!""

So sure enough, on the opening night, "And now, the next veritable veer!"
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 9:37, Reply)

Pissy Welsh Prima Donna Short-Arse
I never got on too well with acting at school. That is to say, I maintain to this day that I had a certain unique star quality, and those prissy, stuck-up drama teachers just weren't ready for my style. I was too out there, you know? And I think it frightened them.

Anyhoo, the upshot of this is that I didn't end up doing any acting. Despite numerous auditions, the best jobs I ever got were on the technical side.

Not like this short-arse Welsh kid. Oh no, they loved him. He obviously had a severe case of the short-man complex, and was severely overcompensating. For example, during the work we did on one play, he insisted that the costumes, which everybody else was happy with, were not good enough for him, and had his own one made up specially for him by some black dude with a really nice voice and his own underground workshop. (And it looked fucking ridiculous)

What was also grating as the fake American accent. Alright, boyo, we know the Welsh accent isn't a particularly convincing one to use in amateur dramatics, but couldn't you at least have pretended to be English?

Anyway, the main incident that sticks in my mind is the time I was doing the lighting. During rehearsals, I apparently committed the cardinal sin of moving - yes, moving, all I did was walk across the back of the hall and it turns out this is enough to put him off his stroke! He flies off the handle and starts yelling at me,
"How dare you? You don't fucking walk round the set while I'm trying to fucking act..." and so on and so forth.

The drama types call it his "artistic temperament." I call him a twat.
(LongJohnBaldry, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 9:19, 2 replies)

Combined 80's electro me thinks
Ahh the nativity play.

Well I had two bizzare parts. I shall begin with the first.

Now in my school we didnt audition, we got told what we were going to be. Every one wanted to be a traditional character including myself, but no.

My first part was that of a toy robot, yes a toy robot. This consisted of me in a giant cardboard box covered in foil. Now as it came to the play I did a lot of sitting around all I did was eat the foil that was right by my mouth well I couldnt twiddle my thumbs, my hands could not physically touch, such was the size of the box.

But to be fair it was a toy robot and had some meaning to christmas. But my second role had absolutely no bearing to the nativity or christmas what so ever well for a child anyway.

Now remember that song Saturday Night by Whigfield, youtube it if you don't, hell just youtube it anyway.

Doesn't really have that christmas feel does it.

And so to my part, there were three others beside myself and yes you guessed it we in the nativity were dancers, yes Dancers with a full routine.

But being the extroverted little shite I was, I loved it, the others didn't but I did.
So on the performance night I was so excited. We got up on the stage and I was on the end and as my mother recalls rather embarrasingly I was doing the routine with great enthuiasm which wasn't shared by the other children.

Now the only promblem was they were dancing in complete sync while i was well, completely absorbed and had erm shall we say gone off the track somewhat but I do remember having a whale of a time.

So all in all it had nothing to do with christmas but it put me in christmas cheer all right.


A little note by bastard brother got to be father christmas but my poor little sister instead of being an angel whcich would have been perfect sweet thin and blonde she ended up being a sheep.

baa for now.
(imnotnormalami, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 3:57, Reply)

Weird ideas
'While I was on the bog the other day,' writes 'mudskipper', 'it occured to me that when you take the word ‘weapons’, and spell it phonetically, ‘weppins’, it looks like a name you’d give to a pet rabbit.

What really, really, REALLY weird thoughts have you had?'

Comment space reserved for an alternative QOTW should you want it.
(Fuckpig "That's not even a pound a midget.", Sat 28 Mar 2009, 2:06, 18 replies)

Lord save us
My wife is a primary school teacher and every year throws out some gems.
Last years fav......JC & the robber dude had been lolly popped and one kid piped up dont save Jesus save The rabbits (Barabus)
(tomma turn around an bite you every time, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 1:05, Reply)

I was
cast for some reason as one of several red indians. An odd choice for a Christmas play, but being about eight, I really didn't have a huge amount of say in the matter.
This particular tale takes place during the dress rehearsal which was performed in front of the rest of the school during a special assembly.
Picture a skinny, milk bottle white runt of a child with a feather taped to his head and clad in an item of apparel consisting of what can only be described as a pair of flaps (you know the kind of thing I am referring to i'm sure) lovingly decorated with meticulously researched hunting scenes using a purple crayola, but alas very poorly constructed. (not by me I might add) This will be a factor later, but for the moment I was happy enough with the arrangement.
Of course genuine native americans did not have Y-fronts visible in the gap up the side of their flap based garments, and so neither did our protagonist in this little tale. No keks for this kid. No, I was taking method acting to its limits for this one. You think Sitting Bull wore Marks and Spencer underpants with Ewoks on them? I couldn't have improved my authenticity quotient if I had scalped the kid playing the christmas tree and set up a casino. I was Geronimo, I was Hiawatha, I was Tonto, I was naked in front of the entire school. Fucksocks.


The odd thing is that only about a quarter of the audience noticed, I put this down to my super rapid re-hoisting of my flaps. This speed came in handy during my teenage years when it was channelled into a finely honed 'wanker's reflex'.


Length? Well, I was only 8...
(Prof. Moriarty put his foot in it on, Sat 28 Mar 2009, 0:21, Reply)

Mr. Kipling
I was in every play every year at my primary school. I loved it - it got you out of classes doing something different and I always wanted to get a good part.

In my last year at infant school I played the lead angel. This wasn't as cushy a part as it seemed - after delivering the baby to the manger we three angels just had to stand behind the manger while everyone came to praise Jesus. It seemed like an awfully long time.

But the play that always stuck in my mind was my first junior school play. It was a school written retelling of various fairy tales. Joy of joys, I got a small part, with a line and everything. During some scene resembling Cinderella I, for some reason to do wih getting cakes that has long since escaped me had to say "Somebody fetch Mr. Kipling!"

I didn't get the joke. I had no idea who Mr. Kipling was, or why this was funny.

Or why people were laughing at me.

I burst into tears, and was only truly consoled by my parents after the show who explained that it was a good thing that people had laughed at my line.

Still, they are exceedingly good cakes.
(mistressminimas is absolutely insane, Fri 27 Mar 2009, 23:53, Reply)

Oddly enough
I was part of the alien choir for our school "nativity" play one year. I can't remember much about it, but it was about Christmas on other planets. I can remember the song though. And my sadness about only being in the choir.
(timewarper, Fri 27 Mar 2009, 23:52, Reply)

Flat Kimberley
Was a feminist spin on Flat Stanley that we did when I was about 8. I was chuffed to bits as I got to play Arthur the brother and co-star. I spent a whole lunch time lording it over the plebs who had to be prop makers or back stagers. Till I found out what I had to do.

In the final scene of the play Flat Kimberely and Arthur foil some museum burglers. She was disgiused as a painting and I for some fetishistic reason of the drama teacher had to be a greek statue. A naked greek statue.

You remember that nightmare when you're in front of the school completely naked? I came damn close to living it. OK so i did get to wear shorts but I was the kid who would get changed under a towel for PE, so it was pretty much the same thing.

I had to go on stage, stand on a box and strike a kind of discus thrower pose for what seemed like an hour (2 mins) till the burglers had done their part. Then I could go behind a piece of scenery, quickly put on a gown and do the last 5 mins. That was the theory but one of the backstage plebs had "forgot" to put the robe there so I had to do it still in just my shorts. Cue much downstaging and hiding behind the fat policeman.

That was the last time I ever acted. Still traumatised to this day.

Greenland Middle school in Sheffield if anyone remembers.
(Bo Nidle Coming back in from the cold., Fri 27 Mar 2009, 23:00, Reply)

Trial By Jury
For some reason, my school thought that it was appropriate for the annual school play to be Gilbert & Sullivan's light opera, "Trial By Jury." In most schools, this would have been fine but since ours was an all boys school and "Trial By Jury" features a substantial number of female parts, it was obvious that our teaching staff either had (a) forgotten or (b) a wicked sense of humour.

Anyways, I audition for a role and wind up as a bridesmaid. A fucking bridesmaid. Which means that for three nights in a row (plus the daytime dress rehearsal that the rest of the school was invited to) I got to prance around on stage wearing my nan's nightie (in lieu of a bridesmaid's outfit).

Twenty years have passed and I still wake up in a cold sweat, hoping that it was just a nightmare but, sadly, no. Luckily this was all before the time of Youtube so that shit wasn't digitised for the whole world to enjoy.
(mister_barfly, Fri 27 Mar 2009, 22:50, 1 reply)

I was nine, and I played...
No, don't try to guess. You'll never get it in a million years.

I'll tell you.

Ian McCaskill.

(For the benefit of anyone born after the eighties, he was a weatherman on the BBC.)

My job was to run onto the stage in a woolly jumper and thick glasses, unfurl an enormous weather map of Britain on a piece of paper nearly as high as me, deliver the weather forecast, and run off again.

You've probably realised by now that my school didn't do a traditional Nativity play. In previous years we'd plodded through some variation on the traditional story, but come 1992 it was Mr Killick's turn to write the script.

As with all the best teachers, Mr Killick was slightly eccentric and not one for convention. Out went the choirs singing traditional hymns, to be replaced by a song called "Yule Tidings" sung to the tune of Greased Lightning.

Anyway. My lines as the bespectacled weatherman were, as best as I can recall, to explain that Doctor Who, K9, and for some reason David Bellamy, who at this point were all busy saving Christmas in the Tardis, should wrap up warm as they were going to be battered by the big bad blizzards I was excitedly pointing at on the map.

My attempts to reconcile the recurring encouragements during rehearsals to both (a) try to mimic the gentle whispery voice popularly associated with Mr McCaskill, and (b) speak up so people at the back could hear, resulted in me delivering my lines as if this respected meteorologist had overdosed on speed. Still got an applause, though.

"And that's all from me. Goodnight."

All school Christmas plays should be like that.
(greem, Fri 27 Mar 2009, 22:39, Reply)

I have to say, I performed with brilliance
I've never been in a Christmas play specifically, but when I was in fifth grade we put on a play for the Christmas season. For some bizarre reason it was about baseball. That year I had a totally bitchtastic teacher (if we ever have a bad teacher qotw, oh the stories I will tell). My teacher decided that everybody was going to have a part in the play, which was about Babe Ruth or something. Every student would either be an actor, or help make the set, or bring in a prop, or help make the costumes. I, being entirely uninterested, looked on and did nothing. This lasted until about one day before the show when the teacher was making the programs and realized my name went nowhere. What was I to do? I had to do something! Her unquestionable rules demanded it! So in the end, what did I do?
Whenever the actor playing Babe Ruth took a swing at an imaginary ball, I was the one hitting a xylophone hammer against a wooden block to make a "thock" sound. My parents came and took pictures.
(mariam67, Fri 27 Mar 2009, 22:20, Reply)