Reminisce by Matthew Rodenkirch

I’m always fond of the gag gifts for shows.  I have a squirrel, a little stuffed squirrel, that I got when I did "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest."  I was one of the chronic patients.  I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the patient I was playing ("Mister Ruckley"), but I got to swear profusely, and it was the only role I had to do any great physical training for, because I had to hold my arms out at my sides for extended periods of time.  I (the character) had some sort of Jesus thing, and he was pretending he was hanging from the cross any time he was on stage.  So I had my arms out in this extended position, and I did that for several minutes at a stretch, and literally half an hour / forty-five minutes at a time.  And I really had to stretch and bulk up my arms a little bit to deal with that.  Fortunately the Director, Steve Hilbert, had me up against a bookcase, and I was able to sneak a book out on either side to sort of rest my upper arms on, as far as I could get them, I had a little something to help, but otherwise it was very difficult to do.

And another long string of embarrassing things: wearing tights, having water thrown on my face.  It seems every time I go on stage it seems something embarrassing happens to me, by design.  But in this particular case, Steve thought it would be funny if I had wet myself before I went out.  So every time before I went out I had to pour water down my leg.  It was cold water, too.  Then, as soon as I got off stage I had to go dry, because the next scene I was on was another day, so that was always a challenge just getting my pants dry.