Performance 16

1. Furiously read through the script because even though you've run this play at least 200 times, you seem to have forgotten the order of the scenes.

2. Constantly check yourself to make sure your fly is zipped, your shirt is buttoned, your wig is on straight and you are in fact, wearing your pants.

3. Avoid water 7 hours before your performance in fear that you will need to pee in the middle of the performance.

3 a) Despite your efforts, you have to pee anyway, and for some reason this is the time you decide to contemplate how Noah avoided sea sickness on the ark.

4. Scratch your legs until you bleed trying to keep from itching that spot in the middle of your face and screw up your make up.

5. Develop the habit of blinking frequently and rapidly because you're brand new contacts have chosen this moment to screw up and glaze over.

6. Frantically quadruple check that all the props are in their proper places, reorganize them, forget your "improved" organization order, and panic when you can't find one prop.

7. Sit in a corner, crying, and asking yourself why you chose to be in a stupid local play in the first place, you don't like talking in front of people anyway.

8. Write out Post-Its with custom deadly threat and place each one in the seats your friends will sit in. Make sure they understand, if they laugh at you, they will suffer.

9. Tear down every flyer in the town and throw a bucket of paint over the giant sign advertising the play and hope nobody will show up because they don't know what time the play starts.

10. Fake a sign saying the play is canceled.

11. Dress in dark clothes and a white mask and, through the power of song and special effects, scare the audience away and close the show early.

12. Practice loosening your lips for 2 constant hours before the performance in fear of messing up a line during the play.

12 a) Work your lips too much and suffer a rare but painful face cramp in which your face locks down and you cannot move your lips to say your lines, and just so happen to look like you're sneezing through your nose as well.

13. Badger your fellow actors back stage every 5 minutes to ask if your make up still looks fine.

14. When someone mentions breaking a leg, stand and curse loudly for 10 minutes, accusing the director and the rest of the cast of trying to jinx you before your first big performance.

14 a) Insist a witch-doctor be brought in to rid the area of its "bad joo joo."

15. Write a blog post about your fears that will help you loosen up and then try to relax before your performance.

16. Call up the local government officials about being entered into the witness protection program to escape your humiliation if the performance goes bad anyway...just in cast.