Point Me Toward Tomorrow

(February 8, 2008)

It's Friday again! I'm still at work. I'll write about it this weekend if, on my way home, I encounter any more magic costume accessories from 1970s smash hit musicals.

I DID spend a lot of free time this week Youtube'ing amateur performances of A Chorus Line.

I've decided that I don't want to see any amateur performances of A Chorus Line.

Hey, I like local theatre as much as the next fool and have done my share of shoestring shows. But A Chorus Line is a show ABOUT A SHOW, and I just don't think it lends itself to community theatre! It's a brilliant concept that brilliances itself right out of the grasp of amateurs. Inseparable from the script itself are the character attributes -- these people are professional dancers and singers. You can't "act" that.

This comes up because the Youtube audience is pretty rough on the video clip owners. There's a lot of video heckling.

Especially if the video's blurb is clearly from the actor, such as "this is me playing so-and-so."

Especially if the actor is, you know, quite a bit more zaftig than your usual, ahem, professional dancer and can barely sing the part.

The comebacks to the insults posted by online-hecklers are always something like "Jerk, it says COMMUNITY theatre, we KNOW those aren't the real dance steps!"

Mmm...yyyyeahhhh buttt....as much as I want to agree with them, I have to say to the amateur actors: your hecklers have a point. It isn't like you're doing Li'l Abner. Or Guys and Dolls. When the audience comes to see a community theatre production, they of course know that those aren't real Dogpatch hicks, or gangsters, or what have you. But disbelief has a hard time suspending when you're watching a girl with no tits and no ass sing about how she's had all this plastic surgery? In one of the clips I saw, the Richie character is doing his song and, I'm sad to say, he can neither sing nor dance.

That's just not good.

Alright, that's enough about that. Off to see if there's a Technicolor dream coat in the dumpster outside.