Play Festival madness

It's play festival madness here at the Ruby Slippers house! I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this (I'm sure I must have) but Mr Ruby Slippers and I met when I joined The Franklin Players, a community theatre group of which he was a long-standing member. I joined in 2004, and though we weren't actually in the same show - I was in the big musical while he was in a heavy play about infidelity and fighting and more fighting - he did come to help us out with putting up the set and providing an outsider's viewpoint. Plus he was the director's housemate so I saw him a lot. Lucky me :-)

Here's me doing my best Judy Garland impression in "Get Happy", the closing number of the musical, "Faces of Music".

So fast forward a few years and hubby and I have both been in a number of other musicals and short sketches and plays. Well, not me so much; I far prefer singing to straight acting. Anyway, I've been in stuff. But last year we bowed out because of The Wedding (those rehearsals are killers) and, well, we just haven't felt like going back. I just feel like it's not as fun as it used to be. You really have to enjoy going to rehearsals on Monday and Wednesday nights plus most of Sunday, and I just don't anymore. And Mr Ruby Slippers, after two years as chairman of the Franklin committee, has lost all enthusiasm and soul for drama. Which is a pity.

HOWever, it's still fun to go and see what's going on there. Plus we're kind of obliged to, since Sister Ruby Slippers and her husband, not to mention a host of our other friends, have all got plays on. My sister and her husband co-wrote a play, which he is directing, and she is directing another one which is on next week. (And which she's now starring in, thanks to a dropout two weeks ago. Can I just say that I ABHOR people who can't stick to their commitments? Way to ruin it for everyone else).

Here's Sister Ruby Slippers and friends Paul and Tarryn in 'Teatime of the Living Dead' last year, which was written by my clever husband. She's a dead body come back to life (one of many) in a funeral parlour...it's a long story.

The play festival runs over four nights, and other amateur dramatic societies are invited to participate, which means that we have eight plays this year, four from Franklin and one each from four other societies. Mr Ruby Slippers is adjudicating along with two other people, so that's what we'll be doing for the next two weekends. It's kind of fun, though, to be on the outside looking in. Though I have to say I do miss that dressing-room excitement; the smell of make-up, the roar of the crowd...oh wait, we didn't really get that sort of crowd at Franklin. Well, the pleased applause of the crowd, then.

I just wish I could muster up the enthusiasm to be a part of all this again. I love theatre (well, mostly musical theatre), I really do. But sometimes the effort doesn't seem worth the result. Sigh. Mr RS and I have had many, many, sad conversations about this.


PS - I have to get up at 5am tomorrow morning to get to my photography class practical at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens at 6am. Shudder. I don't even know what 5am LOOKS like.