"Before you can search for truth, you must be interested in finding it." -Miroslav Volf

Friday, June 17, 2011

Boswell Duo Makes its Theatrical Debut

Some of you may have already seen some of these pics on Joann’s facebook page, but I wanted to include a few here. Last Friday night was Tumwater High School’s “Oscar Night,” the annual awards ceremony for the theater department.

Joann presented most of the awards, with the help of her able-bodied assistant, myself, finding and organizing trophies for her (reprising my role as the “Lovely Boz”…pardon the obscure reference...where art thou, Steven Keck?).

We also performed a duet together, I believe the first time we’ve both sang and acted for an audience. Though, sometimes we do converse with each other when others are around as if we had an audience. It’s the actress in her, I guess, and the needy-for-attention child in me, probably.

We did our own rendition of “He Lives in You” from the Lion King Musical. Joann played the baboon sage and did the majority of the singing, using song to explain to me, the young, confused lion, my true identity. I spent most of the time “discovering myself,” learning how to be a lion while also goofing off. It was a true straight-woman, funny man comic duo.


You can see our costumes in the pictures; mine featured a stuffed lion duct taped to my head, which was of course a crowd pleaser. We had a blast. The “story” we told was fun, the harmonies were solid, and our interaction was pretty darn funny...if I may boast. And the students loved it. One male student actually proposed to me after our performance. I politely declined, of course.

In reviewing our performance together, Joann differentiated for me two kinds of actors (not the only two kinds). There are actors who take direction well and when on stage adhere pretty strictly to the script, not being so lost in the moment that they forget their precisely prepared movements and cues and lines.

Then there are actors who take direction well but once on stage lose themselves and take things in whatever direction they feel like in the heat of the moment, often thwarting the director's work but being nonetheless entertaining. She tells me I’m that one.

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