ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

You know this one? The dream where you’re being married to someone you don’t like – by your history professor – while standing in your pajamas? Yeah. That one. Nightmares involving public humiliation are the worst: Didn’t study for the test? Don’t know where you are? Forgot to put on clothes!?!

This is why actors amaze me. For the joy of bringing a play to life and a chance to bring an audience to their feet, they are willing to face the possibility of public humiliation. Forgot a line? Missed your cue? Your skirt falls down!?! Yep.

Actors are the bravest of the brave. When the army is forming a front line to charge the enemy on the battlefield, bring up the actors. Tell them just beyond that row of critics holding semi-automatics there’s an audience waiting, and off they’ll go. And in community theatre, they don’t even get paid to run that gauntlet.

Many, many years ago, I became a volunteer in the acting army when I joined the cast of a Growing Stage production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

I hadn’t been on stage for 20 years – not since a college production of Medieval Plays for Christmas in which I played “Angel Number Two”. I had one line.

What I learned from that experience was that when the moment arrives to speak one line, and you’ve practiced that one line four thousand times, it is virtually impossible to make that line sound normal.

Angel, top left - "Medieval Plays for Christmas", College of William and Mary Theatre Department, 1979

    The next acting I tried was live radio theatre here in Loudoun County, Virginia. Radio Theatre is the Laz-E Boy Recliner of theatre experience, because it involve no memorization, very little rehearsal, and no costumes, set, publicity or lighting.

    You can wear your polka-dot pajamas - a definite plus. But it has no audience — a fairly large drawback.

    And so, after all these years I dared to "tread the boards" again. I went out for a local production of Taming of the Shrew, hoping for more lines than just the one but scared to have too many. Highly respectful of my wishes, Tim Jon, the Director,  gave me very few lines — and four different roles.

    We began rehearsals mid-July, a cast from every conceivable walk of life with one very important thing in common: no free time.

    Planning a rehearsal schedule in which everyone is there for certain scenes takes the skill of an airline pilot (But it was pure coincidence our co-Producer and fellow actor, Stokes Tomlin, was a retired airline pilot). Tough as that scheduling turned out to be, the real fly in our ointment was a missing actor: we had no Hortensio (the original cast member bowed out due to illness).

    If you’re not familiar with Taming of the Shrew, Hortensio is is the one who winds up marrying The Widow. Have I mentioned one of my roles was The Widow? Oh, fine, there’s a little more to Hortensio than just the marriage. He plays a huge and very integral part of the play — and it was six weeks from Opening Night.

    All of us called every actor we knew that fit the director’s description, which by that time had narrowed to “Breathing — possibly male”. I had no luck at all: one guy was gone in August; another had a lead in a different Shakespeare play; another was called out west to fight forest fires for the National Park Service (the nerve...).

    Days ticked by. The Widow began having nightmares about history professors and polka-dot pajamas. Practices were unsettling: half the time I was reading for Hortensio. You can sprain an acting muscle that way.

    And that is why four weeks before opening night, I came to rehearsal depressed. But acting is an amazing thing: once practice begins, you somehow come to believe that everything will turn out right. I easily lost myself in the beauty and the humor of Shakespeare, the blocking of the movement in scenes, the characterizations, the thrill that is live theatre. Not to mention getting to work with the best of people.

    I’ll bet most folks think of acting as speaking lines, but acting is mostly listening: its reacting to each other’s lines, working together when someone drops a line to bring a scene back on track, helping everyone stay in character when the set falls down. You hang together or you die alone. As a result, you make friends for life with some of the most caring, intelligent, creative and generous people you’ll ever meet. And when you get together, you share war stories like old veterans.

    However, in order to bond properly, you also need a full cast — which brings us back to our missing Hortensio.

    There we were on a lovely August night, practicing our lines in the courtyard of Leesburg’s Market Station (A very cozy Globe Theatre-like space, as it happens), when a very tall, mustachioed fellow in a three-piece suit stepped out on the balcony from The Tuscarora Mill Restaurant. Lots of diners had been watching us rehearse from the window above and we'd just gone on, show business as usual, when he called down in a friendly tone, “So, what are you doing?”

    “Shakespeare!” we called up in unison.

    “Which play?”

    “Taming of the Shrew,” our Director, replied.

    And then a bit of a miracle occurred. The fellow nodded, stepped up to the railing and began quoting from the play.  

    And we stood below, dumbstruck. But when he kept quoting, we began nodding and smiling among ourselves, and our Director - who looked as though he’d eaten the proverbial canary cage and all - said, “Well, there’s our Hortensio.”

    When the fellow was done, we applauded loudly and asked for more. He laughed and shook his head. “Funny. That’s not the response I usually get.” Then he said something about loving Shakespeare and launched into Hamlet’s soliloquy.

    Tim offered him Hortensio on the spot. And he was brave enough to take it.

    Four weeks later we opened the show, and I’m pleased to say we sold out every night; few lines were muffed; no sets fell, nor any rain, nor any costumes; Shawn Malone, former co-manager of The Tuscarora Mill Restaurant, had a blast playing Hortensio, and the cast bonded, just as they should.

    If Shakespeare was correct and all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, I'm certain theatre is the best of all possible worlds.

    Give it a try sometime. And look around for me... I’m the Director in the polka-dot pajamas.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW at Market Station, with Kate, the Shrew above, and The Widow and Hortensio seated below

Article first appeared in McMath’s "Good Neighbor Column" in the former Loudoun ART Magazine, published by Gale Waldron. Although she is no longer with us, her work and inspiration live on, and this is updated and posted in Gale Waldron's honor.