Confession/retraction

Okay, so when I announced my latest role, I said that one of the reasons I am so excited is because I've never had the chance to act out my life-long girlhood fantasy of playing a princess...and I've been racked with guilt ever since because it's not technically true.

I have played four princesses.

But, in my defense, three of them looked like this:

I'm not sure why I played this role on this day. The actual understudy is standing right next to me...

Obviously, none of the actresses playing the "fat" princess was actually at all fat.
This probably made it more funny, though.

 As you can see here, they aren't exactly the "fairy tale, dream-role-type" princesses that Cinderella is. In fact, they are three "unsuitable" princesses who are rejected in The Princess and the Pea. And I wasn't actually cast in any of the roles. I wasn't even the understudy for any of them. I was the understudy to the understudy... for the entire cast. (I wasn't in the A cast or B cast; I made up the entire C cast -- who else can say that? Kind of awesome.) This enabled me to play all of the unsuitable princesses, and even one of the guards at one point. They never let me play the actual, pretty princess, because she had her own understudy. I just played the understudy's part if the real princess couldn't be there.

Really, though, playing those awful princesses was a hoot, especially since I didn't know the exact lines for two of them. I knew enough to get along, but the prince was very nice about helping me out when needed. There was so much ad-libbing going on in that show anyway that I'm pretty sure no one even noticed that I might have made stuff up. I love live theatre!

The fourth princess was in The Twelve Dancing Princesses, where almost everyone in the cast was a princess:

In fact, the press release listed every other actor, and then said, "--and a bunch of girls playing princesses." So it was hardly special. And I wasn't the pretty princess in that one either. I was the bratty crony to the "mean" princess -- think Peter Pettigrew from Harry Potter. Again, fun to play, but not quite the fulfillment of a dream.

So, I relish the opportunity to play a real, pretty princess. One little girls might want photos with. One who gets to run around in a pretty ball gown and marry the handsome prince. I was so excited last night about my first rehearsal tonight, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking, "My friend Casey is playing my stepsister and will be torturing me!" and "Little Red is going to say 'You can talk to birds?' to me!" and "I get to pretend to have small, dainty feet!" I'm already thinking about ways to keep the character from becoming too cartoony and stereotypical and boring but still remain the elegant princess. How I love "we haven't started yet" anticipation! I don't know anything yet, and I want to do everything. Let's get started already!

Oh! It feels so good to get that confession off my chest! Now I can proceed with no further guilt on that score. Nice start to a Monday :-D