(what is a “petard” anyway?)

Or “the shoe is on the other foot”. Or “What goes around comes around.” Whatever your favorite version of the sentiment may be. I’ve become the most recent example of it.

I currently have a small role in “Sordid Lives” at Baytown Little Theater. I’m supposed to be playing a west-Texas Baptist preacher, doing a funeral. Well this northern boy never really learned to “talk Texan.” I’ve been told my attempts sound like a cross between Georgia and British. Given that we’re doing this show in Texas, there’s no shortage of people to tell me how badly I’m doing the accent.

However, that’s not the worst of it. Two of the other people in the show have been in shows that I’ve directed: Lady Windermere’s Fan, by Oscar Wilde (a turn of the last century British play) and Brighton Beach Memoirs, by Neil Simon (about a family of New York Jews just before WWII). So I have a reputation with these two of harping on my east Texas actors to try to mask their accents.

They are enjoying my struggles way too much.