Lenten Entertainment

Rehearsals continue and my part in the play is getting bigger; or, to be more accurate, the number of small pointless roles I have is expanding. I am now playing no fewer than six people, with lines ranging from "Where will you have 'em burn sir?", a long-debated crux of thespian interpretation, to "Here's a letter come from your son, sir," the possibilities of which demand a thought and consideration which tax the amateur. I am also half of a brief dialogue scene in which I facilitate a husband role-playing the seduction of his own wife in the guise of a travelling hunter, and of another dialogue, my half of which consists purely of shouting 'Oh God, sir!" in increasingly hysterical tones. I am sorry to say that in both cases this is a good deal less sordid than it sounds. However, the former scene does involve acting a person who is acting, a remarkably difficult thing to do convincingly, and the latter involves acting someone with no personality, which is no doddle either. There is no denying that finding new and engaging ways to say "It pleases you to say so, sir" would confound the ingenuity of the most experienced and dedicated professionals.
In any case I had forgotten how much I like acting, and not just because of being around all the nice thespy types who tell me how much they like my shoes and say kind things about my accent. I spent a lot of time board-treading as a gel, but have scarcely been in a play since school, when the opening night of my star turn (ahem) as Lady Bracknell was marred by a less-than-word-perfect Jack Worthing. He fluffed my cue line, and thereby created the only performance in the history of The Importance of Being Earnest in which the line "A handbag?" was never in fact delivered. Oh, and there was the time I was roped into a One-Act play festival. Despite staging the worst-rehearsed show in the history of theatre, something about my portrayal of a bumptious uniformed Girl Guide-cum-secret Lesbian frotteuse seemed to appeal to the (old, male) adjudicator. Inexplicable.
Actually, my last foray was not at school but when I featured, rather successfully, in an intercollegiate drama competition in my first term at Oxford. It was definitely one to go out on: it was only a small role, and in a play so forgettable and so briefly and plainly named that I can't even find it on google; but it does make me one of few people who can honestly say they have been awarded a prize for their performance in Bed.