Rotten Apple Tree
Sometimes the starring role isn't the one you audition for.
At 18, life was simple and there were a few guarantees. One, for starters, was that my mother would overreact when I told her I had a migraine, another would be that I would, without a doubt, zone out during my 5th period economics class, and the last was due to the fact that I was a senior, I would get any role I wanted in the school play.
It made perfect sense, I was a senior, and if I told my drama teacher I wanted to play both romantic leads he’d have to let it slide being that this was the last year I’d be able to spread my theatrical wings. We had put on a production of “Night of The Living Dead” that October, and I had snagged one of the lead roles without auditioning. I felt like I was Meryl Streep, and I had been offered a part without having to audition, because I would obviously give the performance of a lifetime. My character, Helen, was supposed to turn into a zombie at the end of the play and needless to say, Meryl Streep wouldn’t have found playing a zombie in front of her harsh friends to be the most mortifying experience of her life and would’ve done an overall better job. She probably wouldn’t have memorized her lines the day of the play either.
Christmas break was over, and spring had sprung, meaning it was time to get the ball rolling for the last show of the year. My drama teacher, let us call him Mr. A (The main reason we’re calling him Mr. A is because that was his name. I’m not in the business of denying my readers the cold, hard journalistic truth.) decided that “The Wizard of Oz” would be the perfect show to showcase what little superstar talent the class had. The reasoning behind him choosing “The Wizard of Oz” came from his utter disappointment from “Night of the Living Dead”. He rationed that with the minimally talented students the class had, he had to pick a play with minimal talent required. Hurtful but accurate.
Audition time.
The obvious audition choice was the Wicked Witch of the West. Sure, Dorothy was an option. I had brown hair that would look adorable in braided pigtails, but my ego couldn’t handle whining in that annoying 5-year-old voice Dorothy has throughout the show. I couldn’t be Dorothy. I needed to be someone who had an edge. Plus, I would’ve rather started a rumor around the school that I had 50 toes in lieu of singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in front of an audience of critics who would judge my not awful, but almost-slightly-okay singing voice. Which, for the record, is more painful to listen to than an awful singing voice.
Oh, and green looks great on me.
Right, the audition.
One of my best friends in high school, Laura, was auditioning for Dorothy. Laura was short and cute with a singing voice perfect for the role, so I *cough cough* let her have it. I told Laura about my plans to audition for the Wicked Witch and we agreed that it was only destiny that we'd get to play opposite each other in our last high school play. Right before it was my turn to go on and audition, I mentioned to Laura that it would be kind of funny to say the Witch’s lines in a "me" way since it was going to be my last audition ever.
“I’m just gonna say my lines as if I'm Miranda Priestly from "The Devil Wears Prada". That’s funny, right? Make the Witch sound like the editor of Vogue, that’s so me,” I whispered to Laura. “I could do whatever, I’d still get it.”
Laura laughed and agreed that if there was something I was good at, it was speaking passive aggressively to no one in particular.
Seven Tin Men later, it was my turn to go on stage. I couldn’t wait to deliver those iconic lines a-la-Vogue.
“I’ll get you my… pretty,” I said in a cold tone, sizing up the imaginary Dorothy that was standing next to me. “And…. your little dog too…” I even let out a small, evil laugh.
God, why did I do that? I could feel the weird looks I was getting from my peers and my teacher as I transformed the Wicked Witch into Miranda Priestly. When I got off stage, Laura and I were dying of laughter and reckoned that a green witch working in the fashion industry was the absolute height of comedy.
“Um.. good job, Alex,” Mr. A muttered.
He didn’t sound too impressed with my audition, but I wasn’t concerned. I figured he was annoyed that I didn’t take the audition as seriously as I would have taken the SAT, which I hadn’t taken that seriously either, but he didn’t know that. I brushed him off.
To Laura and I, my audition was nothing short of a Tony Award worthy performance. To my teacher and the rest of my classmates, my audition was nothing short of a manic episode. In retrospect, it was bizarre.
Just a couple of days after the auditions, Mr. A told us he had finalized the cast list. My school had just started using iPads as the go-to resource for everything and the class begged Mr. A to post the cast list on our main app, Showbie. That probably sounds techy and advanced for a high school but trust me, it wasn’t. We mainly used the iPads to play Subway Surfer and read “Fifty Shades of Grey” during religion class to be extra scandalous, of course.
“I don’t think I should post the list now,” Mr. A said as we pressured him. “Some people will be upset with me.”
“POST THE LIST! WHY WOULD ANYBODY GET UPSET?" I yelled across the classroom to his desk. I was positive I’d gotten the role I wanted anyway.
Finally, Mr. A caved and posted the cast list.
After scanning the document over 15 times and not seeing my name under the Wicked Witch, I looked for it under Dorothy, Aunt Em, even the Scarecrow and still couldn’t find it. I had started to think Mr. A had completely forgotten about casting me when I saw my name under a role I hadn’t even known existed.
“You did not..” I looked up from the iPad to Mr. A’s cringing face. “APPLE TREE? YOU PUT ME AS AN APPLE TREE? A TREE?” I barked.
I could not believe that Mr. A would have the audacity to cast me, a senior, an acting prodigy, as a God forsaken tree.
He was cruel too, I wasn’t cast as Apple Tree #1, not even Apple Tree #2, I was slumming it on stage as Apple Tree #3, the rotten one of the bunch.
During the weeks leading up to the show, I did everything in my power to make sure that the apple tree’s role was not seen as irrelevant. I got interviewed by the school’s morning news anchors about the show, showed up to every rehearsal and even asked Mr. A not to stick me in a dumpy tree costume. Instead of ordering traditional tree costumes, Mr. A went on Party City’s website and ordered the trees ‘Poison Ivy’ costumes that were too scandalous and body concious for me to ever be comfortable in. If Apple Tree #3 wasn’t a lead role before, it sure as hell was now.
The day of the show had finally arrived and I never wanted something to be over quicker. I had told my friends and my mom not to bother coming to see me since I was going to be on stage for .3 seconds, and I wouldn’t want them to waste their precious time coming to see me in a revealing tree costume throwing apples across a stage.
As I was waiting for my scene, I decided to look over my two lines.
“What do you mean you don’t want any of these apples?”
“Get them!”
Got it.
The lights went out on stage as the stage crew quickly set up for my scene. I got into place, and the lights went up.
My mom, dad and my loving, harsh friends were in plain view in the middle of the audience with posters, yelling my name as if they were at a concert and I was the headlining performer. I felt so warm and calm when I saw their smiling faces that I completely forgot my second line, “get them”. I just flung the apples across the stage hitting Laura a little too hard. I let out a laugh, a gigantic grin and looked directly at my fans, completely breaking character. Well, as much character as an apple tree could possibly have.
When the show was over, I took my bow with Dorothy and the rest of the principal characters (let me have this, okay?) and I realized that casting me as an apple tree was probably the best thing Mr. A could’ve done for me.
“You got the most applause and the biggest fan club. Are you done bitching about being a tree?” Mr. A snapped at me after the curtain fell. He was one of those teachers that could say that sort of thing and it’d be funny, so I laughed and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t hate him.
Once I sat in my car with the flowers my parents and friends had gotten me, it hit me. I didn’t need to be the Wicked Witch of the West to be the star of the play, I already had the adoring fans I wanted.
Now, it’s my favorite party story, and I laugh at the thought of myself on stage in a green, club dress made out of spandex throwing apples at my friend. I was a shitty actress and couldn’t remember one of my two lines but damn, green did look great on me.
About the Creator
Alexandra Regueiro
Alexandra Regueiro works in fashion merchandising and resides in New York City where she spends most of her time staring at herself in every mirror she passes by. Follow Alexandra on Instagram & Twitter @nanaregg
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