SoCal Suburbia

Playing Second Fiddle

My school's variety show is coming up. As in, May 23-26. As in, three weeks. For said variety show, every section in the arts program- theatre, film, art, dance, music- does something, and people are divided into groups within their discipline. I found out who was in my group Monday of last week, and I was told our first rehearsal would be that Wednesday at five. All right, so I had a Butoh class off-campus that didn't end until five, but there was nothing I could do about it. No worries, right?

So Wednesday afternoon, we showed up. All our director wanted was our names and phone numbers. He said we'll start rehearsals next week. All the other groups were starting/had started, but hey. He was doing lights for the dance show, he had an excuse. I went with it.

Day before yesterday, I asked the head of our theatre department if he'd heard anything from my group's director. He hadn't; I ended up calling our director myself. Said director said he thought we'd have our first rehearsal Wednesday, from five to eight. I should have mentioned that three of us had a class off-campus that ended at five, but I didn't. First mistake. Second mistake- I told the rest of the people in our group what he had said (all save one, whom I forgot to tell and whom I don't particularly like. I also managed to use my "Business Voice"- that is, the voice I used on the phone since I was talking to someone I hardly knew and needed something from- on one guy in my group, who is very nice and who doesn't deserve such a curt voice and who I might even sort of kind of like.)

Today, I was looking forward to our first rehearsal. All the other groups at this point have rehearsed and know what they're doing, but I was fairly confident we would get to work and get on track. Then, at four o'clock, right in the middle of Butoh, my phone started to ring. Humiliation struck, I snatched the phone and turned it off, and all was well. Or so I thought. It was not even a minute before another phone rang- this time, it's Michelle, also in my group. He does the same. And then, even another phone rang- Ben's. And guess what? He's in my group.

It wasn't until ten after five that Ben got the message left on his phone: we'd been cancelled. I didn't catch the reason, but I was mad. Fists-clenching, eyes-narrowing, jaw-tensing mad. But of course, there was nothing I could do.

posted by Lucy @ 5:41 PM