I hope everyone is having an excellent Christmas season this year. Mine is good. My house doesn’t look very Christmasy, though. I haven’t been putting up a Christmas tree at my place for the past couple years. The season goes by way too fast. And I have cats.
I’ve been busy learning my lines and rehearsing for the Clarkston Village Players’ January show.
We’re working on “Vino Veritas,” a dramedy in which two couples try out a mysterious, blue, truth-serumish wine and start being honest with each other. Completely, horrifyingly honest.
Just four characters in the cast, one of whom is named “Phil.” I don’t play him, that role went to Jim Hoxsey. I play a guy named “Ridley.”
The confusion is fun when director Karen McLellan is giving us notes. When she calls out something for Phil, is she talking to me? Sometimes. Other times she means Jim.
I have many more lines than I’ve ever tried to learn before, but not as many as Phil, I mean Jim. We’re getting it down.
We’ve been working through Thanksgiving, and now Christmas and New Year’s on a play set on Halloween. So we’re actors in costumes portraying characters wearing costumes for Halloween.
Unfortunately for my waistline, the candy season has never ended for me. Adding that onto the Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, I have a lot of work to do in the new year to try to get it all off.
I got my nativity scene set up, though, for Christmas. I got one a few years ago from my church’s gift shop. I can put it up on some shelves above my television, so my cats can’t get to it. They may help explain why I’m not so broken up about not getting my tree up. They consider it a big cat toy.
Mary and Joseph are permanently attached to the stable I got, but baby Jesus is separate. I take him to church the Sunday before Christmas, to stand with the other folks holding their tiny baby Jesuses and we all get them blessed, which is nice.
I might have gotten the set because the scale matches my vintage Star Wars figures, which I still have laying around. Luke Skywalker in his “Empire Strikes Back” fatigues has been known to help stand vigil Christmas morning, along with the shepherd, sheep, and oxen.