High School Tony Awards Honor Nation's Biggest Drama Club Nerds
I was a theater kid in High School so it brings back memories. I never ever did any acting and never wanted to be onstage. I was in the band and on the Tech Crew. As the crew, we sometimes used to joke that our shows would go so much more smoothly if it wasn't for those danged actors getting in the way. If theater kids were considered nerds, I suppose the tech crew was really low on the totem pole, but life is much more fun if you let your geek flag fly!
Anyone watching Swingtown on CBS? I had to take my post about my connection to the show down because I was uncomfortable about all the hits I was getting about it. (I happen to have grown up in the same neighborhood at the exact same time as the creator of the show who loosely based the show on his childhood recollections.) My blog was coming up on the first page of google searches on the topic of the show and I prefer the coziness of supportive crafty blog readers to the snarky judgement of pop culture blogging. My Chicagoland Craft Collective friends wanted to know, so I'll say that the unhappy judgemental woman angrily baking pies is not my mom! I'm also not the young girl who ran away because her mother is more focused on her coke fueled affairs. However, the map she drew to her woodsy hideout is nearly accurate! I don't remember anyone's dad being an airline pilot but lots of people were traders at the commodities market. Our train station does look like the one in the show, but riders to our neighborhood would come out of a spooky underground tunnel which was covered in graffiti in the 1970's.
"Best Performance in a Pre-Show Prayer Circle"
ReplyDeleteOooooh man that brought back memories! I did props for a couple of plays, but was a choir nerd more than a drama nerd. Thanks for the laugh!
"If theater kids were considered nerds, I suppose the tech crew was really low on the totem pole, but life is much more fun if you let your geek flag fly! "
ReplyDeleteThere was a pretty formal hierarchy, with the stage crew at the top, dancers at the bottom, and so on.
Theater kids aren't really nerds, more so on tv (where people with boats all wear captains hats and blazers, farmers are mentally challenged to put two words together, fathers can't perform a single household chore correctly, and all businessmen are evil) than in reality. But as is said about Disney's High School Musical, it might be entertaining, but it doesn't have much to do with actual high school or actual musicals either. I can think of the words we actually used to describe actor types, but it wouldn't be "correct" to repeat them here, though nobody was all that offended back then.
Frankly, my high school experience was that crew involved having a lot of friends, of both sexes, and an active social life. (While at the same time the "normal" guys in my advisory probably didn't say more than a few words to a girl in their four years in high school. Who was the nerd?)
Stage crews can have a geek streak, but I saw it as decidely creative and crafty, and a fair number of people I did it with were definitely not geeks. Though some obviously were (and are). Probably depends who's running it and how?
R
R- We were absolutely not geeks! I'm only making an awkward attempt at self-deprication. Of course you are correct that the tech crew is at the top of the totem pole of theater because of our technical expertise and creativity. These days it seems like it's totally chic to be a geek, so I guess I'm referring to that here. Obviously in real life all those social hierarchies are totally artificial and I can't imagine anyone having more fun in school and in their free time than we did at crew.
ReplyDeleteI do remember that I read in the New Trier newspaper back then that "only geeks hang out in the rotunda". I laughed as I realized that I hung out regularly in the rotunda and I liked my friends there and I really don't care if "they" think it's a geeky hangout. I absolutely never felt persecuted ever at school. You, Anonymous R, had your own cool, fun car and were hanging out with girls so you were really high status!
I've been so nostalgic lately. I think it's time for me to get a job.
Rebel- Props was one task none of us really liked to do. My friends preferred building, painting, and lighting to fiddling with props, but it was all good times!
S- I hope I didn't sound defensive about it, but I'd hate for anyone to think that it was all nerds.
ReplyDeleteAnybody who shows any interest in activities beyond just sitting on the couch and changing channels is going to get called a nerd or a geek by "normal" people who have no serious interests of their own. So being "geeked" about something is actually where the fun comes from!
-R
Hey, we had an airline pilot neighbor down the street on Cherry Street -- he still lives there, I think. He flew for American for years, and back in the mid 1970s his annoying daughter was forever bragging to the rest of us on the block about the family's frequent trips to Maui.
ReplyDeleteThis was back when exotic travel for my family meant a drive to my grandmother's place in Urbana IL, or maybe the other grandmother's outside Detroit.
Anonymous J- Did you ever try camping at the forest preserve? I wish we could have gotten away with that. The most I ever did at the preserves is light illegal fireworks.
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