For those of you who read my story, Behind the Scenes of a Klutz, you know that the drama teacher, Mr. Lane, is hilarious and most of the time sarcastic. I based him off of my middle school drama teacher Mr. Phipps (pronounced "fips".) They are twins (except for the names.) Mr. Phipps was the best director for all of our middle school drama productions. And for those 3 productions that i was in (Fiddler on the Roof Jr., School House Rock Live Jr., and Dear Edwina Jr.) he always opened with one classic line.
"You are going to hate me by the time rehearsals are coming to an end. I am going to seem like an ogre." Every single year, that was the first thing he said at the first rehearsal. But he always reassured us that he wasn't an "ogre" and that he really was nice. And he really is.
But like he said, we all hated him by the time the 3rd month of rehearsals rolled around. He was SOOOOO strict. And if the leads called out "line" when they forgot it he would start freaking out that we weren't ready yet.
His rules were simple: no gum, wear closed toe shoes, always bring your script with you everywhere, and do not annoy or bug me. (he was serious about the last rule)
And he always told the leads to practice their lines on the way to their classes. And almost every day, i would pass someone from rehearsals and see a glazed look in their eyes and their lips moving. and later that day, someone would always tell me how weird they looked. But hey, that's theater.
He was hilarious too. For those of you who have seen Dear Edwina before, the song where scott confesses his love to edwina was his favorite. He tried showing the guy who was playing scott what to do by acting out the song and lip-sinking. He totally acted like elvis too. You know, swinging his hips and all. And he used his pencil as a microphone too. In about ten seconds, everyone had their phones out and were making a video and were cracking up.
But don't even get me started on the sarcasm. He told us (along with the ogre comment) that 95% of the time he was sarcastic. And whenever we broke the last rule (no annoying him) he would hold out a fist and say "run as fast as you can at this with your face!"
You know how Mr. Lane said he had the attention span of a squirrel and the memory of a goldfish? That's Mr. Phipps exactly. Mr. Lane is really messy and unorganized too. So is Mr. Phipps. His classroom (which is exactly like Mr. Lane's) is a complete mess and most of the stage is covered in boxes and junk. (and i mean junk) The stage managers for Dear Edwina Jr. were two of my friends and identical twins. He couldn't tell them apart to save his life. He would call them (this isn't their real last name though) Smith 1 and Smith 2. And he was almost completely dependent on them (like Mr. Lane is dependent on Cameron, but Mr. Phipps has a better idea of what's going on.)
As my middle school years are coming to an end (FINALLY!) i think the one teacher i'll miss is Mr. Phipps. HERE'S TO YOU MR. PHIPPS!
Mr. Lane is AWESOME!
March 29th, 2009 at 01:18am