I take center stage at Washington D.C.'s primo Shakespeare theater, the stage lights beating down on my head, the rapt, glazed eyes of the audience fastened on my every move and their iPhones. I am prepared. I am ready. I am going. To. Perform.
I take a deep breath.
"I...I..."
"Forgotten your lines again?" asks Cheryl Lamar, Performance Instructor. She doesn't look surprised. This is undoubtedly because of her years of experience coaching drama novitiates like myself into one of the world's more laudable professions, I'm sure, although the fact that I've been on stage six times in the last hour and a half without once uttering a single coherent word might have something to do with it. No matter. My colleagues are dedicated, behind me one hundred percent. We'll be here all night, if that's what it takes.
"Get the line right or I'm taking you down," hisses Massachusetts English teacher Jamie Wyatt from the front row. "
Glee is coming on and I'm not missing it for
your putrid acting!"
Okay,
I'll be here all night, if that's what it takes. I am dedicated and committed, after all.
"Get the line right
now," Cheryl tells me. "They're doing a production of
The Facts of Life: The Musical in here tonight, and we're not delaying opening for this farce."
Okay, I'll be here for another five seconds if that's what it takes. I am, after all, a perfectionist.
I take another deep breath. Let it out. Begin:
"I had been...happy?"
Cheryl nods. Cut. Wrap. Print. My colleagues pretend to be pleased with the output. Jamie puts her nail file back in her purse, silently vowing to break it out again if necessary.
I have taken the first halting steps towards becoming...an Actor.
----------------------
One of the most important lessons the Shakespeare Institute offers its fledgling secondary and college teachers looks astoundingly obvious upon first glance: Those shows you see on stage? Those are rehearsed. Exhaustively.
That was the first lesson Cheryl had for us in our Day One Workshop: Getting Into Character. Twenty-five of us stood on stage, arms limp at the sides, focused on her as she pulled out a sock puppet and held it up for us to behold.
"Who do you think this is?"
"Whom," corrected Chicago teacher Geoff Stanton. As a reward for his prescriptive grammar, he got a whack in the head from Matthew Cleveland, workshop co-director and wielder of the Plastic Sword of Peace. Matthew, it should be noted, didn't even look up from the magazine he was reading while sprawled in his easy chair.
"Try to come up with this sock puppet's character," Cheryl told us. "Remember, we're in the world of theater, so pretty much anything goes."
"It's a politician?" suggested Genevieve Hansbury.
"No, that's wrong," Cheryl told her. "Try again."
"But I thought you said there
were no wrong--" Geoff began, only to be interrupted by another dead-on
fappo! across the face by Matthew.
"Listen to your inner voice," Cheryl urged us. "Forget about the sword--Matthew only hits you when you deserve it. Now what
is the puppet?"
A long, pregnant pause filled the air, after which we began shouting out nervous guesses.
"Barack Obama!" guessed D.C. teacher Amber Caryn.
Thwack!"Alexander the Great?"ventured Helen, of Montana.
Bap!"My grandfather?" guessed Wisconsonite Chris Lavois.
Fhap!"Chris' grandfather?" I guessed.
Fhap! Fhap!"I'm pretty sure the answer is Chris' grandfather," Randall Jar-Jar of Minnesota offered, receiving an extra blow across the face for ad-libbing.
"A bucket of paint!" Jamie shouted, dodging the sword.
"Chris' grandfather?" I tried again.
Bhack! Whack!"My grandfather?" Chris asked.
"Okay. Okay. Those were
all good guesses," Cheryl reassured us. "But they were all incredibly stupid. This puppet isn't
Chris' grandfather. It's
mine. My grandfather. Who never called me by name and never took me to the zoo like he promised."
"Oh." General recognition swept the stage at this point. "Ohhhhhh!" We all crowded around the puppet to frown at it.
"It wouldn't kill you to show a little affection," Amber scolded it.
Cheryl continued, "Now we're going to do some improvisational role playing. It can be quite mentally healthy." As she spoke, she gestured towards Matthew, who sensed the tide had shifted and it was his turn to lead, sighed heavily, heaved himself out of his easy chair, put his magazine down, and clapped his hands.
"We're going to make things slightly more complicated," he told us. "You're going to be Cheryl's grandfather, but I want you to
visualize that you're the grandfather first. Can you do that?"
Visualization was no problem. Half of us were visualizing the bar we were going to hit right after rehearsals. The other half was visualizing getting knocked over the head again, which was, after all, pretty much the same thing. So we all closed our eyes, conjuring visions of an elderly gentleman standing on a stage, with a plastic sword wielded threateningly over his head.
"Okay." Matthew's voice comes floating, soothingly, towards us. "Now I want you to envision that this grandfather's got a really
big head."
I squinted. With some effort, I became, in my mind, a hydro-cephalic senior citizen.
"Now make the head
full of red hair! On the top! Out the ears! From the nose!"
Here I found my mind cramping in an effort to construct the picture.
"Now make the rest of his body a bunny rabbit's!"
Well...
"With a Mets jersey on!"
Uh...
"And give him these really
big chainsaw hands! Yeah!" Matthew laughed maniacally, running around stage and beating us over the heads when our chainsaws weren't quite up to his expectations. How he can do this, I'll never understand, but when I was picturing blowtorches instead of chainsaws, he ran over to me, pounded me over the forehead and warned me that he wouldn't take any improv actors that didn't follow his directions to the letter. Meanwhile, Cheryl was still standing at the front of the stage, grinding her teeth as she relived every slight her grandfather had ever bestowed upon her, boring her eyes into each and every one of our backs.
Mercifully, before things got too bizarre, the library director appeared. "Okay, wrap it up," he told us all. "You've got ten minutes to research. Make them count." Without missing a beat, he ran over to Matthew in time to physically restrain him, at which point Cheryl snapped out of her reverie and brightly reminded us to have the first half of
King Lear memorized for tomorrow's workshop.
That was when it hit me: These people are insane.
I now understand the true genius of the Performance Workshop.
----------------------
Day two begins with me sullen and uncertain. Cheryl points to the stage and orders me to get up there and deliver my monologue. Since I've only gotten four words right as of this morning, and since Matthew's sword, nowhere to be seen, seems to have been replaced by a bullwhip, I'm somewhat reluctant. But Cheryl's encouragement is too much for my pessimism. I climb the steps, face the audience and begin:
I had been happy, if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known. O, now, for ever
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war!
And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!
The house is silent for a moment, until it breaks into thunderous applause. Cheryl approaches me, smiling.
"See?" she said gently. "You
can do it."
Words have overcome me. Tears are streaming across my face. Matthew looms up beside me.
"I didn't see any chainsaws," he says, hefting the bullwhip.
And I'm
still smiling. Because I know, soon enough, he most certainly
will.
