This past spring of 2025 I was in a (tragi-)comedy play at the Tater Patch Players in Jasper, Georgia, called What is ‘Murder?’ My role was as the detective, Val Clenard, trying to figure out which of three “Jeopardy” championship contestants had killed a fourth. It was a LOT of fun (and work), of course. I am trying to post the link, but it won’t cooperate. Well, here’s a still from the play, at least! That’s me as the sloppy detective, in the hat.

This is my fourth stage role in the last six years at various community theaters in north Georgia/metro Atlanta, and the second comedic one, following a stint as a Shakepeare-imitating highway robber in the Bard parody Thee & Thou. One other was as Van Helsing in Dracula (about which I did a very long blogpost); and the other two were in actual Shakespeare plays: King Henry IV in Henry IV Part 1 (about which I wrote an article), and three lesser roles in Julius Caesar.

For the life of me, I still haven’t figured out why I took up amateur acting at my age. (Prior to 2020 I had only acted twice: as Dr. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in my high school production of M*A*S*H during the Carter Administration, and then as Leonato in Much Ado about Nothing when the college troupe where I was teaching in 2002 needed a middle-aged man to portray the Governor of Messina.) I am, after all, something of an introvert (INTJ on the Myers-Briggs scale). If anyone else has done such stage (or other) acting that seems to play counter to personal type, please let me know! Maybe you can help me figure it out.