5: Talk about the best birthday you’ve had.
The first one that comes to mind is the day after my 22nd birthday; I had rehearsal for our Giant Shakespeare History Epic on my birthday, had a very embarrassing and awkward (but funny) conversation with my mentor that I’ll remember forever, and don’t recall anything else from the actual day. But the day after, we didn’t have rehearsal, and the majority of the cast took me out to dinner and we went out on the beach in the middle of the night and ran around yelling Shakespeare in the dark by the ocean - mostly Henry V - because we’d been told to work outside anyway.
10: Talk about the biggest fight you’ve ever had.
My mother threw me out of the house when I turned down the college she wanted me to go to and committed to the college I wanted to go to. (They’re within half an hour of each other.) It was right around all my spring senior year tests, too, and I kept going to class and getting A’s while crying for a week. But I mean, she’s kicked me out other times, and I’m sure we’ve had so many fights that were bigger; that was just the first time. It doesn’t even feel real anymore.
15: Talk about the time you were most content in life.
It’s not a specific time, but when I used to do my math homework before school at 5AM, and I understood it (but not so thoroughly that it was boring), I would listen to music in German, and my brain would just go silent and only focus on one thing - problem-solving. Being in one place mentally is so, so elusive for me. Math did it. Programming sometimes does it. Shakespeare does it beautifully, but only when someone is very, very adept with it.
20: Talk about something that happened in high school.
Ha. In my sophomore year, we were doing Arsenic and Old Lace, and we got this bullshit review in the school paper, and it was obvious that the girl who wrote it hadn’t even read a synopsis of the play. So I got there, and everyone was just devastated because the drama department in my school worked out of a gutted auto shop and always got the short end of the stick, and we’d really been looking forward to reading a real review instead of just more proof that no one even bothered to come see us. So what does mousy, shy, neurotic, quiet little me spontaneously suggest to cheer everyone up? That we grab the matches we were using in the play and light a bunch of those papers on fire in the parking lot before the show. It was like I wasn’t even aware what was coming out of my mouth, but suddenly we were all outside and that shit was on fire and we were screaming madly and running from the hall monitor who tried to catch us.
Later, I insisted I’d been joking. And I also wasn’t the one who lit the fire. But the seniors called it “some Lord of the Flies type shit” and looked at me with new respect.
25: Talk about an ex-best friend.
I don’t think I’ve ever had any sort of severe friend break-ups. There are people I’ve drifted apart from, but none so extremely that I think of them as an “ex.” I was close friends with a guy in high school (that I eventually dated for a while) that I now realize was shitty and a wee bit physically abusive “as a joke” and I don’t talk to him.
30: Talk about what turns you off.
Being talked down to. (I. Will. Cut. You.) Bad hygiene. Meanness and pomposity in general.
35: Talk about things you wish you could stop doing.
Eating so much junk food. Procrastinating. Making messes. Second-guessing myself? Although I don’t know that I’d give that up; I feel like I’m being realistic when I put myself down.
40: Talk about the end of something in your life.
LOLOLOLOL HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT I’M GRADUATING THE CONSERVATORY IN A WEEK AND IT’S THE END OF SCHOOL FOR ME UNLESS I EVER GO BACK TO GRAD SCHOOL. On one hand, I’m ready to work and have money and go after my dreams in a more free-form way. And not have homework. But at the same time, I feel like I’ve only just started learning, about acting and about myself. I’m glad I’m covering another show here in fall, so I don’t have to say goodbye just yet. But I will be saying goodbye to a lot of the people in a week, and that hurts. They’re honestly family. Sometimes I get mad at some of them, and sometimes they get mad at me, but on my part at least, it’s in a “siblings I never had” sort of way, and I’d be there in a heartbeat if any of them were in trouble. I’ll miss them so much.
