When your old professor asks you to perform a bit from “Julius Caesar” in front of his fourth graders, you start to wonder if you were a favorite student or a hated one.
I am to dramatic acting what Mozart was to golf.
If I were in the audience when Shakespeare asked for volunteers to play Cassius, the Bard of Avon would’ve taken one look at me and never written another play.
For those who don’t know, in “Julius Caesar,” Cassius is the guy who comes up to Brutus and says something along the lines of “Have you considered chopping up our dictator like a salad?”
And Brutus replies to the tune of “But I despise Caesar salads. Besides, they would wreak havoc on Rome, or, uh, its digestion.”
And Cassius says something like “Please pretty please with a cherry on top?”
And Brutus goes, “Okiedokie!”
And they stab Caesar 23 times.
I say “along the lines of” because I don’t actually remember what Brutus or Cassius is supposed to say.
It turns out that real actors actually memorize about two hours’ worth of deep Shakespearean doo-doo whenever they perform “Julius Caesar.”
I always assumed they just had really large stacks of cue cards.
Not that I had to perform the whole play. I only had to do a scene alongside five fourth-graders.
I have to say, conspiracies lose a bit of pizzazz when the guy playing Brutus is a foot shorter than you.
I cannot for the life of me play a convincing conspirator.
A convincing nervous wreck, maybe. A calm, cool, collected conspirator? As the Romans might say, “No dice.” If they could speak English, that is.
Besides, given the first few rehearsals, I began to think these fourth-grade conspirators were more interested in stabbing me than the guy playing Julius.
We had done our practices in T-shirts and all, but the night before the big scene, my performance troupe decided we needed to have togas.
Do I own a toga? No. Have I ever owned a toga? No. Can you just walk into a store and buy a toga? Absolutely not.
If you came into a T. J. Maxx and asked if they had anything in the imperial dictator style, they’d throw you out on your gluteus maximus, if you get my drift.
But togas had to be had. I ended up sewing the ends of several bath towels together.
Then of course I needed to make laurel wreaths for everyone, which necessitated raiding my neighbor’s garden.
My neighbor is the sort of guy who could’ve easily led the Roman legions to thrash the barbarian tribes, and a few other tribes, too, just for good measure.
When I say that not only did I trim his laurel bushes, but actually fashioned wreaths out of them with pipe cleaners and a hot glue gun, you must understand my deep commitment to children’s education.
Add the fact that I had spent two whole weeks memorizing my part, and if I didn’t get to play Cassius, I would stab someone, even if it was only with a foam sword.
The day of the performance, the only line I remember saying was “Good morrow, Brutus.”
Everything else was a blur. I blinked and the audience was throwing bits of laurel at us. That was it.
Maybe I really just inhabited my character for two minutes. Or maybe I completely blanked. I couldn’t tell you.
On the positive side, I was probably more entertaining than Mozart.
Alexandra Paskhaver’s column is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
