Chris O'Carroll

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Acting Lessons from Minor Characters

If you play the Apothecary, say,
That guy in Romeo and Juliet
Who sells the poison in Act V, Scene I,
You're here and gone with half a sonnet's worth
Of words to tell one human soul's full truth.
And even if you play a major role,
You have no less a stake in any line.

Chris O'Carroll is a writer and an actor. (Yes, he has played the Apothecary. Also Capulet and Friar Lawrence.) His poems have appeared in Angle, Free Inquiry, Light, The New Verse News, and The Rotary Dial, among other print and online journals, and in the anthologies The Best of the Barefoot Muse and 20 Years at the Cantab Lounge.