Tale #29: No Phone For A Drunken Pirate

Sometimes friends provide you with a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes friends provide sage wisdom and advice. I think a friend becomes truly valuable when they stop you from sending embarrassing, drunken texts.

A summer tradition at VACT that was unfortunately lost when we moved into our new rehearsal space was the annual Pirate Picnic. After the Sunday matinee performance of our summer all-ages musical, we would hold a big barbecue potluck at our pole-shed building complete with a water balloon fight, face painting, and pirate costumes.

My first summer production back from college was Shrek the Musical in 2015. I did the choreography alongside Mama Terry who directed.

Shrek was a huge accomplishment for me. It was the second all-ages summer production I had choreographed and the first one I did as an adult. I felt I really got to push some creative boundaries for myself and the theater. I was proud. It was a great feeling.

We had a great opening weekend of performances that ended with the yearly pirate picnic. I was dressed in a cute pirate wench outfit and was hanging out with my good friend Alex at the bar (aka a set piece we commandeered to become a bar for the party).

My phone buzzed. I unlocked my iPhone to see a facebook message from this guy a friend of mine had been dating at the time who had come to see the show. His boyfriend, my friend, had done the set design so this guy was being a supportive boyfriend.

Now, I didn’t really get along with my friend’s boyfriend. I just thought he wasn’t the nicest of guys. I could tell he didn’t think too highly of me either.

This guy’s message was shockingly long for a Facebook message so automatically I knew it wasn’t going to be good.

He began by stating that since I was a choreography professional and a friend of his boyfriend’s, he assumed that I would want his honest critique of my work. He then went through number by number and told me how basic, simple and boring my work was.

Now, I have chosen to work in creative fields. Whenever you put your creative work out into the world, you have to be prepared to take criticism. It is a part of life. However, this was not someone truly attempting to provide constructive criticism. This was someone driving a very big wedge between his boyfriend and myself.

My friend Alex noticed my demeanor had changed as soon as I looked at my phone. He asked if everything was ok. I just handed over my phone and he read through the message.

Now my guy friends are often much more level-headed than myself so if they tell me something isn’t a huge deal, I try to listen (emphasis on the try).

My friend Alex had known me for a while and he knew that there was nothing more important to me creatively than my choreography. He knew this long and poorly worded Facebook message felt like a sucker punch to the jaw for me. 

He agreed it was a pretty shitty thing for this guy to do.

I shook my head in a combination of shock and anger as I made the bold declaration, “I’m getting drunk today.”

He laughed and said, “ok but here’s the deal. If you are going to get drunk, then you don’t get this.”

He took my phone away and gave it to Mama Terry.

He quickly filled her in on what had happened and then we proceeded to start drinking.

Cheers!

Drinking with Alex is always a very entertaining way to spend a day. For someone who is generally pretty quiet, he can get really loud after a few rum punches.

About an hour or so later, Alex and I were sitting in the building on a folding table trying to stop laughing/burping when my mom found us. The food had all been picked apart by the various families, so our drunken asses were hungry.

All three of us agreed we would go out to one of our local bars with our core group of theater people and get some food.  We sat outside on the patio and ordered multiple fried appetizers. It was Wisconsin after all.

The drunken pirates slowly started to sober up over cheese curds and French fries and they eventually gave me my phone back.