Sans Fig Leaf
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"Overstudy"
29 May, 2008
In my high school production of "Guys and Dolls" I was cast as a character who had only two lines of dialogue, and was otherwise in the chorus. I was a little surprised at the first "introductory" rehearsal when I was told to show up the next day for the soloists first read. My character didn't have a solo. One of my best friends was also in the play and he had a somewhat larger part, with about 40 lines of dialogue, but no solo. He was also supposed to attend the first soloist rehearsal.
He theorized that we were understudies. We would learn the part of one or more of the principles and be ready to fill in. I had been in two previous plays in that school, and neither one had bothered with fully-practiced understudies, so I was skeptical.
It turned out we were both right. Two of the guys who had been cast in roles that had solos could barely carry a tune in a bucket. So they were going to deliver all the lines of the two characters, but each time said characters had to sing, we would step forward and sing with them--though really we were singing for them. So we weren't understudies who were expected to fill in if one of them got sick. We were their overstudies -- performing the parts of the role than neither was suited for.
It was more than a little like being the Debbie Reynolds character in Singin' in the Rain.
As chance would have it, the two guys we were providing singing voices for were guys who had on more than one occassion bullied my friend or myself. They were also well known "pets" of the drama teacher. I was not terribly pleased. It seemed clear that they had been cast in the large roles simply because they were favorites of the drama teacher. I tried not to be bitter about it and but on a brave face throughout rehearsals.
I didn't always succeed. There were a few incidents. Nothing terribly serious, but it would be safe to say that our relationships did not improve. There was no After School Special moment where we all realized that the creation of art was more important than our individual wants and needs, and all became friends.
Which isn't to say there wasn't an epiphany. During the tech rehearsal, which was the first time we managed to run through the entire play from beginning to end, I accidently laughed out loud at a particular exchange of dialogue between the two characters played by the guys we were overstudying. I'd heard the dialogue before, because we were in all the same scenes, but something about the scene in context with the rest of the play caught me off-guard.
And that's when I realized
that they hadn't been cast in the roles
merely because they were the teacher's pets. They also were pretty darn
good at comic timing, delivery of lines, and so forth. They were good
actors--more than good enough to handle the roles in question.
Maybe I could have done as good a job in one of the roles as they did.
Maybe my friend and I would have been even funnier. Then again, maybe
not. And it's in that uncertainty that I recalled an important
principle: correlation is not the same as causation. In other words,
just because two things (A and B) seem to happen together doesn't prove
that A caused B. It's possible that both A and B are actually caused by
some other thing we haven't noticed, or that B causes A, or that it's
all just a big coincidence.
Yes, the two guys in question were well-liked by the teacher, but certainly the fact that they were good actors had at least something to do with why the drama teacher liked them.
I was involved in lots of extracurricular activities in high school. I was often juggling schedules: needing to leave a band rehearsal early to go to a debate tournament, missing some play rehearsals to go to orchestra competition, and so on. During my busiest times, my grades suffered. I was never a consistent or methodical studier. I often let my freaky ability to absorb a retain (at least for a while) huge amounts of data without hardly trying and to improvise and analyze quickly on my feet to make up for my lack of preparation and work. Which meant the quality of my projects was uneven. Which would understandably make a director think twice before casting me in a pivotal role.
Maybe I was well less well-liked by that teacher because I'd flaked out on her one too many times. Maybe my reading in the auditions was awful. Maybe the guy I was singing for believed he was saddled with me because the director felt sorry for the musician who couldn't act. Maybe one of the other guys who auditioned but didn't get any role came away convinced that the only reason I was cast was because I was active in band and choir.
Maybe we were all right.
And equally wrong.
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that
all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus,
they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But
they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
--Carl Sagan
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