Working Hard or Hardly Working

One day we got an email from our director. We were to show up as early as possible in order to help with building our set. I didn't know that was part of the deal. The prima donna in me was somewhat disturbed...manual labor? Ewww. The drama queen in me was exquisitely frightened...for my own safety and for that of anyone who might come within 10 feet of me and a power tool. The realist in me was anticipating great embarrassment.

Ever responsible and eager for approval, I arrived promptly at the requested time. Still unfamiliar with the lay of the theater, I wandered in and meandered to the room where we had met for our one previous rehearsal. There was an unfamiliar circle of faces in the room reading unfamiliar lines and I frantically scanned the perimeter of the room for someone recognizable. I found them huddled in a corner around what turned out to be a freight elevator and went to join them. There were about five of us, I think, and two were being productive. The other three hung back making various witty comments about how useless it was for us to be there at all...not because there wasn't plenty to do...but rather, because we were likely to do more harm than good. Okay, to be fair, I was the only one making witty comments to that effect. Someone from the circle of line readers approached us with a "shush, we're trying to run lines." I think that if she had heard my hilarious comments, she would have never dreamed of shushing us. At any rate, properly chastised, we buttoned our lips and trooped down into the prop room where the real "help" was to begin.

Witty banter can only take a person so far. Witty banter is how incompetent people deal with the insecurity surrounding their incompetency. Witty banter is where I am a Viking. I'm always amazed by people who can jump into any situation and make themselves incredibly useful. There was a guy there who gave us a rundown of what needed to be accomplished and immediately, everyone started moving as a cohesive set building unit, while I stood stupidly and made jokes. Two people grabbed some old props and started tearing them apart in order to make new props. One person (a GIRL, no less) grabbed some 2x4's or 8x12's or QxR's or something and started feeding them to a motorized death machine (I think the technical term for that is "circular saw"). I stood paralyzed in horror and awe wincing at every wooden scream and sawdust spray and then wandered around saying, "Someone needs to tell me what to do. Someone give me a job to do." How do people just know what to do? I don't know.

The guy in charge had a handful of something and said, "Here, these pencils need to be sharpened." Awesome. "I can sharpen pencils!" I said. And he handed them to me. Now, these were not regular roundy type number two pencils, and there was no pencil sharpener in the house. These were hard core rectangularish SHOP pencils and the only way to sharpen them was with a KNIFE. So I took a knife, and I took a pencil and I sharpened it to a gleaming graphite spear. And then I did it again. And then again. And you can only imagine the thrill that coursed through me when I heard someones desperate cry: "Hey! I need a pencil."

Fade to Black

I may or may not continue this saga. Today I know I will not. Maybe tomorrow I will. It's all fading so fast...that's an unfortunate fact about the nice things in life. They go away so quickly. I remember sitting next to Beauty one day watching scenes that we were not in being blocked and reblocked and lines being run and rerun. I leaned over to her and said, "It's so weird, but I don't remember this part of the theater at all." She looked at me oddly and said, "What part?" I motioned towards the rehearsal and said, "This...the rehearsal. I only remember performing." We laughed at how silly that was because 90% of a show is rehearsal.

It's true though...I remember the conversations in the dressing rooms and the parties after rehearsals and the cheering of the audience during the curtain calls, but the work surrounding it all is so forgotten. I remember the things I learned that had little to do with rehearsing, but everything to do with the overall experience.

I remember the when my "Mother" in The Glass Menagerie explained to me what she meant when she said that DeeDee and Tiffany* were "affected". I've never forgotten that word...I had never heard it before (in that context). She was describing two girls who put on airs of being far more grown-up and cosmopolitan than they actually were. And it helped me to understand them so much better. Up until that moment, these two girls hovered at the edge of my periphery as two glamorous strangers who held the all of the answers to the feminine mystique. In that moment, their sparkly auras were slightly dimmed, and I found that I was far more interested in having my Mother respect me than to have her lump me in with the "affected" girls. I wonder how I would remember them today if we had never had that conversation.

*names have been changed to protect the innocent

16 Year Olds Are Fun

Is it normal for a 32 year old woman to thoroughly enjoy conversations with 16 year old boys? Maybe these were unique 16 year old boys, or maybe I have absolutely no concept of my age. Or maybe I'm just a creepy old lady. At any rate, I think I enjoyed the conversations I had with our two 16 year old boys more than just about anyone. They are just fun! One of them had a small part...his lines consisted largely of "Sorry." And as my few lines consisted largely of "Ernie!" we had a good amount of down time during which we discussed the important things in life. I made a brilliant case in defense of The Legend of Zelda as the best NES game of all time. He begged to differ and made his case for Mike Tyson's Punch Out (or Knock Out...or whatever). Was he even born when Nintendo came out? Kids....they think they're so smart. I also learned that The Chocolate Wars and To Kill a Mockingbird are two great books that I really must read. And I came away from our discussions of The Dark Knight with more profound understanding than I had garnished from any such discussions with my grown-up friends.

I absolutely love people when they are at an age where they are dreaming and planning and idealistic and passionate and untainted by many of life's eventual cruelties. That's not to say that millions of 16 year olds haven't encountered more of life's cruelties than I could ever pretend to imagine. I am just compelled to take the ones that haven't yet fully butted heads with the injustice of life and validate every dream and insight that they are willing to lay bare. I also want to take them under my inadequate wing and protect them from every awful thing that lurks in the shadows waiting to devour them.

Both of these boys have dreams of acting...on stage I think...thought I doubt either would turn down an offer of great Hollywood celebrity. My husband was commenting on how interesting it is that guys so young would have such a passion for something like acting - that they would take it upon themselves to audition for plays that are not part of a school sanctioned activity - and that they would do it every opportunity they get. And it is fascinating. I love it. I love the privilege of getting to meet these amazing people who maybe don't buy into everything that "kids" are "supposed" to be. They have real interests and passions which aren't dictated by a desperate desire to be accepted by the coolest of their peers. Ugh...I hope no one ever succeeds in taking those interests and passions away from them. I think if I ever saw someone try, I would have to punch them.