Galileo's Falling Body

posted by Fletch 1 decade 4 years 5 months 3 weeks ago • 494 views

BRM's video reminded me of one of my fonder memories of high school.

I played Galileo in a High School play. Short on time, we built this rather unwieldy Tower of Pisa out of these huge wire spools stacked end-to-end and wrapped with cardboard, painted to look like the Tower (kinda). An aluminum ladder was placed behind the Tower. The plan was for me to appear at the top, deliver my lines, drop what ended up being a ping-pong ball and a red rubber dodgeball (both painted gray) into strategically-placed, bounce-inhibiting padded box, cleverly hidden behind cardboard shrubbery, and then smugly bask in the glow of the assembled and amazed Pisans. The set wasn't completed until the day of the first performance, but we were pretty confident all would be just fine. We didn't need to rehearse it (much). We knew our goddamned lines. Let's do this.

The first performance ended my run as Galileo. After climbing to the top, I couldn't reach the front of the tower with my "weights" very well without leaning on the damn thing, which was already leaning towards the front of the stage (in hindsight... pretty precariously). As I leaned forward, the ladder flew backwards from under my feet and went crashing to the rear of the stage. I had to grab the top of the Tower to keep from plunging 8-10 feet to my death, so I was just hanging there momentarily with my arms straight out in front of me as if I had crashed through some ice, holding on like a baby koala, as if my life depended on it. Needless to say, the "weights" missed the padded box, and went bouncing across the stage as ping-pong balls and rubber dodgeballs are wont to do, the dodgeball ultimately reaching the front row of the audience. Yes, the Pisans were indeed amazed. I, having just spiked both weights over the front of the Tower in a desperate bid find a handhold, couldn't actually see where they going... until our beautiful Tower toppled over with me clinging to it like Rick, Will and Holly over the waterfall. All I saw when I hit, cracking two ribs, was the dodgeball being caught by my girlfriend's younger brother, and that goofy smile on his face.

End scene.

Curtain.

Awesome memory. 

5 Comments

Sarzy says...

Reminds me of a performance of Oliver that I was in back in elementary school. I was in a scene with a friend of mine, and we were looking at a painting. My line was something like "Do you notice that there's an uncanny resemblance between that boy and my daughter" at which point our music teacher, who was on the piano, played a dramatic "dun dun DUN" -- which was completely unrehearsed. My friend and I held it together for about a second, but as soon as we made eye contact we both completely lost it. We were laughing hysterically for about a minute or two before we were finally able to resume the scene.

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