Luciola, or, a most theatrical Failure

We did it, guys. We performed a play in Portugal, during the competition THALIA. We made ourselves look completely ridiculous in front of the entire world of people who speak Latin.

At least a certain architect whom I quite admire appeared to sleep through the whole disaster.

To be fair, this was somewhat intentional. With only three weeks to rehearse at the insistence of one of the lead actors, who believed this would be more than enough, we didn’t exactly learn our lines well. Nor did we prepare any backdrops or costumes, aside from some thrift-store clothes, “togas” made of bedsheets, and photographs taken by a friend of mine in a park hastily projected behind us. Our vibe resembled that of an early John Waters film, one of those pre-Pink Flamingos shorts, not the surprisingly professional plays the other groups performed. With a budget of about zero dollars and no time to actually learn our lines, we knew that humor and good writing were our only advantages.

Our utter lack of sleep, a result of the sweltering weather as well as our anxiety during the festival, certainly did not improve our performances. During the competition, Tommaso and I spent at least thirty minutes trying to remember whether bananas grow on trees or underground (for the record, they grow on trees). No, we were not drunk at this point; neither of us are accustomed to consuming intoxicating beverages. We simply could not function on so little sleep and so much stress. Nor was I capable of following most of the lectures, though Tommaso claims they were excellent. He praised in particular the intellect of Schola Humanistica’s Paolo Pezzuolo, who lectured in very lovely Greek. I wish I had been there, instead of sipping bitter black tea to avoid falling asleep in a nearby cafe.

We were sooo tired.

For me, the worst part was when I forgot my big song the moment I stepped onstage to perform. Bathed in eerie blue light, gazing alone into the gloomy abyss that was the audience, I felt as if I were in a gloomy, quasi-dangerous discotheque. The lack of background music and lack of other performers to cheerfully play off of caused me to freeze, not unlike the time I had a panic attack during my first conference presentation and couldn’t read the notes before my eyes. Instead of belting out a tragic “I want” song full of longing for a stable home after my character’s wretched, Odyssean wanderings in the so-called “sea of dreams,” I merely mumbled a few lines, forgetting the order I ought to sing them in, before rushing off to the wings in shame.

At least my stupidity was soon overshadowed by the hilarity of Tommaso’s admittedly extremely accurate impersonation of a German accent in the following scene. Actually, his accents were very funny. His Frenchman was so persuasive that multiple native French speakers from the Belgian group asked if he was perhaps French himself. I guess that is what happens when you cast a highly erudite glottologist in your play. If there had been a prize given for the most laughs, we might have won; however, there obviously wasn’t, so we won nothing. We also knew pretty much from the moment that the curtain fell that we did not deserve a prize for that disaster. After seeing the rest of the plays and how delightful they were, we only became more certain of our own foolishness.

Next year, we - and perhaps the people reading this - will learn from our mistakes and, hopefully, produce a far more entertaining play.