By Chris Cameron
One word. Exhausting. I must say this whole experience is taking it out of me. The rehearsal isn’t necessarily too long it’s the depth of the material and the feelings of so many lives which are being embodied in this play. It’s truly crazy. I had to drop a class with my favorite professor because there was no way I’d be able to juggle the two of them. Five hours of engineering classes and four hours of rehearsals every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and all I can say is…LET’S GO.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to relive the pain of not just one person, one family or one police department. It’s the pain of one city and the feelings of a nation. I’m from Florida so I had no clue who half of these people were, but the experience is the same. Pittsburgh is fairly segregated whether people here want to accept it or not. Individuals here know certain areas not by a type of food but by a skin tone, yet everyone is alright with that. This play has so much potential to illuminate the truth underneath the surface of the steel city. Honestly, since I’ve been here, the only thing that truly unifies people of all cultures here are the athletic teams. That’s great but why aren’t we unified in life as human beings?
That’s where the excitement lies. To think that if we do this to the best of our abilities we could change the view of a whole audience base. Then again that’s wishful thinking, but I feel that that’s the goal we’re trying to achieve. So I have no excuse to put nothing less than my full effort in this piece. How can I not? That’d be disrespectful to the individuals who were directly affected as well as the people such as me who are indirectly being affected.
Life isn’t about black and white, but sometimes in this city that’s exactly what it is….and of course yellow because that terrible towel always waves on Sundays. In all seriousness though, that’s exactly why I have to produce. Yeah I’m one of maybe 40 people involved with this play, but I’m going to do my best to let the pain of Ray Seals be felt by the audience. That’s the least I can do if I’m going to play him during such a dark time in his life. Same with Tony Norman, I will honor them as I if it were me. I can only open one pair of eyes, then I did my job as an actor.
Let’s get it done.
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Chris Cameron (Ray Seals, Tony Norman) is a mechanical engineering major at the University of Pittsburgh participating in his second Pitt production. He sees this as a chance to learn and hopefully change some of the perceptions of people in the audience watching. If you see a guy with purple glasses dancing down the streets of Pittsburgh it’s probably him, and don’t hesitate to say hi. He doesn’t bite.