My Favorite Role I Have Played

Rumors, a play by Neil Simon, is a comedy about a Charlie and Myra who are hosting their 10th anniversary party, but before the first guests arrive, Charlie shoots himself for unknown reasons and Myra is missing. As the first couple frantically tries to figure out what to do because Charlie isn’t talking and Myra is no where to be found, the next couple arrives. At first they pretend that everything is fine but then they finally tell Claire and Lenny what is going on. Then the next couple comes in and gets wrapped in this as well but no one tells them what had happened. Finally the last couple arrives and is completely oblivious to everything. The lies get worse and worse until finally the truth is revealed to everyone and cops are involved. In the end, Lenny makes up a long winded story to describe their situation to the cop, and the cop buys it and leaves them alone. As the guests head upstairs to talk to Charlie they hear a noise from the basement door. It turns out that Myra is locked in the basement as Lenny had described in his story.

I played Cookie Cusack who arrives with her husband, Ernie, third. I was an eccentric character who really loved people. My quirk in the show was that I would get random back spasms throughout the show; I hunched over and yelled weird shrieks. I would constantly lose my earrings because of my spastic motions as I get the back spasms. I really liked working on this character because she was a very comedic character but I still had to find the humanity in her. At one point, everyone is arguing, the cops are coming, and her and her husband are on the floor doing yoga. It was very interesting to me to logically connect why she was on the floor calmly when everything else is so chaotic.

The set was really realistic and neat. We had many tech people working on the set for weeks. It was so interesting to see it all come together. We knew that the set was going to be really pretty because the party hosts were a rich and prominent couple. However, I did not expect that it would be so realistic and grandiose.

The actual story line was very clever and witty, and it was very challenging to do Simon’s style because he used many quick one liners which we had to get exactly as written or it wasn’t funny. Simon wrote many lines that had very subtle humor which we, the actors, only fully understood three weeks into rehearsals. Overall, the acting was great, the set was beautiful, the directing was great, and the tech was good. It was a great show and I enjoyed being a part of it.