Catherine

The role I played was a young girl, fourteen years, snippy, peevish, snob, rich and mean. Meaner than mean. Oh  you just bought that dress? It looks so ugly on you, you wouldn't believe. And your hair cut! Here let me fix it! Snip, oops, at last it looks better on you, giggle giggle.
Rude, mean and only in one scene. She was pissed about that too. Really pissed. Swore off stage and tripped another girl pissed. But lucky it worked out for everyone because it worked with the sound effects. 

Problem was, I became that person, mean, snappy, swearing and being rude. What had come over me? It wasn't me to be this mean, it wasn't me to be this rude, it wasn't me to be this... this arghh! But Catherine had become me and I had become Catherine. I brought it to work, to school, in my dorm room and every where else I went. I was short tempered, rude and always looking like I was ready to shoot someone or myself in the foot for one reason or another. 

I couldn't let it happen again, I couldn't the theatre ruin me again. Before I was a dancing, singing fool who followed directions and jumped when the big shot said jump. What else was there to do? The play ended, we closed up shot, we finished off the year and we all went home.  Over the next month my adopted persona seemed to have evaporated and I hoped for good. I put a name to those characteristics, Catherine, if I knew that I was acting off and not myself I told the character Catherine to go away and let my personal self come back. What else could I say?

The theater had changed me, and it wasn't just the cast. It was the character that changed me, not the play.  Defying teachers, picking on classmates... I had to stop. Catherine is around, she'll rear her ugly braided head once in a while but I know that I can kick her back down. It's all I can do right now.

My meanness is called Catherine. If you see her instead of me, tell her to go away and send back the person that you know and love. It would benefit us all.