I was very happy that our first Diary entry got such an enthusiastic response. It still bears my little underline marks, and it is a play that, someday, I hope to direct. I still have Let’s Look Around in my bookcase. Nevertheless, I had the bug, as they say, and the rest is history. The mission was aborted before we even got to the Golden Goose’s first appearance. We were all sent home enduring lectures about how locking someone in a refrigerator could cause someone to die – or worse (I wasn’t sure what worse was, but it sounded terribly ominous) – and needless to say, my first attempt at directing a play was a total failure. They got the door open and removed my leading man from the bowels of the old fridge he was quivering with rage and what I can only assume was a newly acquired, life-long case of claustrophobia. The hulking white box had been fed and it wasn’t going to yield up its meal.Īlas, parents had to be fetched. He was quite unhappy in there, and soon began to demand to be let out. We all stood around staring at the refrigerator, stuck in what felt like a disappointing moment of denouement.
Much excitement ensued as the other boys wrestled Jack into the fridge and quickly shut the door. That suggestion met with no resistance from the rest of the cast, despite my protestations. It was suggested by someone that Jack, who was playing my leading character, should be placed inside the gaping white cavern. The door got pried open and there was much discussion about what to do next. I remember yelling out that they had to leave the refrigerator alone and get back to work. To make matters worse, there was an old discarded refrigerator by the side of the garage, and the boys got distracted mid-Scene One by attempting to get the door open.
My five/six-year-old self was decidedly challenged. And, I remember being quite frustrated that they did not glean the importance of actually memorizing the lines, which I had so carefully underlined for them. They kept wanting to play games, and their attention spans were woefully lacking in duration. In rehearsal, the boys proved to be difficult artistes, to say the least. I can only assume we were rehearsing in secret because we were going to surprise our parents with the magnificent show that we had created. I was, however, as stubborn then as I am now, and eventually we decided to secretly rehearse behind a big garage that housed the trucks of the bottled water company at which our fathers worked. I do not remember any pushback, though I’m sure they resisted.
I fell in love with the idea of doing a play, and shortly after – though I do not remember how long exactly – I commandeered my small gang of friends, mostly boys, and announced that they were going to be in a play. It was a play version of The Golden Goose, replete with wonderful illustrations of a stage set, the characters in action, and stage directions. Toward the end of the collection of stories from around the world, I encountered something I had never seen before. One was called Let’s Look Around, and I devoured it, as I did all books at the time. I believe it was my grandmother who gave me several books that had been left behind by my aunt or uncles as they left childhood. The memory is remarkable only in that it proves how quickly the “bug” can infect one, and how being affected by the right piece of literature, at the right moment in time, can transform one’s life in an instant. If I were to write a book, it would likely begin with my earliest memory of my first leap into directing – a job I assiduously assigned to myself at the ripe old age of five (or six – I can’t remember). They are also always asking me how I got started on my strange path. People are always asking me to write a book about my curious adventures over the course of my life-long career in the mercurial, odd, difficult, magical world of theatre.
#Whack the creeps what happens when you call patrick professional#