I’ve got the theater bug again.

After seeing “Avenue Q” on Saturday (see previous entry), I saw “Take Me Out” yesterday afternoon, finally. Great play, if a bit long, and Denis O’Hare is… just… absolutely… priceless. I almost bought the script afterwards just for his baseball monologue.

Why the hell don’t I go to the theater more often? This is goddamn New York, and I love the theater. Whenever I see a Broadway show, I feel like I’m back in high school. This weekend I felt like a giddy excited teenager again, a closeted gay teenage theater lover. It just makes me feel so good. I used to come home from college during vacations, take a quick bus ride from the New Jersey suburbs into Manhattan, and get myself a ticket to a matinee. I remember how nervous I felt when I was 18 and went to see “Falsettos,” which I’d been dying to see, and then had to explain to my parents afterward that I’d only seen it because I’d heard it was good.

I miss acting — it was my main activity in high school. I used to dream of being a professional actor. (I wasn’t that great — I was a ham — but I loved doing it.) I cut short my acting career toward the end of my first year of college, when I tried moving on from UVa’s First Year Players to the collegewide productions and didn’t get called back for anything. (Too bad — maybe I would have had a chance to work with Tina Fey, who was a fourth-year UVa drama major at the time.) I gave up on acting, and my main extracurricular activity became singing.

After my great weekend of theater, I’ve made a promise to myself. From now on, I’m going to try to see at least two shows a month. I’m particularly going to try to see all the big Broadway musicals and plays. I haven’t seen most of what’s currently out there, and that’s just dumb.

And maybe I’ll try my hand at playwriting again.

Incidentally, I bought two more of these yesterday, because I had a bunch of stray Playbills piled up. I’ve now got six of those binders, and my collection’s nicely organized chronologically by show, from “Peter Pan” and “Annie” (my first shows, late 70s/early 80s) to “Take Me Out.”

I guess I shoudn’t be afraid of my inner theater queen. I should embrace it.