What is it about drama that brings out the booze?

Ed Abbey wrote last week about his experiences of being involved in a high school drama and someone spiking the punch. It got me thinking about my experience involving drama and alcohol. I was never involved with drama in High School. I made my only on-stage debute during my year in Virginia City, Nevada. The Silver State, at least back then, had a program in which they brought the arts into the rural counties. In our case, a drama teacher was in the community to both teach in school as well as to do community productions. There were several of us whose roles in the play were only in the first and third act. So during our last performance, we decided to skip out and hit another party that was going a block away. I was told that the director wasn’t too happy with us when he found out. Below is an excerpt from an unpublished essay I wrote about the Virginia City experience:

I don't remember whose idea it was to skip out in the middle of the play’s first act and head for the Flapper Party at the Silver Stope. In a block, from the school on D Street to the bars up on C, the three of us migrated from Grover's Corner, a small town in New Hampshire, to the lower East Side. As Joe Stoddard, a turn-of-the-century undertaker, I wore a black frock coat with a string bow-tie. Penny and Christy, the two women I escorted, wore calico farm dresses. We didn't exactly look like Flappers, but then New Englander's don't have time for nonsense. And we weren't the only ones dressed inappropriately. In the crowd, sporting his usual double-knit leisure suit was Murry Mack pounding the rag-time blues on the piano. The Stope was filled with patrons that Saturday night, most of whom had seen the play earlier and thought it was wonderful that we'd come up during our break and sample a cup of their bathtub gin. Someone produced a camera and immortalized us behind the tub with cups raised, toasting the Mucker's production of "Our Town."

By the way, we all make it back for the final scene where we buried Emily Gibbs a third and final time. And for the curious, bathtub gin is as bad as it sounds.