I’ve been a member of Garioch Youth Musical Society (GYMS) for 7 years, a whole year before I started secondary school. Last week I was in my 8th, and final, show with them. Going over the shows in my head, there’s only three that I can honestly say were brilliant shows, but there’s only ever been three that haven’t been good by the end (and two of them were in churches so that’s understandable). The third was this year’s show: The Dracula Spectacula [sic].
As you might have guessed, I did not like this show. It was apparently popular around the ‘70s when it was written, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. The storyline is sketchy at best, the characters are all just clichés and the playwright doesn’t know the difference between vampires and zombies. I played one of the “Idiots”. We could have been called the villagers, but no. This is what I had to wear on stage, in front of people I know (I’m far left):
Enough said (and you can’t see the wellies…).
I stuck with the show though, mainly because it was my last one ever and show week is always a good laugh. Which it was, but I’ll get to that in a minute. If anyone’s ever been in a show though, they’ll know that the best feeling in the world is right at the end of a show, when you’ve just bowed and you’re smiling so much you’re actually laughing; not because anything’s particularly funny, but just because you’re so happy that smiling isn’t enough. On the Friday night show (we did Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. There was meant to be a Saturday matinee too but it got cancelled because we didn’t sell any tickets. 
) I nearly got that feeling, but never properly. Not including Passion (one of the church ones – written by a local playwright, generally a bit rubbish), that’s the first show I’ve been in that I’ve never got that feeling. Bad times.
Backstage was brilliant fun though, as it always is. As you can see these fun times included phone faces, making Helen into Zombie Britney (the uneven bunches are because she’s ridiculously tall and we couldn’t reach properly) and eating deformed Dolly Mixtures amongst many, many other sweets. And giving the girl I still know as Short Hair Nose (there’s a reason, but I’ll leave you to come up with a more interesting one yourself) a zig-zag parting.
We actually had a bit of a ‘90s revival this show, as well as the Zombie Britney and zig-zag partings, the dance to 5, 6, 7, 8 by Steps played a very big part in backstage fun. A very big part. I really wish I had a picture of the entire cast doing it at the after show party, I nearly killed the guy who switched it off half way through.
Speaking of the after show party, I wasn’t really there. Our little group (except Murray ) all went for a Chinese and some wine for the older ones and then went back for the last half hour. I wish we’d started to do that years ago, the after show parties are normally dire (all the little ones just get hyper on fruit shoots and left over ice cream, it’s not fun).
We went out again, with Murray this time, the Tuesday after and it really made me realise how much I actually will miss GYMS, and especially our ridiculously stupid break time chats. And all the stupid backstage banter, and competitive “Where’s Wally?” with Katie, and the million games of “Bang!” we play a year, and my head being permanently stuck with random songs from musicals… Maybe not the last two so much. Saying that, I won’t miss being treated like a primary school kid all the time, or the fact that they haven’t chosen a well known show for years, and there are definitely certain members (and ex-members) that I’m quite happy about being out of my life now.
I will miss it though. I’ve known some of the GYMS people longer than I’ve known most of my best friends, and it will be really weird not seeing them every week anymore.
