LITERATURE vs VCSS

***NOTE: What follows is a story I wrote over at http://www.goodreads.com as a comment on a review of C.S. Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planet" and I thought I would post it on my appropriate Blogs:



"I read [Out of the Silent Planet] in high school (Vancouver Christian Secondary School) and it was also assigned to 8 other people in my class. Besides the 8 of us, the other kids in our class got other books to read. But all of us who read the books had to act out a scene from our respective books.

Now, keep this in mind: The other kids in our class haven't read our book and they don't know ANYTHING about it. PLUS, it takes place on another planet. So how do we act out a scene from a Sci-Fi, inter-planetary story in the front of a tiny classroom ... in 10 minutes or less?

We picked the scene (possible spoiler coming up) where one dude is taken off and tortured by water. We did this because we had a sink in the cloakroom of our class (it had formerly been an old elementary school) and I got the bright idea that we should wet down someone off stage. Guess who got picked. Yup. Me! I kept saying. "But, but, but ... I'm a girl. And the character is a man". (nice excuse eh?) But I had this big perm (it was the 1980's) and hair like Bon Jovi and I thought, "If I've got to do it, I'm going to GO FOR IT!
At the appropriate time I was dragged off stage, into the cloak room and I stuck my head in the sink and drenched it. Then I started yelling at the top of my lungs (I was supposed to be being tortured and I was "in character"). My yelling sort of surprised the other kids in the class who were watching our scene and had just seen me go off into the cloakroom without knowing why. And because of the fuss I was making off stage, the other 8 kids who were in the scene had stopped acting altogether. They kept trying to see what was happening to me in the cloakroom, so they had stopped saying their lines completely. I whispered to them loudly, "I'm okay. Keep going. Say your lines or I can't come back on stage."

They'd start up their lines again and I'd start yelling again! Every time I yelled (I'm being tortured, remember) everyone would gasp and stop what they were doing. I'd whisper again, "Don't stop. Keep acting or I'll never be able to finish this. I'm waiting for my cue so I can come back on stage!"

So I'm yelling, laughing, and the two guys who were portraying the aliens that had dragged me to my torture were afraid to even come near me. It all seemed so ridiculous that I started laughing even more.
Suddenly, I hear the Principal of the school walk into the room. He had heard the screaming and had come to investigate.
By that time I'd been threatening the other 8 kids to keep going so much, that they kept saying their lines no matter what. Not stopping for anything. FINALLY, I realized that my cue was coming up, but my hair was almost dry. So I took one more massive dunk into the water and the two "Aliens" dragged me back on stage ... unconscious.

When I got back on stage my head was hanging down (and dripping profusely) and I was "unconscious". Dead weight. They had to half carry me back on stage.
Once there, I was suppose to groggily come back to consciousness, look up and say the line, "I can't believe you betrayed me like this, Ransom!" - Which I did.

Between being soaking wet, yelling at the top of my lungs and saying the line with a lot of feeling, the kid playing Ransom (poor Cameron Walker) must have thought I was serious because he quickly responded, "No I didn't, Laura-Lee. I would never betray you!"

By that time the scene was pretty much lost and we didn't know what to do or how to finish and I thought to myself, "this just didn't work out the way it was suppose to".
But the mischievous side of me came out again when I realized my big Bon Jovi hair was still drenched and dripping all over the floor. I decided to shake my head just like a dog shakes after a bath and I covered EVERYONE with water: The kids in the scene, the kids watching, my teacher standing nearby and the principal looking in. They all let out one massive scream when they got hit with the water and curiosity finally got the best of the kids from the other classes and they came to investigate all the yelling and screaming.
Isn't literature wonderful?!!

RANSOM meets a HROSS (Alien) from 'Out of the Silent Planet"