The laughingstock of KWRS 90.3 FM

Today was our theatre project for radio class. Each group had to perform a play or story live on the air. My group, which consists of myself and three freshmen boys, chose to do the play "Trifles." We didn't practice a ton, but we thought we had everything pretty well under control - after all, it's radio, so you just have to read from the script. Easy, right? Since there were two female characters in our play and only one of me, one of the guys had to play a woman. This turned out to be a very bad idea.

We started off fine and things were going smoothly until . . . the guy playing Mrs. Peters had an all-out, red in the face and eyes watering, laughing attack. He was able to keep it silent for the most part, but he could not get himself under control well enough to deliver his line. The problem with radio is that everything is live and you can't just stop or start over if you mess up. You have to keep going - dead air is unacceptable. I was pretty much worthless at baling him out, because that kind of laughter is hopelessly contagious. Finally, one of the other guys stepped up to the mic to read Mrs. Peters' line. Then he started laughing (silently) at his pathetic attempt to pull off a female-sounding voice. I had to dig deep, but I was able to muster my composure in time to deliver my lines, which unfortunately included uttering the word "duty." This set off another bad case of the giggles for my poor comrade. We were a lost cause. So much for an "A" in that class!

Finally, intermission came and we put on some music and turned off the mics so that we could pull ourselves together. By that time, all three of the guys had read Mrs. Peters' part, depending on who had the most composure when one of her lines came. I'm sure this thoroughly confused our listening audience (hopefully no one was tuned in besides our prof.).

The second half was less torturous - although a few minor cases of the silent giggles still erupted. To add to the mess, my mic started to fall down, so I had to balance it on my chest whenever I had to turn a page of my script.

Afterward, we discussed what went wrong. I asked why the line "It's his duty" had caused such an outburst.
"Duty's another word for poop!" My comrade responded with another burst of giggles. I guess that joke went over my head - or perhaps under. Did I mention that they were all freshmen boys?