Dickens Diary

We had our first rehearsal for Fezziwig's Ball, our part of Southport's inaugural Charles Dickens Christmas Festival, yesterday. I wrote about taking part in this a few posts ago, and figured I'd follow the experience along on Pooh Sticks, you know, because it's my blog and I want to ;)

We were experiencing a "tropical weather event" yesterday, and from the sounds of it outside right now today as well. There had been some concern as to whether or not practice would go on, but it turned out to just be rainy and the show, such as it was, went on. We had a good turn-out, I thought, and I was happy to see some friends from our Wizard of Oz experience again. The associate pastor of our church and his wife also turned out, at the insistence of their grandson. I was really happy to see that, they are two of the nicest, most down to earth and fun people we know and I can't wait to share this with them. They are looking to expand their horizons, something I can totally relate to. I love to see people opening new doors.

We signed up for shifts at the party, requested costumes and volunteered to help with refreshments and decorating. We worked on our dance and I think learned it fairly well. It's very close to something I did during a rather unfortunate phys ed class in college. We laughed and danced around and bumped into each other and tried not to step on the toddlers weaving between our legs all the while. It was the kind of experience we expect from this group, and we loved it very much.

The wandering characters were discussed a bit and I asked about a script for Uriah Heep, but he hasn't got one yet. I'm very excited about that part of the Dickens weekend, but I have to say it reminds me of a thought I had in Disney. We were watching one of the parades go by, I think it was the random one we happened upon while trying to leave the Magic Kingdom on our last day, and I saw Terk, the gorilla from Tarzan. I got to thinking about how many people saw him and thought, "Who's the monkey?" I mean, Disney's Tarzan is a fine film, but not one of the classics or most popular by any stretch. I wondered how the guy inside there felt when he excitedly shared his news that finally he was going to be a "head character" in the parks (in a parade even!) with his friends and they asked who he was going to be. Would he be Donald? Goofy? A relatively minor character like FroZone or Mr. Smee? "Nope," he would say proudly, "I'm Terk." I wondered at the expressions on his friends' faces. Would they be so rude as ask who the Hell Terk was? Or would they congratulate him and wait til later to hit Google?

Terk. Know him, love him :)

In my case, I had only a vague idea of who Uriah Heep was myself when Jen brought up the idea of playing him, so when I tell people who I'm going to portray I always explain who he is. I have some rather more literary than average friends, so they catch right on. Don't misunderstand, I'm very happy with Uriah. I would pick a bad guy over a good any day, and playing someone less familiar takes a lot of the pressure of "getting it right" off my head. I'm not an actor, so that is a very good thing. But still, it reminds me of that guy in the monkey suit on the Disney parade float. I am sure it didn't matter to him who he played. He was at Disney World, he was in the parade, he was portraying a character that animators and writers spent months breathing life into. That's awesome and exciting and something to be extremely proud of. I knew who he was, after all, and when he went by I hollared out a "TERK!!!!". I really hope he heard me :)