Hi everyone! Here is the second installment of our “behind-the-scenes/meet our players” special: Meekins!

From Meekins:

Oh boy! Well, uh, I guess… Oh, come on, get it together, Meeks! How hard is to tell your own life story? Well, in my case, as a man who has traveled from coast to coast, sea to shore, polar ice cap to polar ice cap, I can say with total certainty: life can be a real doozy, altogether dark sometimes, unfortunately, but the happiest I’ve ever been was when I was brought in by good ol’ Samuel Peaches and his performing troupe. Ever since then, all the misadventures with Mole People, unnecessary abductions while lost out in cornfields, and head-to-head battles with mother sea lions are a thing of the past! Now, I just PRETEND to get in fights with animals, and I couldn’t be happier for it.

Oh, here I go, rambling again. The way I joined the Samuel Peaches’ Peripatetic Players was straightforward enough: tasked by a mysterious witch doctor to return a crystalline skull that would presumably imbue with great power, I was kidnapped by headhunters along the rushing Amazon River. There, it seemed, they aimed to make a sacrifice to their elder gods, and had me fully trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey! It wasn’t looking good for ol’ Meeks just then, I’ll have you know (although, I have escaped from much gnarlier situations)! Right about that time when I was beginning to maybe start saying my prayers, out of the brush came bounding the same wagon you see before you today, and atop it, seemingly having lost control, was the man himself- Samuel Peaches! He grabbed hold of the rope that I was strung up to try and stop the catastrophic caravan and ended up freeing me in the process. Of course, I was ever so thankful, and even though he wasn’t too sure, I eventually won him over with my ardent, repeated pleas for help, just like my momma taught me!

Since then, I’d have to say my favorite story has been, without a doubt, the Crow. Nothing bad ever happens to him! He just dances around in a very safe manner and makes little rhymes that are of insult and harm to no one, including himself! Surely, you see the appeal? Another great thing about playing the Crow is that I get to play with the ever-so-beauteous Princess Gwen! Sure, she steals the tasty cheese I was planning on saving for myself, but she’s so nice and and strong that I’m happy to relinquish it on a daily basis at our performances.

If I’m being perfectly honest with you, my dream destination for a Samuel Peaches’ Peripatetic Players performance (woo, mouthful!) would be any sort of sterile room with padded walls and ceilings where nothing is hidden and there are no noxious fumes in the air! I can’t think of anything safer than that.

My fondest memory that isn’t related to an actual performance is certainly the time when Samuel Peaches finally made me a full-time performer. Up until then, I had just been chasing the caravan across desert, mountain, ocean- you name the biodome, I crossed it chasing that wagon! Finally, he stopped the wagon to do a show and I was able to meet everyone in the cast. After the show, I stowed away and pestered him with notes from my hiding place on the wagon that read, “Please please please let me be in the show please please please I’ll do anything pleeeeeaaaaaase,” until he finally sent me one back that said, “Yeah, okay, whatever.” That’s when ol’ Meekins was finally able to graduate to an actual spot inside the wagon itself.

This sure wins the cake for the best thing I’ve done in my life! Cheers!

Meekins as The Mariner in How the Whale Got Its Throat, in last year’s production of O Best Beloved.