Annie Get Your Gun

Our Senior Class play was Annie Get Your Gun but not the musical version. I played Frank Butler and Sheila Brady played Annie. She had acted in community theater for years and boy did it show. She was on a completely different level than her counterpart - me. Whereas I was focusing on lines and hitting my marks, she was adding in all of the little things that an experienced actress would - nonverbal things like smiles, smirks, and other body language types of things.
Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun
Newspaper article announcing the play. My brother Joe was an Indian as there were not enough seniors who wanted to participate.








Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show is touring the country. One of the featured acts is sharpshooter Frank Butler, who at each stop challenges the town's best sharpshooter to a shooting competition. In Cincinnati, he goes up against his equal, in the form of - a woman, Annie Oakley, an uneducated, unsophisticated, naive, country girl who has never ventured far from her home in rural Ohio. Bill and his right hand man Charlie Davenport decide to hire Annie to play 2nd fiddle to Frank's act. She falls for him and he for her.

A happily-ever-after for Annie and Frank is impeded by others who want to place Annie front and center without Frank's knowledge, especially as their show is going up against a rival show. When she out-shoots Frank in one of the shows he storms off leaving her brokenhearted. Eventually they get back together but I forget how.

When you act on stage they tell you to over do everything so it is seen by the person in the back row. It feels pretty fake to tell the truth as your gestures are all much greater, your language much louder; there is nothing natural about performing on stage. Movies would be much more natural I suspect.

The biggest compliment I received with regard to this play was when one of my female friends said that she was so mad at me when my character dumped Annie for beating him (me). At least one person thought my character was believable ;-)


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