Geek Fest: I Am A Theater Geek by Lisa Mantchev

Lisa Mantchev is the author of many short stories and the soon-to-be-released Eyes Like Stars (July 2009), part one in the Theatre Illuminata Trilogy. Eyes Like Stars captures the imagination through a combination of theatre, fantasy, humor, and love. Bella Aire, still a bit starry eyed after reading Lisa Mantchev's debut novel, predicted for it to be one of the best YA novels in 2009. Eyes Like Stars is on the NSCG List of Favorite Books. Check in later to have a chance at winning a personalized ARC of this fabulous novel!

"My mother left a half-crimped pie crust sitting on our kitchen counter to take me to my first audition. I was seven. The play was South Pacific. The director knew me from the holiday shows at school, which also meant that he knew I could memorize and bellow lines, take stage directions, and, perhaps most importantly, that he could count on my mom to bring me to rehearsals on time.

Sent onstage at the audition with five or six other kids, I was asked to recite a poem. I launched into a veritable manifesto by Kay Starbird. With the stage lights in my eyes and the audience reduced to that hazy glow, I told them about "Eat It All Elaine" and her propensity for eating twigs and rocks and prune pits.

One morning, berry picking, a bug was in her pail

And though we thought for certain her appetite would fail,

Elaine said, "MMMmmm, a stink bug."

And while we murmured "EWWW"

She ate the pail of berries and ate the stink bug, too!

The warm laughter that sloshed to and fro after I delivered those lines hooked me forever. Well, that, and they dyed my hair black so I could play one of the children living on Bali H'ai. Singing, plus costumes, plus getting to stay up late, plus flowers on opening night, plus hair dye? Count me in.

After South Pacific came Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, and The Nutcracker with my ballet class. I was obsessed with props and costuming. Wanting to read about the theater, I devoured the Shoes series by Noel Streatfeild, in which children attend Madame Fidolia's Academy of Dance and Stage Training. The Fossil sisters (Ballet Shoes) are cast in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Richard the Third. I asked for, and got, a Complete Works of Shakespeare for my tenth birthday.

When I didn't have my nose buried in a book, I was onstage: Grease, in high school, and the lead role in Eleemosynary, by Lee Blessing. After seeing a group of traveling performers put on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe with only three actors and a small box of props, I was inspired to write a children's play. I took it to the creative directors at the community playhouse who had cast me in Eleemosynary and said, "I'd like to direct this here."

To my (now) amazement, they said yes. Twenty kids, all under the age of sixteen, put up with my bellowed directions for two months and a weekend's worth of performances. We got written up in the local paper, and my high school newspaper ran a series of columns on students known for their extra curricular pursuits; they labeled me "The Writer."

I was annoyed, because I was headed off to University of California , Irvine to become a Real Actress.

Except something about the university drama program immobilized me. I had never auditioned using monologues; we always read from the scripts in community theater. A few disastrous auditions into my freshman year, I stopped believing in my ability to deliver a line. I was too tall, too busty, too awkward because I felt tall and busty. Suddenly, I didn't know what to do with my hands. I didn't know where to look during the audition, because the director was sitting right in front of me in a fully-lit room.

Instead of acting, I stage managed. Cleaned costumes. Tended to quick wardrobe changes for the actresses onstage. I took musical theater and advanced lighting design, learning the hard way (during a graded project) never to fade a porch light. For my senior thesis project, I did the costume, scenic, and lighting design for Much Ado About Nothing. While I was painting and gluing and rigging up HO scale train layout lights into my miniature catwalks, I also enrolled in a playwriting class.

Somewhere in between filling out character sheets and constructing short scenes, I remembered that I was also a Writer.

It was inevitable, when I sat down to write My First Real Novel, that it would be about the stage. It was only later, when Shakespearean characters were scampering about a teenaged main character with flaming blue hair that I realized just how full-circle I've come. These feet haven't been onstage for close to five years, but part of me lives at the Théâtre Illuminata... the little girl covered in body paint with a silk flower in her dyed-black hair, the one who wanted desperately to play Wendy in Peter Pan but had no idea why a thimble would be a kiss, the teenager who wouldn't take no for an answer to any question. It's the part that flares to life when I take my seat in the audience, burns bright when the lights dim and the curtain goes up. It's the magic that bridges the real world and the place where anything is possible.

If anyone is looking for Neverland or Narnia, they can meet me backstage. No need to prepare a monologue. Costumes will be provided."

Taste the bad candy at Lisa's website.

Check out the brand new Theatre Illuminata site!

Curiosity question: who else has been involved in theatre/had some theatre experiences?