Backblog – Friday, May 8th

May 8th saw my acting debut. This Friday was CVCA’s “prom” – the Junior-Senior Banquet where the kids get dressed up for a formal dinner, have some form of entertainment, and watch the senior video that is made by one of CVCA’s teachers as a service to the kids.

This year’s prom was at Hudson Country Club. It was a nice club, but did have one major drawback – to fit all the kids in they needed to use three separate rooms. While it made the dinner portion of the evening more intimate, it was weird not to see a large number of the students once everyone had been seated. The kids looked really nice, as usual. They take the evening quite seriously in its formal nature, and the guys look sharp in their tuxes and the girls look very pretty in their dresses. The main entrance was crowded this year – the main entrance also housed the photo line, so there was no good place to dress-watch with Meredith. We like to compare notes on what style and color of dresses we like. I felt as if I missed most of them this year since I was largely at my table for much of the evening.

Dinner was okay, but for some reason that I never fully understood, it was served about an hour late. That is a long time for people to mill about and chat, and it may have been that chatting that caused the food to be later than it otherwise would have been.

Several teachers, me and Mer included, made up an acting group that was to be the entertainment of the evening.We were performing a murder mystery, and the kids were organized into teams to guess who done it. We improvised a bit for the “auditorium” – we realized that we needed a lot of space to accommodate the students, so some quick thinkers cleared all the tables out of the way and set up chairs in rows. That way, we seemed able to seat about 90% of the students (the rest seemed content to talk with each other in the far dining rooms).

Mer and I were a married couple in the play. She was an impatient, wealthy, domineering wife who was mostly concerned for her three million dollar diamond ring (which she had locked in the school safe). I was a wimpy, brow-beaten husband who was an incessant gambler. So, we were pretty much typecast. What are you going to do? Anyway, our characters are at a presentation at a high school named after my character, and some of the students start to act up, so Mer loses her temper and storms off to get her diamond so she can leave the school (and never come back). She finds her diamond has been stolen, and the school security guard staggers onto the stage and dies in front of the students (to much effect). Thus the mystery part began. The cast of characters was fun – there were some “punk” kids, a cheerleader, a coach, a principal and his secretary, a thief, an FBI agent, a student protester, a couple of teachers, and our daughter (Mer and I had a daughter in the play). All these characters were played by CVCA teachers and spouses. It was a fun group.

Mer had worked very hard to memorize her lines. She had a ton of lines (maybe the most in the play – it was close), and she did very well, especially with her screaming, frantic run on stage after she discovers her diamond has been stolen. I also memorized my lines, but I think I only had about 12 lines in the whole play, so I pretty much picked them up from helping Mer run lines.

We had four practices in all. I think it came together very well for a bunch of non-actors with only four performances. Occasionally people forgot lines, and one time the coach forgot his lines and just started ranting in character. It was wonderfully funny, and the kids loved it. As fun as the play was, the practices were even better. We just all got along and laughed much of the time. One of our very sweet colleagues had to pull a gun on everyone at the end. To her credit, she had no idea how to hold a pistol, and we just all lost it. What a great group of people to work with.

We got to improvise some during an intermission. We were supposed to wander the crowd blaming each other, and generally being in character. I loved that part. It tied in nicely with my improv skills and I did not have to worry about lines.

So, I think the kids enjoyed the play. We got pretty positive feedback, and there seemed to be a lot of smiles around. After the play, we all watched the now-traditional senior video that shows baby pictures of all the seniors followed by their senior photo, and there are many group photos as well. Once the video was over, the formal part of the evening broke up and most people headed to “after party.”

After party is a parent-sponsored and run informal time after prom. It is held at the Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium, and it is a place for the kids to take their dates to go and hang out and have fun. There is tons of food, music, usually a couple of movies playing, various games (wallyball, racquetball, basketball, etc.), and there are some really good prizes given away at the end of the evening (iPods, TVs, DVD players, and so on). Mer and I stopped by after party, and once again had the joy of being mistaken for students (we were still in our formalwear). We ate more food, chatted with some colleagues, and wandered around to enjoy seeing the students having fun. We stayed for about an hour and then headed home. I’m just sad that my play closed on opening night.