Having a Fantastick time... (and no, that's not a typo!)

UFF-da!

I'm tired. Just got home from the first technical rehearsal for "The Fantasticks," which goes up soon at Corn Stock Theatre. I'm playing Mortimer--a small role, but a very physical one. Pretty much the whole time I'm on stage, I'm moving. I carry another actor around the stage, engage in a mock combat sequence, and do an elaborate death scene. Factor in the temperature lately (it's been in the nineties) and the walk to and from the theatre, and you start to understand why I'm getting a little worn down.

None of which should be read as a complaint, mind. Because I've been waiting years for a chance to do this show.

"The Fantasticks" is one of those shows I seem to have a history with. Thirty years ago, my father (who was about the same age then that I am now) played the male lead in a community theatre production in Wisconsin. Though I only have a vague recollection of watching the show itself, I got to know all the music really well.

Ten years later on, I'm in college, suffering from a severe delusion I might have a career in theatre. In a musical theatre class, I was assigned some of the songs from the show, and loved them all over again. Since then, "The Fantasticks" has been one of just a handful of shows I swore I'd do as soon as the opportunity came along. In the end, it took twenty years before I happened to be living a city when there was a production coming up. So, when the auditions at Corn Stock were announced, I was there.

So, in brief, that's how we got to this point in the story. I still love the show and now, after just a twenty year wait, I get my chance to be in it.

Opening night is Friday. If you're in Peoria, you should come out and see it.