The Ian Show

Recently, I've decided to tap into my inner diva. Or, so to speak. I'm creating a YouTube channel in hopes of becoming an internet super star. I've long had a love for performance. Back in the day, I'd write script and the neighbor kids (my brother's and sisters' friends) would come over and we'd read the skits and record them on tape. It was a lot of fun.

In my teens, I bought a couple camcorders. One "high end" from home shopping network and another from Toys R Us. The one from the toy store shot exclusively in black and white. I'd write script or just out impromptu skits with my kid sister. The skits didn't necessarily have to make any sense. At some point I put panty hose over my face and stretched the legs of them while spinning around in an office chair squealing, "I'm wacky rabbit, wacky rabbit, Whaaackeeee RABBIT!"

Totally stupid, I know, but there was something about it...some magic, that I loved.

In high school, I was in a number of plays, my interested in them spawned from a ridiculous skit in Spanish class. Every quarter or so, we'd have to act out a small skit in front of the entire class, using words we had learned in previous lessons. The first such session involved me and a classmate mimicking we were in a plane. I clutched my stomach and squeezed out a painful, "Me muero!!" Which translates to: "I'm dying."

The entire class was uproarious. Suddenly the shy kid who was constantly, secretly, on edge for fear of bullying or being called horrible names, was thrust into the spotlight. My fellow students loved it. Of course, I'm not sure if they loved the fact I was dying because they hated me, or if somehow I made a mass connection. Even the football jocks who had long been disturbed by my perceived sexuality found my rendition of a Spanish-speaking-man-suffering-from-air-sickness funny. With each successive skit-driven assignment, I died, or somehow uttered the phrase that made me famous in that class.

At some point during my junior year, a classmate urged me to audition for the high school's fall play. She long had a love for the theatre and was cast in all of the plays she auditioned for. With her lead and encouragement, I went to auditions and scored my first role as a man who goes to a seance with his wife and channels King Henry VIII. I was marvelous. I know, because audience members told me after each performance as they filed past the actors and actresses.

I was cast in supporting roles for both the spring and fall plays of my senior year in high school. I loved the rush of being on stage. The feeling that at that moment, all eyes were on me. And people came because they wanted to see me, the shy gay kid who was breaking out of his shell. Or maybe they were driven there by seeing the plenty of other kids on the stage. In any event, whether they came because I was in the play, or if they came because they were related to the other performers, I knew I would leave an impression on them. I shined.

Before I started college, I went to an open audition at Webster University. As a result, I was cast as a transvestite in a student film and a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, complete with goatee in an experimental film by the Associate Professor of the film school. It was a lot of fun and we got free pizza and copies of the finished movies (VHS format). Subsequently, I performed as a female impersonator at a local club.

As an adult, I performed in three community plays. As a 1940s gangster in "Give My Regards to Broadway", an old man in a play that felt like a Saturday Night Live skit, and lastly as a clam shucker in the ensemble cast of Carousel (my first singing role). There's something about being part of the community and giving something back that I adore about small theatre companies. It's a lot of work, but it was a fun lot of work.

It's been awhile since I've been in any theatre production, but every Halloween, I do enjoy dressing up. I like when people look at me, mesmerized by my costume. I like stepping outside of myself and becoming something else. I like the theatrics of it all. It's like where ever I step, that's my stage. I could don a full costume and go to the post office, and boom, that's my stage. All eyes on Ian. And there's some high I get out of it. It's like an out of body experience for my personality.

So, I've had a history of being theatrical. I love it. I can be anyone or anything. And that, my friends, is what The Ian Show is all about. Let the voting begin on what my YouTube channel will be called...