When Jenna was seven years old I had signed her up for an acting class. The show to be preformed was “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown”. A few hours before taking her to the “audition” she painted red dots all over her face and told me she couldn’t possibly go because she had the measles. I don’t know what she had against Charlie Brown at the time, but I know the entire “Peanuts” gang were not high on her list of shows to watch. Pretending she was one of them seemed against her nature.
That first night of class the script
was passed out. Three boys and four
girls read the script according to how the instructor had assigned them before
she changed what parts to read for. Lucy
and Linus were cast that night but she was still getting a feel for who the
other children would play and who would be double cast (as there are just six
characters). Jenna had memorized
everybody’s part except for Charlie Browns.
She was hoping to get cast as either Schroeder or Snoopy.
The following week the children went
over the script again. Neither the
instructor nor I could see either of the boys playing Charlie Brown as one
seemed highly unfocused to play a main part.
The other spoke Spanish as his native tongue and did not read English
well enough to pull off Charlie Brown.
Thus the instructor had asked if Jenna would be okay playing Charlie
Brown. She wasn’t, but we made Charlie
Brown a girl instead of a boy.
Long before the final performance Jenna
had memorized the entire script. She has
continued this for years. She has never
taken drama at school until this year.
Script was written and parts passed out – more students than
characters. Thus to include Jenna
additional supporting characters were written in so that, if nothing else, she
would at least be seen milling in the background. People who say “there are no small parts just
small actors” are full of it. There are
parts or even characters that are insignificant enough that they can be written
out.
To her credit, Jenna has learned
others’ parts as she has practiced going over lines with some other
students. During the course of time she
has been asked to substitute for various students who would not/will not make
it to the final performance (or sometime during the week of performance) She has done that before – playing multiple
characters or saying multiple lines when she is on stage with the one she is
saying lines for (for example, there were three aunts in "Madness, Murder and Matrimony -or-Have Some
Madeira, M'Dear?" who appeared on the stage at the same time, but
when another aunt was unavailable to
perform one night, Jenna said both of their lines.
