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Growing up the vast majority of my friends were creative ‘out of the box’ types. Between my community theatre and gaming circles life was never dull. Even the most ordinary and mundane activities held potential for creative adventures. Ordering pizza became a bit of a ritual with my crew which actually lead to my address being posted in infamy on the staff notice board at the local pizza joint.
It started with a senior team rehearsal for an all-students production of Peter Pan I was a part of my first year of high school. We were meeting at the community theatre group’s rehearsal annex, a black-box space with attached kitchen and costume-prop storage, on a Saturday afternoon to plan out set and prop designs. We decided to order pizza and while waiting we continued experimenting with the black lights we had purchased for the show.
Instead of using wires for the requisite flying sequences we were going use black lights and a strippable black set. One or our missions that day was to test if the costumes we had gathered would show up brightly enough in the black light. As we waited for the pizza to arrive we were testing the visibility of the various outfits our costume person had offered up when someone uttered the somewhat dangerous phrase —