Guest blogger Josh Greenfield is a junior at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He plays Snug the Joiner in the Dallas Theater Center’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream opening next week.

Monday and Tuesday were birthdays, respectively, for Cameron Kirkpatrick (who plays Tom Snout) and Cedric Neal (Puck). We sang “Happy Birthday” at the end of rehearsal on Sunday night and it sounded beautiful; we have a couple professional singers in the cast and everyone else can carry a tune pretty darn well.

I’m really excited to be finally working in the Wyly for two reasons: one, it’s the freaking Wyly Theatre, and two, I can walk to rehearsal from my school now — Booker T is only a block away in the Arts District. No more racing to the student parking lot in order to get to the Kalita Humphreys Theater by 4:30.

My first professional tech rehearsal was fascinating, exhilarating and exhausting. I walked from school with the other Booker T. cast members around noon, so I missed about half of the school day. Before we started to rehearse, artistic director Kevin Moriarty told us that even though rehearsal may seem to move excruciatingly slow for us actors, the tech people are actually working faster and more efficiently than we can possibly imagine, and that we needed to be very patient and go with the flow. The dressing room I share with the other Booker T. guys is three flights of stairs below the stage, in the chorus dressing rooms. The downside to my dressing room’s location is that it takes me twice as long to get from it to the stage as it does the adult actors. But the upside is that the room is much bigger than the rooms that the adults have — and my legs will be really strong by the end of the show from climbing all of those stairs!

I got a haircut from the hair guy which was nice and quite convenient because now I don’t have to find time to go to Great Clips. When I was talking to him about his job, he told me that when he makes wigs, he has to put every stand of hair onto the template, individually, strand by strand. It takes him around 30 hours to make a wig.

Thankfully all of the Booker T. kids get let out of rehearsal at 10 pm so I didn’t have to stay until midnight. Of course I was still up until midnight because I had more homework to do.

I’m exhausted, but I’m really enjoying every minute of what I’m doing.