And when did I invent Guess the Animal? On a rainy Princeton afternoon with Dolly when there was nothing else to do. She taught me to connect with children, to understand them, and to entertain them. And somewhere along the line, she must have picked up some of these skills herself. For years she has been a superb teacher in Ithaca, New York. She has directed spectacular school musicals and student productions of Shakespeare. And she has raised four marvelously talented and creative sons. Whenever we see each other, we revert to an adult version of our long-ago childhood selves, giggling and teasing like Big and Little. But she is Sarah Jane now. Nowadays there are only a handful of us left who remember that she was ever known as Dolly.
[9] Curtains
I was a curtain puller for Marcel Marceau. For decades, the immortal French mime was a yearly one-night-only fixture at McCarter Theatre, presenting his delicate art in hypnotic silence for wildly appreciative full houses. On one of his visits, I was pressed into service. I was assigned the job of raising and lowering McCarter’s massive red-velour curtain for Marceau’s single performance. It was one of many backstage jobs that I undertook at the theater, for piddling wages but mostly for fun, during my two high school years in Princeton. At various times I had run lights, painted sets, fashioned lobby displays, and operated the fly lines that hoisted flats and set pieces up and down. But pulling the curtain for the great Marcel Marceau was the best gig of all. I was humbled by the honor.
In those days Marceau was a one-of-a-kind Gallic superstar, his slight frame and unique persona recognizable everywhere. In performance, his face was painted stark white, with his mouth, eyes, and eyebrows delicately outlined in red and black. He wore white pants cut to halfway down his calves, a striped shirt, a tight, short jacket, ballet slippers, and a little blue hat with a flower sprouting out of it. In this emblematic costume, he performed a show that was simplicity itself. He would present about a dozen short mime pieces, most of them in the character of Bip, his alter ego. Marceau would chase butterflies, struggle against the wind, grow drunk at a cocktail party or seasick on board a cruise ship, all in pantomime. The entire performance took place on an empty stage, without props, sets, or supporting players. Or rather, all of these things were there but invisible, created by the magic of Marceau’s physical gifts, by the eloquent lighting, and by the imagination of the audience. Clearly, the rise and the fall of the curtain was also pretty damned important.
On the day of Marceau’s performance, I watched worshipfully from backstage all through his afternoon technical rehearsal. Although he had been through the drill a thousand times over the years, his preparation was exhaustive and precise. When it came time to rehearse the curtain call, his stage manager instructed me in broken English to raise and lower the curtain in a steady rhythm as Marceau took several bows. This was known as “bouncing the curtain,” and it required that I quickly master a complex new skill. In the wings, I stood in front of two thick ropes. I would pull on one of the ropes to ring down the curtain while the other rope shot up in the opposite direction. When the curtain was almost down, I would grab the second rope and allow it to lift me four feet off the ground. At this point, my counterbalancing weight would reverse the direction of the two ropes, I would drop back down to the floor, then pull on the second rope with all my might. The curtain would “bounce,” barely touching the stage, then gracefully rise up again. For Marcel Marceau I was to repeat this maneuver ten times: five times up and five times down. It was a tricky business, demanding enormous effort and split-second timing, but by the end of the tech rehearsal, I had mastered it.
The evening performance was sensational. Each of the mimed mini-dramas was greeted with clamorous adulation. I and the entire McCarter crew performed our backstage tasks with self-assurance and a sure hand. Marceau had craftily saved his best material for last, and in the final moments of his performance the audience was completely transported. I’d never heard such an ovation.
Then came the curtain call.
I brought the curtain down on cue. After a poetic pause, I switched ropes and pulled it back up again. I switched again, ready to “bounce the curtain.” The second rope hoisted me high off the ground. The curtain reversed course and came back down. I switched ropes and was hoisted up again, the curtain bounced nicely off the stage and went straight back up. Perfection! I switched again, gaining confidence, as the cheers rang out. Down, up, down, up, as Marceau smiled, clutched his heart, and grandly bowed. On the fourth bow, the curtain came down, I switched ropes, and once again I lurched back up in the air. But by this time, my strength was flagging. I lost my grip and fell in a heap onto the stage floor. I scrambled to my feet and stared at the two ropes as they gradually slowed to a stop. Terror engulfed me. I had no idea which one I should grab next. Hoping for the best I reached for the one on the right and pulled on it for all I was worth. I pulled. And pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Bit by bit, the rope offered less and less resistance. The roar of the crowd was oddly diminishing. A ghastly thought slowly dawned on me: Had I grabbed the wrong rope? I turned and looked out at the stage. What I saw filled me with horror.
Between Marcel Marceau and the audience was a massive pile of dark-red velour, about eight feet high. It was McCarter’s grand show curtain, lying on the stage like an enormous felled giant. Instead of bringing the curtain back up, I’d brought it down, down, down, piling it up, up, up on the stage. This mountain of fabric was attached to a long metal pipe and a series of tangled wires. These hung down from McCarter’s fly space in full view of the audience, swaying slowly from side to side. The crowd had fallen into a deathly silence. As for Marcel Marceau he was standing erect, with his hands on his hips, his weight on one leg, and a foot turned out. He was staring at me with stony fixity. His immobile face, with its bone-white makeup, its knit brow, and its gashlike red sneer, could only be described as a mask of rage. Predictably, the famous mime said nothing.
The moment was indelible. I cannot say that it had anything to do with my eventually becoming an actor, but it most certainly persuaded me that I had no business being a stagehand.
My evening with Marcel Marceau was one of many memorable nights at McCarter Theatre in those two years. Blessedly, it was the only catastrophe. In most cases, I was an engrossed spectator. In my memory McCarter was a kind of conservatory of the performing arts, with me alone making up its entire student body. And the faculty of my private conservatory included some of the greatest figures of that era, in theater, music, and dance.
Where else could you find such a roster of brilliant teachers? Then as now, a parade of world-class artists and ensembles shared McCarter’s stage with its resident theater company, presenting to the university and to the greater Princeton community a vast smorgasbord of performances. And under the protective guise of a staffer’s brat, I became an expert at sneaking in to see them. I would casually stride through the stage door at the back of the theater, pass through the scene shop, costume shop, and rehearsal room, slip into the inner lobby, and mingle with the gathering crowd. Having bypassed the ticket-takers, I would walk into the auditorium with the paying audience, climb up four flights, and perch myself on the top stair at the very back of the balcony.
During the first half of any given performance, I would spot an empty seat far below in the first few rows. I would note down its exact location. During the intermission, I’d seek out the seat and confidently plant myself in it. And for the second half of the evening there I would be, a dozen feet away from Dame Joan Sutherland, Pete Seeger, Rudolph Serkin, Odetta, Isaac Stern, Dave Brubeck, Julian Bream, every major symphony orchestra, and the dance companies of Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, and the American Ballet Theatre. I would bask in the glow of their brilliance and drink it all in. There was even a visit from the Cambridge Circus, a young comedy troupe from England, featuring a tall, thin fellow with an especially anarchic streak. I worked with him forty years later and we deduced that, yes indeed, he’d been there and I’d seen him. His name was John Cleese.