On The "Women's Report"

B3ta's "Question Of The Week" is:

Nativity Plays

Every year the little kids at schools all over get to put on a play. Often it's christmas themed, but the key thing is that everyone gets a part, whether it's Snowflake #12 or Mary or Grendel (yes, really).

Personally I played a 'Rich Husband' who refused to buy matches from some scabby street urchin. Never did see her again...

Who or what did you get to be? And what did you have to wear?

Here is my contribution:

On The "Women's Report"

It was Christmas time in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, in 1966. Our 5th-grade teacher, Mr. Chavez, wangled an invitation for our class to stage a Nativity Play on KOAT TV-7, during the "Women's Report", a godawful 15-minute daily segment usually filled with useless society news in an arid town that had hardly any society. The TV segment was hosted by the mother of one of the new kids in the class, a boy whose premature interest in girls had earned him nothing but scorn from the rest of us boys. The entire 3:15-3:30 p.m. slot was handed to us 10-year-old children.

It's disorienting enough to enter a TV studio for the first time, but we were flummoxed by the appearance of Uncle Roy, an obese kiddie show TV clown, who came on-the-air at 4:00 p.m. Uncle Roy already ruled our inner fantasy lives with his cartoons, jokes and zesty manic edge, but in person he seemed morose, inscrutable, and difficult-to-please. We began to panic, first at the idea that Uncle Roy was a human being with a real physical existence, and second that he was there to watch everything we did. Pleasing Uncle Roy would be like appeasing a volcano: there might have to be a sacrifice.

The Nativity Play itself was a blur of stuttering, muffled voices. My friend Byron had vowed that he would never let the camera see his face, and he kept his word. Clad as a shepherd, Byron never stood still, wandering hither and yon across the set, veering away every time the camera's red light indicated it was on. My friend David, one of the Three Kings, forgot his lines and had to be prompted by a girl shepherd wearing a fake beard.

As Narrator, I gamely struggled on, with the camera relentlessly staring me in the face and Uncle Roy visible in the distance behind the camera. Right towards the end of the play, my eyes veered away from the prepared text and I lost my place. By obsessive over-preparation I had somehow managed to memorize the text, however, and I soldiered on despite being lost.

And then it was over. The lights went dark. Uncle Roy had disappeared, his judgment unknown. Uncle Roy's studio audience of excitable kids began entering the studio for his 4:00 p.m. show, but our 15-minutes of fame had expired, and we hit the cold pavement outside just as it began snowing....