“This is the theater, honey. The character is naked, not you.”
“Good point, Carol,” I interjected, unwisely. Carol gave me one of her furious looks, reminding me that she was approaching a breaking point in our love affair. What can be said about this? After five years, it’s a regular enough occurrence. The truth is that we’ve never been very happy together. We pick at each other and have squalid fights. I’ll spare the details, except to say that whenever I think about our fighting, or about Carol’s drinking, I feel sad for us both; and this makes me want to phone her up and find out if she’s doing all right; and this behavior, as will easily be understood by anyone who has lasted even a short while in a hostile erotic relationship, is almost invariably a prelude to knockout sex.
“What will I be wearing” called a boy from the back of the basement. The boy was Sam English, a theater regular, bearded and deep-voiced; he was my Bottom. Carol said to him and to the entire cast, “Costumes are designed to suggest historical period and class, while also referring to modern dress. Bottom and his fellow Mechanicals will wear weight-lifting belts over wool tunics with the characters’ names ironed on.”
It had been my idea to depict Shakespeare’s vulgar tradesmen as a team of Elizabethan power lifters. I imagined them carrying six-packs of beer hanging from clear plastic rings. “Let me see Bottom and his men at the front of the room, pronto,” I called out, to begin that day’s walk-through of the play within the play, act five’s irresistible “tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe.”
Here came Quince, the carpenter; Bottom, the weaver; Flute, the bellows-mender; Snout, the tinker; Snug, the joiner; and Starveling, the tailor — in reality a cluster of political-science and religious-studies majors. These six huddled around me, and I said, “You guys are fuckups and you’re ugly. You’re a bunch of functionally illiterate dipsomaniacs, and I’d be amazed if any of you has ever been laid. Your own mothers ought to be ashamed of you.”
The boys looked confused, and I knew I had them where I wanted them. It is useful, when directing, to blur the boundaries between actor and role, to inaugurate, with a few stringent words, if necessary, a certain emotional instability; in this instance I was exploiting my students’ routine insecurities in order to lead them to identify with Shakespeare’s motley artisans.
I then gave these Merry Men my cautionary talk about the hardships of a life in the theater. At some point, I became aware of Danielle — I could see her over Sam English’s big head; she was waving and pointing at her watch, making those gestures and absurd faces people make when they need your attention, yet are afraid of you — so I concluded, “Boys, the point is this. People think the theater is romantic and magical. And sometimes it is. But most of the time it’s just a pile of crap that nobody cares about.”
“Time for animal improvisations!” Danielle shouted.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, historians tell us, was probably first presented at a royal wedding held in the summer at a house outside London. Presumably, the guests, like wedding guests throughout history, became intoxicated with alcohol and the aphrodisiacal spirit of the occasion. Young couples, wandering in and out of doors, slipping away to flirt or break up or make love, had dramatic counterparts in the unhappy children lost in love in Shakespeare’s imaginary grove. How many real lovers woke after the ceremony, hungover and sick, to discover themselves entwined on the lawn with mates met only during the festivities the night before? I wanted to create a world where love is mercurial, unbridled, bestial. In our production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the unmarried lovers would fall asleep after chasing one another through the forest; then, doused with nectar from Puck’s flower, they would roll over, rub their eyes, and fuck the wrong person.
“Let’s all get down on our hands and knees,” I told the cast.
Down we went. Right away I noticed that Mary Victoria Frost and several faeries appeared to be acting like house cats; these girls arched their backs, projected feline butts into the air, and hissed. Sheila Tannenbaum — who, in act two, scene one, repeats the famous line “Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me”—was doing a nice job as a submissive pup, rolling over and sticking out her tongue to lick Billy Valentine, slithering past on his belly. Lion roared and Bottom brayed like an ass, and Sarah Goldwasser, our Titania, responded by rubbing herself against Sam; it was clear that these two had a flirtation in the works. That’s something I like to see. Sex makes any show better. “Oink, oink,” I said to Mary Victoria Frost.
I love the theater. I really do. And I adored my cast. They adored one another, too; these boys and girls were becoming — as the days became weeks and the play took its shape — uninhibitedly smitten with one another. It was mid-May, and summer’s first warmth was in the air. The basement felt stuffy and hot, thanks to the overheating furnace in the corner.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I announced at the beginning of our third week. “Those of you who haven’t got off book, you’re holding the rest of us up. Demetrius, time your entrances so you don’t keep Helena waiting downstage. Titania, less kissing and more teasing when you’re giving it up to Bottom in act four. Make him work for it.”
“Reg?” peeped a voice from the crowd. It was Sarah Goldwasser, the prima donna.
“Yes, Sarah?”
“When will we get out of this gross basement and start rehearsing on the green?”
“Any day now. Roger and Emil are building the platforms in the trees, and they have to dig the hole for Puck. Once Puck’s crater is finished, we’ll move the show outdoors.”
“Crater?” This from Martin Epps.
“That’s right. In our Midsummer Night’s Dream, the demons won’t merely buzz around like woodland pixies; they’ll come right up from the earth to grab us and pull us down to Hell. At any rate, Martin, I don’t think your hole will be much of a problem after one or two on-site rehearsals. You’ll see,” I assured the blind boy.
It was one of those moments when a person (myself, in this instance) says something wholly untoward, and then, becoming aware of the faux pas and its implications, rushes blindly forward — there is no other way to describe this adequately, except as a king of verbal blindness — exclaiming additional horrors. “What I meant is … the rest of us will … watch you crawling … covered with dirt and sticks … You can picture it … I don’t mean literally…”
“That’s okay, Mr. Barry,” said Martin Epps.
“Call me Reg,” I reminded him, by way of apology. Then, addressing the room at large, attempting to regain authority: “All right. Let me have all the young lovers over in the corner. Lovers, don’t touch the boiler.”
Possibly — I should say probably — it was risky of me to attempt simulated sex with undergraduates.
“What do you think, gang? Is this something you feel you can comfortably do in front of an audience?”
Together we sat — Mary Victoria Frost, Sheila Tannenbaum, Billy Valentine, and I — in a cozy circle on the floor. Billy, I noticed, had his eye on Mary; he leaned back beside her, and you could tell he was angling to spy an opening in her blouse and glimpse a breast. Mary spoke: “How dark will it be?”
“Fairly. By act three, the sun will be setting. With any luck, it’ll be a humid night and the fireflies will be out.”
“It’s going to be beautiful!” exclaimed Sheila.
I concurred, “That’s right, Sheila. When you make love, you’re doing God’s work on Earth.”