The Theatah

ACTING:   In the Beginning

        It is sometime around the Bi-Centennial. I am scribbling these notes on the familiar yellow legal pad—how many times over how many years now? Here in the little Slave-Quarter pad in the French Quarter, it strikes me that the day is appropriately gray for such an undertaking. You see, I’m facing the risky business of delving back into my early years in the Theatre and already know that the journey will evoke that same youthful excitement, frustration, joy and peculiar fear known as “stage fright,” as if it were only yesterday. But Freud assures us not to fret: time, the Great Cushioner, has already shorn such delvings of their deepest angst and cruelest pains—(also, one wonders, of their height’s of beauty and thrill of  creation as well?).  We shall see.

            Sitting here snug and removed in time, table lamp on in the middle of the day and soft jazz providing background, I am certain of one thing:  unlike François Villon I need not ask, “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”  They are here in my fluttering heart and eagerly-sharpened extra-soft #1 pencil—having drifted into the nooks and crannies of my still-alert,  eighty-two year old mind.

 I intend to review my years of acting and directing. Initially, I will indicate both the glories and the pitfalls of our profession by including (with, I hope, a redeeming sense of humor) those times I goofed, made stupid acting choices, was lured into deceptive traps and fell flat on my ass (always before a live audience, of course). But in so doing, I found both my creative sea legs and personal limitations. Thus, like Topsy, I was des- tined to grow. I also hope to resurrect certain directing discoveries, experiments and innovations which I brought to certain productions, hoping to stimulate young metteurs en scène who, by some quirk of fate, may have stumbled upon these pages.

STAGE STRUCK:

            Where in the world did it all start, anyhow?  Back in the 1930’s at age six or seven, I guess, in the basement of 910 Arnold Street, Galesburg, Ill.  My dad, Tom, an industrial  arts  teacher  at  our local  high school,  earned a little  extra on his  modest salary by building  sets  for the  school’s  plays.  Years  later,  Mel White,  the dramatics teacher at the time, told me he’d never forget the amazing little kid who came to rehearsals with his dad and sat motionless in the front row for hours mesmerized by the ritual unfolding before his eyes. That was me.  With an uncanny grasp of who his little son was and what he needed to make him happy (a quality that unfortunately disappeared with the years) Dad presented me one Christmas with a beautifully crafted miniature stage with Christmas lights in a metal trough across the top. A thrill ran up my spine. Show Biz!  It was robin’s egg blue, I remember, and  was set up in  the  basement room where the ping-pong table could be folded up against the wall.  With help from a couple of other second-grade  “hams,” we performed “entertainments”  for neighborhood kids at two pennies each.  We wrote the scripts, made the puppets, sets, and props and played all the parts. Our shows were some kind of revue, because all I remember is a marionette of Lillian Russell, for whom I sang, in my youthful soprano, “After the Ball is Over.” When our theatre was “dark,” I entertained myself by creating fabulous “stage settings.” One in particular was a jungle setting replete with self-carved stele and ruins of a Mayan temple  with every vine,  tree  and  flower  handmade by yours truly.

Several slightly blurred photos still exist of this visual extravaganza, worthy of Cecil B, himself. From then on, “jungle” would always have exotic (and erotic) connotations for me and, undoubtedly, explain my sojourns later in life to locales “with the strange-sounding names” of:  Tikal, Iquitos on the Amazon, Sulawesi, Fiji, Komodo, Tahiti and Machu Picchu. I think, even in those early years, I was subconsciously hooked by the idea of l