Megan Stielstra's Blog

So Friday I told a story at the Goodman—

Context for the above sentence:

Friday was Looptopia, an all-night arts Festival in Chicago’s downtown loop district. It’s supposedly modeled after those White Night parties in Europe, where there are bands and street performers on every corner, and all the businesses stay open and put on some sort of show, just art art art all the time, trippy wild art involving lots of costumes and floats and glow-in-the-dark stuff, sort of like a Redmoon spectacle (Dear Redmoon: I really miss your Halloween parties in Logan Square, with the fire dancers and face paint and puppets and beautiful, creepy craziness. Can you start doing those again? I’d really like Caleb to experience them. Thank you) but multiplied times 100,000 people all night long.

(Was Looptopia like that? I’m guessing no—I can’t really judge, since I just wandered around til about ten. What I saw was ONE: Rain. Rain that fell like a faucet, and, at one time, fell HORIZONTALLY. Not particularly conducive to an outdoor arts fest and TWO: High school kids hanging out past their bedtime. Granted, were I still in high school, I‘m sure I would’ve loved Looptopia. I could hang out ALL NIGHT LONG! In URBAN OUTFITTERS! And SMOKE CIGARETTES! And get so-and-so’s big brother to buy me vodka and mix it with Red Bull in front of the Walgreens on Washington and Dearborn! And make fun of the art! And make fun of other PEOPLE! And feel totally in my element ‘cause there were a thousand other high school kids JUST LIKE ME EVERYWHERE I LOOKED! What I DIDN’T see a lot of was ART, so I got bored pretty quick and met my friend Aimee for a drink. Had there been more time, we would’ve checked out some specific shows (I heard the Game Show Show from Strawdog was amazing, and the Miss Looptopia Drag Pageant). But there wasn’t more time, because we had to get to the Goodman).

This year, 2nd Story was invited to perform at The Goodman Theatre for Looptopia—specifically with material related to The Goodman—so Ric and Miller and I wrote some stories with DJ Miles Beyond. And had a blast. Stories, wine and a thousand people? Come ON.

Emotional response to the above sentence:

THE GOODMAN THEATRE! ME! THAT PLACE IS LIKE, CLASSY! REAL ACTORS ACT THERE! IT’S FANCY! I WEAR PAJAMAS MOST DAYS AND EAT PEANUT BUTTER!

Continuation of the above sentence:

So anyhow, last Friday I told a story at the Goodman. It was about how, ever since I played Jet Girlfriend #4 in West Side Story in high school, standing at the back of the stage watching Maria give her final monologue, I wanted to be an actor. But since I’m not any good at acting, I dated actors instead (true story, folks. OH SO TRUE).

The Goodman drew up a little program for the event, and asked me the title of the story. This was tricky because I suck at titles. In the end, it was Becoming Maria, though what I wanted to call it was MEGAN MAKES A VERY GREAT ASS OF HERSELF. ON PURPOSE, OF COURSE, BUT AN ASS NEVERTHELESS. Because in this story, I sang lots of show tunes, yes, and I can’t sing for shit, no, but the real moment was my performance of Maria’s final monologue. First of all, I don’t DO monologues. Second, Midwestern white-girl me has no business touching a Latina anything, so it ended up being me doing Natalie Wood doing Maria, which means it was horrible and campy and stupid and great. I anticipated the crowd staring at me like I was absolutely insane, so the line immediately following Maria’s monologue (“How many can I kill, Chino, and still have one bullet left for me?”) was, “The crowd stared,” ‘cause I thought it would be funny that they’d be staring and then I’d say, “They stared,” ha ha ha ha!—yeah.

Except they didn’t stare.

They cheered.

And, finally, after years of adolescent angst and twenty-something masochism, I’ve learned the joy of self-deprecation.