I don't do plays anymore and I quit following the New York theatre scene when I quit reading the Sunday New York Times every week. But I still watch the Tony award even though I don't know jack shit about the straight plays or most of the new musicals. The reason I watch them is because I feel like it's an act of rebellion against the culture-less assholes I grew up with and around.As soon as I knew what things like plays, TV shows, and movies were I wanted to be in them. The first time I saw a live action play, I was probably 8 or 9 and the play was The Three Musketeers, I knew I wanted to be up on a stage doing that sort of thing. But for many years I had no outlet for doing it. When we got packed off to the farm Aunt Rageaholic and Uncle Adultery owned I was further from my dream than ever. She paid lip service to the arts but they were something only for her and her kids to be doing, for my siblings and I there was no time for such things because we had to clean her house, work in the garden, and basically take a back seat to her kids. When we moved from Howell, Michigan to Jonesville, Virginia things looked even bleaker for my dream of doing plays because Lee County was an even bigger cultural backwater than Howell was.
So during all my adolescence and my teen age years I had to keep my longing to be a part of the theatre quiet. If I had expressed my desires out loud then my cousins, aided and abetted by their parents, would have made fun of me for daring to dream that I had talent and the desire to do plays. They, mainly Cousin Psycho, called me a fag for showing interest in the theatrical arts. It was useless to express any desire to do plays anyway since there was no theatrical outlet for me in south west Virginia.
By the time I got to college I was ready to spread my wings and try out for plays. However my love of partying and smoking pot kept me from doing anything my first year. But by the second year I was all in. I got to do Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Midsummer Night's Dream and Our Town in college. And despite not being able to sing, I got do to a couple of musicals. After college I did many dinner theatre shows, that's where I met Sparky by the way. I went on to do many plays after my stint in local dinner theatre. I got to do parts in such shows as The Mousetrap, The Ritz, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Greater Tuna, and others.
With every play I did I felt like it was a strike back against that pack of culture hating jackals who used to torment me for being different. And every time I watch the Tony awards I feel like it's a beacon to other kids out there who were like me, kids who wanted to do that stuff but were held back from it for one reason or another. Long live the Tony awards and long live live theatre!
That's me batting. If you ever see the film, and you'll see the scene I'm in later because I'm going to record my bit on my camera later today and I'll post it here for all to see, you'll notice I miss the pitch when the duct tape ball gets tossed to me. I hit it dead solid perfect four or five times in rehearsal but when the camera rolled I choked. 
After Turturro catches us playing we all come up to see what he's going to say. That's me on the far left standing there with my belly sticking out and my hands on my hips. The guy who's head I circled is named Ray Aranha. He was super nice to all us extras and he was a total pro. The day we shot these scenes we worked about 14 hours and it was hot and humid as hell out but Ray never complained a bit. He had been on a sitcom on ABC called Married People and I recognized him from that show, when I said I liked him on it he grinned from ear to ear and he seemed genuinely pleased that someone remembered he had been on it. 
The camera stayed on us while Turturro bitched at us for stopping working. Notice how I cocked my head a little, damn that's some fine acting! The guy who's face I put an x on was and still is a total douche. He's one of those guys who to make himself look good and to appear funny constantly runs down everyone else. He bored anyone who would listen with tales about his Harley Davidson motorcycle. He used to hang out in one of the bars we did improv in in Knoxville and I could always hear him trying to talk over us while we did our shows. If I never run into him again it will be too soon.
And finally as the scene wound up we all went back to work and we had to walk toward Mr. Turturro. We were told to walk fast so that it looked like we were eager to get back to work and I nearly walked into Robert. I put my hand on his back to let him know I was coming up fast behind him and when you watch the scene you can see him flinch when I touch him. I guess he wasn't used to being pawed by a damn dirty monkey like me.