Times past and time's passing

Many years ago when i was alive, I was a member of a local Amateur Theatre Group. This particular one took things very seriously and even owned their own theatre, and i guess that I only got in because I was a member of a rare group - Men.
Prior to this my experience of theatre was limited to youth clubs, schools and college societies, where fundamentally everyone pulls together. My illusions of a happy family were to be shattered over the months when I participated in two of their productions.
The first of these was as terribly morbid and depressing play called Blood Wedding by Lorca. In this i played the role of a woodcutter and had but a handful of terribly depressing lines, none of which I can remember now. I am not sure that i remembered them at the time but I do remember the rehearing and the backstage backbiting and bitchery that developed along with the production. One of the problems that this, and probably many other such groups had, was a superabundance of old women, who, saw the place as their own by right and woe betide anyone who stepped on their shoes. Old women of both sexes are a powerful force, and alongside these were the luvvies; a small cluster of latent and overt homosexuals who saw the stage as a way out of the closet in which they had been lying still for the rest of their lives. This formed the backbone of the theatre and breaking into the inner circle was never really an option.
At the time i had long fair hair and I suppose that I must have stood out like a sore thumb in a crowd that was ostensibly comprised of Spanish peasants, but the production went on and was staged to some acclaim by the few in the audience who knew what it was about.
The next production was Anhouil's Ring Around the Moon, a play that I knew quite well. I auditioned and was given the part of Joshua, an elderly butler who shambles into the story from time to time and who shares the final scene with an ancient Jewish banker - more about that in a moment.
In this production, the infighting and general bitching reached heights that I had not believed possible and tensions built between various factions that hung in the air like persistent farts. Each rehearsal was blighted by asides and deliberate provocations, but the real straw on the camel's back for me came on the opening night where the poor woman who was acting as prompt (she was always the prompt for reasons that i won't go into) gave a prompt during a dramatic pause. The old woman who had been prompted launched into a verbal attack as soon as the act had finished. The rest of the flock flapped around clucking and pecking and the aforementioned prompt vanished into the only lavatory cubicle and locked herself in sobbing her heart out.
This was awkward. Not only was there nowhere to pee, but it was clear that the safety net prompt was going to be absent for the remainder of the play. I must confess that I enjoyed the backtracking and grovelling apologies that ensued, and the way that the hens gathered around the unfortunate prompt as she emerged wet eyed form the toilet.
The last act went ahead with prompts safely in place and tempers under control. In the very last scene, a conversation between the elderly banker and myself took place front centre stage and face to face. It is an intimate moment where the play is finally put to bed and both of us were heavily made up as old frail men. The banker had a moustache that had always been well fixed in place until that moment. As the scene unravelled i became aware that the prosthesis was beginning to develop a mind of its own and that he was not able to do anything to control it. My face was inches from his as the hairy device first drooped on one side and then hung at 90 degrees to his mouth, swinging gently and reacting to every p uttered by stretching out towards me. I have never before or since exerted so much self control. Most of me wanted to laugh, but a small part of me admired the way that this guy totally ignored the situation and stayed in role until the final curtain, and so did I.
That was my last stage performance. I couldn't face the blathering and infighting any more and so i decided to channel my interest into producing plays in school, but that is another story.