Me Me Me

Any weekend in which I get to see both of my children is a great weekend — and this one was doubly great because we gathered in Nashville to watch our budding actor give a fabulous performance as a Cockney-accented gangster in a pinstriped suit in Vanderbilt University Theatre’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s farce Role Play. The play earned a standing ovation, and our star’s sweet sister, who has been busily raising money for Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Jim Martin (donate so that he can win the runoff! www.martinforsenate.com), and loving aunt shared the evening with us. 

Parents influence their children in a million ways, and if we’re lucky, they learn from our mistakes and do a better job with the next generation than we did with them. Lord knows they are aware of their parents’ neuroses, as our adorable son demonstrated after the show when he compared me to a character who goes ballistic over a missing fork before a dinner party. (This comparison was not very complimentary, as his girlfriend pointed out. He didn’t see the problem. HA!)

But… one child working in a national political campaign and another one acting and majoring in theater? It’s almost too weird. I was an intern for my congressman, a long-serving Alabama right-winger; I argued feminist politics with his chief of staff in the summer of 1975, and the congressman liked me enough to come to my wedding a year later with his wife (who sported a very distinctive Bride of Frankenstein hairdo), causing a splash in my hometown. Today, I work at Broadway.com and see an average of three shows a week. Meanwhile, my darling husband starred in plays throughout high school and had a summer internship in college at the Georgia governor’s office. It’s enough to make me hum the theme from The Twilight Zone.

Truthfully, I don’t expect our baby girl to stay in politics and I sincerely hope our baby son pursues his other major, elementary education, and not theater as a career. For now, though, it’s fun to see them putting their own spin on things we love.

Tags: Alan Ayckbourn, Jim Martin, politics, Role Play, Vanderbilt University Theatre

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.