Since it is crystal clear to me that I cannot even come close to the theatre expertise of some of my blogpals (you know who you are) I won't even try.

But this Friday Five has made me remember a theatre experience of mine from high school.

In my junior year, we were doing Neil Smon's "God's Favorite", a sendup of the book of Job. I was the ditzy daughter Sarah. Looking back, I realize that I didn't quite understand all the nuances of the role, but it was fun to do. The director (the Drama teacher at our very small rural school) edited the language of the play to make it more conservative rural audience friendly.

A few weeks before our opening we went to the Indiana state Thespian Society Conference, and saw performances by some much larger, city high school drama clubs. The shows I remember in particular were "Godspell", "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown", "Waiting for Godot", "The Pajama Game", and "Pippin".

We knew that our little country school could never get away with doing any of those shows, but we were inspired to do a great job at "God's Favorite."

Unfortunately, the algebra teacher happened to be walking through the cafetorium (yes, that is what we had to work with) and overheard our last rehearsal--specificaly she heard me giving a line that she took to be very suggestive (it is). She stopped and watched some more. The father character swears a bit in this play, and the director didn't take out all of it, but toned it down quite a lot.

That night at home my parents got a phone call from the algebra teacher, in which she basically called me a slut; the next morning the entire cast was called in to the principal's office and we were told that on the basis of this one teacher's objections, the play was cancelled. It was deemed "obscene".

This was the late 70s, dear readers. I don't know if the school administration had any idea what was happening outside our tiny little county. But they wanted to protect our parents from hearing one of us say "Damn."

This was my first real expereince of "fighting city hall". I didn't realize it at the time, but the beloved drama teacher probably risked her job to go to the mat for us. She re-wrote like crazy, we re-learned lines, we re-blocked, we told everyone we could find what happened, and the principal came to see our dress rehearsal before he made up his mind.

The show went on. The local paper was there, after hearing about all the fuss. We sold out (tickets, that is).

"Sarah" (played by yours truly) was photographed mid-scene, and was on the front page of the Dinky Town Daily News.

It was then that I knew I wanted to hang with theatre people.