Jake Otteson

And I should say that we are up there for a whole month before the festival opens, and it's kind of like this intensive rehearsal boot camp.

Like, you're learning to...

think and speak in Shakespearean English so that you can improvise in character all day.

And this is usually where the cast really bonds.

It wasn't really happening.

And so I thought, OK, well, if not the cast, then maybe when I get more into character, I'll feel better.

I get my costume.

I'm excited for this, but I show up and they say, oh, you're playing a gravedigger.

Okay.

Here's a giant floppy hat and an oversized vest.

Now get out of here.

We got to costume the queen.

Okay, and then to make matters worse, I didn't realize that as a gravedigger I would have kind of a solo role, whereas in the past I'd had sort of these family units to bounce energy off of.

This time I had come seeking connection, but I was gonna just be the creepy old man by himself in the graveyard.

So the festival opens, and I'm still holding onto these feelings of not exactly belonging, wondering when it's gonna kick in, but I'm doing my thing.

I'm in my graveyard, which is a really nice little set.

It's got a couple of crumbling graves and a wagon, and I'm there with my prop shovel yelling to people about how their grave is ready, and could they remind me when they were thinking of dying so I can mark it down?

That, you know, gravedigger stuff.

And I still don't feel, I'm not feeling it.

And my friend Kristen, who works as a musician at the festival, she comes up to the graveyard and sort of pulls me aside around midday and says, hey, I have a really odd request.