Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has announced that non-Christians are not his brothers or sisters. So much for that Governor of All The People thing...actually, that sentiment is more in line with his previous job, as the villain in Poltergeist II...
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
You're Gonna Dieeeeeeee!
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has announced that non-Christians are not his brothers or sisters. So much for that Governor of All The People thing...actually, that sentiment is more in line with his previous job, as the villain in Poltergeist II...
Sunday, January 9, 2011
My Year In Review--Theatre-wise anyway Part II
So. I had a month between the closing of The Miracle Worker, and the start of Born Yesterday, at Otterbein University, where I'd been engaged as a guest artist for their fall production. I spent it watching my half-assed garden wither and die due to neglect, since I was out of town most of the summer. I read the script and wondered what the hell to do with Harry Brock. He wasn't a bucket list role at all, and at first pass, I found the play to be a little dated--though the themes of government bought and paid for are certainly current. But there was a certain Pollyanna-ish streak that ran through it that gave me pause, until I started reading it again. It was, on the 2nd time through, a lot more frank than the film version, or indeed many plays of the same period. The language was pretty salty for its day, and beneath Pollyanna's skirts lurked a certain snide cynicism that has always appealed to me. I started to enjoy the rhythm of the language, that sort of "say, what's the big idea" snappy type of rapid fire dialogue from the old Warner Brothers films.
But what to do with Brock? Like many actors, I suspect, once I have a role it seeps into my every waking thought. This can be annoying, because I miss a lot of conversation in the real world--I am busy enough with conversations in my head to pay attention to ones directed at me by my loved ones. Or they co-join, like two radio stations crowding each other in the same spot on the dial:
SHE: " Honey, would you like me fix some grilled cheese sandwiches?"
ME: "Hmm? Oh, well...maybe, I guess...does Harry Brock know how to tie a necktie on his own, do you think?"
SHE:" I am going to take that as a yes."
Harry began to walk around with me, nudging me in quiet moments. I am not one of those actors who gets totally immersed in a role--not for me the Daniel Day-Lewis model of staying in character all the time and all that. It works for him, I guess, but it wouldn't work for me. It would be too exhausting, and I suspect he does it more for show and effect. I doubt he takes a dump in character, or reads a book in character. He stays in character in public, so people can say "He stays in character ALL THE TIME." It's legend-building. So much silliness goes into the craft of acting, so much humbug and flummery. My immersion is less obvious to people, except to Dani, who always knows when my brain is otherwise engaged.
Let's take a paragraph or two to talk about process. On second thought, let's not. Listening to actors talk about process is as boring as listening to someone talk about their golf game. I will confine myself merely to observing that, having never majored in theatre in college, I never learned how to do the "Such and Such" Technique, or the " This and That" Method. I suppose they have value, at least as points of departure, but I have always trusted my intuition and insight, which I like to think is fairly highly developed. I can "get" people most of the time. Years of practice have endowed me with technical prowess on stage, and once I learned to access whatever inner resources I have, I was able to begin to divine the inner workings of my characters. This came late to me, relatively speaking, but just in time, if you know what I mean. Every play is different, every role is unique, and I don't believe you can apply a one size fits all approach to developing a character. It isn't as if all you have to do is type entries into an Excel spreadsheet and out pops a solution to a character.
So I began with Harry's insecurity. I think everything he does pivots around that pole. I decided he was probably a clean freak, one of those low rent guys who, once he hits it big, spends a lot of time on the surface of things, because he isn't very equipped to focus on the inner things. I read once that Sinatra took three or four showers a day, and changed suits just as often. Harry spent his life as a junk man, and once he made his first million, he tried to get the stink of the yard out of his nostrils, and out from under his nails. I asked for a handkerchief, once we started rehearsals, and worked out ways to always wipe his hands after every handshake or handling of some object. I gradually, over time, whittled that down to just a few times during the performances.
As far as his clothes were concerned, I figured he liked George Raft and that kind of guy, and took his cue to dress from the movies, and probably even hired someone to coach him on how to dress. I loved working with the costume designer of the show, who asked me for my ideas about what to do to emphasize character. That's the way it should be. I hate working with costumers who have a "my way or the highway" approach. Costume is character, in some sense--how a character looks is how he chooses to present himself to the world, and that should never be solely left to the costume designer. We added doodads like cufflinks, and watches and stickpins and all that, and all my suits in the show were first rate. It was important that when Harry looks in the mirror, he tries hard not to see the hard-scrabble man beneath the tailored outerwear.
Working at Otterbein--this was my second stint as guest artist there--is a treat. The young actors always add an extra dash of enthusiasm, and remind me why I fell in love with the whole thing in the first place. In past gigs working with young actors, I could see (sometimes very starkly) the difference between talent and skill. All of them are talented--that's why they got into their theatre departments in the first place--but most of them weren't very skilled yet, and didn't know how best to bring their talents to bear. That comes, I suppose, more from experience than something you're born with.
But the cast of Born Yesterday blew the curve on that particular test. There were some young actors who brought a level of skill to the party that surprised and delighted me. Especially my co-star, Stanzi Davis, who is a 40 year old in a 20 year old's body. She has great poise, on and off stage, an old soul, and has, as they say on American Idol, mad skills when it comes to acting.
So anyway, Born Yesterday opened in late October and ran for a few weekends. We played on a beautiful set, to enthusiastic crowds, and I was grateful for the gig, the money, and the chance to work with such good young people. And I thought that would be it for my year. In fact, I bragged, that once I finished directing the school staff show at Dublin Coffman, I had a nice long Christmas holiday full of nothing but reading and eating ahead of me. But...
Whore that I am, I accepted an offer to perform in A Sanders Family Christmas. This was a production mounted by David Caldwell, a frequent guest director at Otterbein and many other theatres around the country. I had never met him, but knew of him through my friend Don, who went to college with him. He called Don to ask if I sang or played the guitar, and Don told him more of the latter than the former, which is dead true. I got a call from Elizabeth Saltgiver, who works at Otterbein, and who was acting as a managing director for Caldwell's production company. They asked me to send a few picking/singing clips so David could get an idea of my range. She emphasized this wasn't an audition--I was already in the play, but this was they could best determine the role for me. So I sent off a few clips, and was given the role of the Sanders family patriarch, Burl, whose playing and singing chores were much less demanding than the other male role of my type, which was just fine with me.
We only rehearsed 10 days, and played in a chapel in Worthington, which was perfect since the play is set in a Baptist church on the eve of WWII. I had a ball, and got to check off a bucket list item, namely playing guitar in a band, on stage, before an audience. Caldwell, who in addition to directing the piece, also played the pastor, was funny as hell, and two completely different people in those roles. As director, he was all business, slightly aloof, and dead certain of where and how to play certain moments (he's done more than a few versions of the Sanders family plays, of which there are 3). As the Rev. Oglethorpe, he was hysterical, silly, touching and never seemed to fail to land his jokes and more serious moments. His funny moments were so funny, I am ashamed to say I corpsed nearly every time. I couldn't help it. I laughed right along with the audience, but I figured since Burl considers him a man who is bit of a figure of fun, I could justify laughing in character.
While the Sanders Family Christmas was rehearsing, I was also rehearsing the staff show at Dublin Coffman. About 7 years ago, the teachers and principals at Coffman were looking for some way for the Coffman staff to get to know each other on a more personal basis, and hit upon the idea to put on a musical. The first two years they did You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Tom Sawyer, and then I came on board, and they asked me to direct the staff show--they had been directing themselves before that. So, in the last couple of years I have directed Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Honk!, and then, this year, Snoopy the Musical.
It's always a fun, if stressful time, and the payoff is always worth it. You get to see people for whom acting is a mysterious and alien concept suddenly finding it, and making things work quite beyond what they thought they were capable of doing. The shows always sell out, and the money goes to fund classroom projects (field trips, special equipment, etc). The students love working on the show--they crew it, and I always have a ton of backstage and booth help for it. We all found the play to be a lesser one than YAGMCB, so I started augmenting it with moments from the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, and from various Peanuts comic strips. I actually think our final product was better than the original play, though I am sure the authors wouldn't agree. But the little kids in the audience howled with laughter, the older kids loved watching their teachers and principals do something completely foreign to their experience with them, and the actors amazed themselves at how they were able to get it over. Directing them is always challenging, because, when you think about it, all teachers are alphas in their classrooms, and all principals are the alpha alphas, and every now and again I had to remind them that when they come to rehearsal, I am the alpha. Dani came to a rehearsal once and said I was Charlie Brown trying to direct the Christmas play--I turn my back, and the partying starts. But it all works in the end, and the staff always ends things with a great party at the principals house, and the camaraderie is priceless...
So that was my year--a year I began by announcing in a New Year's resolution that I was going to do less theatre... final tally: 7 shows, 3 directing, 4 acting.
But what to do with Brock? Like many actors, I suspect, once I have a role it seeps into my every waking thought. This can be annoying, because I miss a lot of conversation in the real world--I am busy enough with conversations in my head to pay attention to ones directed at me by my loved ones. Or they co-join, like two radio stations crowding each other in the same spot on the dial:
SHE: " Honey, would you like me fix some grilled cheese sandwiches?"
ME: "Hmm? Oh, well...maybe, I guess...does Harry Brock know how to tie a necktie on his own, do you think?"
SHE:" I am going to take that as a yes."
Harry began to walk around with me, nudging me in quiet moments. I am not one of those actors who gets totally immersed in a role--not for me the Daniel Day-Lewis model of staying in character all the time and all that. It works for him, I guess, but it wouldn't work for me. It would be too exhausting, and I suspect he does it more for show and effect. I doubt he takes a dump in character, or reads a book in character. He stays in character in public, so people can say "He stays in character ALL THE TIME." It's legend-building. So much silliness goes into the craft of acting, so much humbug and flummery. My immersion is less obvious to people, except to Dani, who always knows when my brain is otherwise engaged.
Let's take a paragraph or two to talk about process. On second thought, let's not. Listening to actors talk about process is as boring as listening to someone talk about their golf game. I will confine myself merely to observing that, having never majored in theatre in college, I never learned how to do the "Such and Such" Technique, or the " This and That" Method. I suppose they have value, at least as points of departure, but I have always trusted my intuition and insight, which I like to think is fairly highly developed. I can "get" people most of the time. Years of practice have endowed me with technical prowess on stage, and once I learned to access whatever inner resources I have, I was able to begin to divine the inner workings of my characters. This came late to me, relatively speaking, but just in time, if you know what I mean. Every play is different, every role is unique, and I don't believe you can apply a one size fits all approach to developing a character. It isn't as if all you have to do is type entries into an Excel spreadsheet and out pops a solution to a character.
So I began with Harry's insecurity. I think everything he does pivots around that pole. I decided he was probably a clean freak, one of those low rent guys who, once he hits it big, spends a lot of time on the surface of things, because he isn't very equipped to focus on the inner things. I read once that Sinatra took three or four showers a day, and changed suits just as often. Harry spent his life as a junk man, and once he made his first million, he tried to get the stink of the yard out of his nostrils, and out from under his nails. I asked for a handkerchief, once we started rehearsals, and worked out ways to always wipe his hands after every handshake or handling of some object. I gradually, over time, whittled that down to just a few times during the performances.
As far as his clothes were concerned, I figured he liked George Raft and that kind of guy, and took his cue to dress from the movies, and probably even hired someone to coach him on how to dress. I loved working with the costume designer of the show, who asked me for my ideas about what to do to emphasize character. That's the way it should be. I hate working with costumers who have a "my way or the highway" approach. Costume is character, in some sense--how a character looks is how he chooses to present himself to the world, and that should never be solely left to the costume designer. We added doodads like cufflinks, and watches and stickpins and all that, and all my suits in the show were first rate. It was important that when Harry looks in the mirror, he tries hard not to see the hard-scrabble man beneath the tailored outerwear.
Working at Otterbein--this was my second stint as guest artist there--is a treat. The young actors always add an extra dash of enthusiasm, and remind me why I fell in love with the whole thing in the first place. In past gigs working with young actors, I could see (sometimes very starkly) the difference between talent and skill. All of them are talented--that's why they got into their theatre departments in the first place--but most of them weren't very skilled yet, and didn't know how best to bring their talents to bear. That comes, I suppose, more from experience than something you're born with.
But the cast of Born Yesterday blew the curve on that particular test. There were some young actors who brought a level of skill to the party that surprised and delighted me. Especially my co-star, Stanzi Davis, who is a 40 year old in a 20 year old's body. She has great poise, on and off stage, an old soul, and has, as they say on American Idol, mad skills when it comes to acting.
So anyway, Born Yesterday opened in late October and ran for a few weekends. We played on a beautiful set, to enthusiastic crowds, and I was grateful for the gig, the money, and the chance to work with such good young people. And I thought that would be it for my year. In fact, I bragged, that once I finished directing the school staff show at Dublin Coffman, I had a nice long Christmas holiday full of nothing but reading and eating ahead of me. But...
Whore that I am, I accepted an offer to perform in A Sanders Family Christmas. This was a production mounted by David Caldwell, a frequent guest director at Otterbein and many other theatres around the country. I had never met him, but knew of him through my friend Don, who went to college with him. He called Don to ask if I sang or played the guitar, and Don told him more of the latter than the former, which is dead true. I got a call from Elizabeth Saltgiver, who works at Otterbein, and who was acting as a managing director for Caldwell's production company. They asked me to send a few picking/singing clips so David could get an idea of my range. She emphasized this wasn't an audition--I was already in the play, but this was they could best determine the role for me. So I sent off a few clips, and was given the role of the Sanders family patriarch, Burl, whose playing and singing chores were much less demanding than the other male role of my type, which was just fine with me.
We only rehearsed 10 days, and played in a chapel in Worthington, which was perfect since the play is set in a Baptist church on the eve of WWII. I had a ball, and got to check off a bucket list item, namely playing guitar in a band, on stage, before an audience. Caldwell, who in addition to directing the piece, also played the pastor, was funny as hell, and two completely different people in those roles. As director, he was all business, slightly aloof, and dead certain of where and how to play certain moments (he's done more than a few versions of the Sanders family plays, of which there are 3). As the Rev. Oglethorpe, he was hysterical, silly, touching and never seemed to fail to land his jokes and more serious moments. His funny moments were so funny, I am ashamed to say I corpsed nearly every time. I couldn't help it. I laughed right along with the audience, but I figured since Burl considers him a man who is bit of a figure of fun, I could justify laughing in character.
While the Sanders Family Christmas was rehearsing, I was also rehearsing the staff show at Dublin Coffman. About 7 years ago, the teachers and principals at Coffman were looking for some way for the Coffman staff to get to know each other on a more personal basis, and hit upon the idea to put on a musical. The first two years they did You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Tom Sawyer, and then I came on board, and they asked me to direct the staff show--they had been directing themselves before that. So, in the last couple of years I have directed Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Honk!, and then, this year, Snoopy the Musical.
It's always a fun, if stressful time, and the payoff is always worth it. You get to see people for whom acting is a mysterious and alien concept suddenly finding it, and making things work quite beyond what they thought they were capable of doing. The shows always sell out, and the money goes to fund classroom projects (field trips, special equipment, etc). The students love working on the show--they crew it, and I always have a ton of backstage and booth help for it. We all found the play to be a lesser one than YAGMCB, so I started augmenting it with moments from the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, and from various Peanuts comic strips. I actually think our final product was better than the original play, though I am sure the authors wouldn't agree. But the little kids in the audience howled with laughter, the older kids loved watching their teachers and principals do something completely foreign to their experience with them, and the actors amazed themselves at how they were able to get it over. Directing them is always challenging, because, when you think about it, all teachers are alphas in their classrooms, and all principals are the alpha alphas, and every now and again I had to remind them that when they come to rehearsal, I am the alpha. Dani came to a rehearsal once and said I was Charlie Brown trying to direct the Christmas play--I turn my back, and the partying starts. But it all works in the end, and the staff always ends things with a great party at the principals house, and the camaraderie is priceless...
So that was my year--a year I began by announcing in a New Year's resolution that I was going to do less theatre... final tally: 7 shows, 3 directing, 4 acting.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
My Year In Review--Theatre-wise anyway
Last January, my main New Year's Resolution was to do less theatre...I wanted to see if maybe I couldn't do a little more writing, a sort of return to my first love (without, you know, the creepy FB stalker thing that most ex's indulge in)--but that was a foolish pledge. In the last 12 months, I have directed 4 plays, acted in 4 plays, and written bupkes. Well, nothing I was interested in sharing with the world, anyway.
All my directing occurred at the high sch
ool where I work. We did Tira Palmquist's The Island of Dr. Moreau in January, which was a fantastic experience for the kids involved. They got to create something no other high school had ever done. We took it to the state thespian conference, where the kids were received like rock stars when it was over. They were never better, and I had a rollicking good time working with them. Later that spring, I directed my own little comic 15 minute adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which was performed during an evening of one acts.
Then I left town to spend 5 weeks in beautiful Granville, Ohio, where I was engaged for a 2 play contract at Weathervane Playhouse in nearby Newark, a summer stock theatre that puts up five plays a summer. I had a grand time, for the most part, met some wonderful people, got to play a bucket list
role (Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady) and Captain Keller in The Miracle Worker.
MFL was a terrifying experience, initially. Those who know me know I am not much for the musical theatre genre. I respect it a lot more than I used to, but I still find it a little frivolous and too filled with "fabulosity" for my taste. But I always thought Higgins was in my wheelhouse, and a friend emailed me that spring to say she'd recommended me to Matt Trombetta ( the artistic director) for the role. I heard nothing from them and was mentioning to another friend how this tempting tidbit had been dangled in front of me, and then--nothing. She said she was seeing Matt that evening, and would mention it to him. She did, and he contacted me the next day, we arranged an audition, and I got the role, and was offered Captain Keller in the bargain. We set a fair price for my services, which included putting me up for the length of the contract.
I knew my Waterloo would be the songs, and learning them in a 2 week, summer stock format. I had a month between casting and first rehearsal, so I downloaded karaoke versions of Higgins' numbers, and drilled them into my head, every day. I decided against watching the movie (which I had never seen in its en
tirety), and figured I'd go it my way.
Rehearsals were long and intensive, and I learned a new respect for the musical theatre performer, and what it takes for them to get it all down. My main trouble was that, being deaf as a post, I couldn't hear the piano if I was singing (being profoundly deaf from birth, my life has always been mono, never stereo). Plus they placed the piano far, far away, in our echo-ridden rehearsal room. It was enormously frustrating--one of the few times I have really felt handicapped (another time was when I was fired from a convenience store job in college, because I couldn't hear the people talking on the speakers from the gas pumps). As a result, I was constantly going off rhythm, and slowing the progress of the show.
My pride wouldn't let me back out, however--I think one of the great things about the theatre is that there is always something you need to increase your reach for, and I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd taken the easy way out. Finally, I did the actorly thing--I threw a hizzy, and announced it was pointless for me to continue until they moved the piano closer, in the approximate with where it would be on the stage . I had asked for this before, but no one seemed to hear it (maybe they were deaf too). It took a raised voice and a scary countenance ( I can do both pretty well when I wanna) for people to pay attention, and they moved the piano, and I started to line up with the runway, finally.
Opening night was one of the few times I have ever been stricken with nerves before a show. Though the sound level was better (this was the 2 piano arrangement of MFL), there were still many times when, if I was loud, I couldn't hear the pianos. Throughout the run, I did much of it by guess--I would sing, or sing/talk my line, then listen to the filler notes between the melody to see if I'd timed it right. There wasn't a single performance where I got it all on the bead, but I started to relax and actually look forward to the numbers. Most of them, anyway. I always dreaded " Ordinary Man", because of all the tempo shifts, and all the movement within it. But, strangely, a number of people told me afterward that was one of their favorite moments of my performance. That and "Accustomed to her Face", the final number, which was my personal favorite.
Weathervane has a terrible policy of lining the actors up outside after the show, so the audience can file by and shake your hand. It felt like an inspection line, or like I was a preacher standing by the church door and shaking the hands of the exiting congregation. I have always tried to eschew meeting the public after my shows. I prefer doing my monkey dance, get the applause, and then slip out the side door to my car. I hate all manner of pretentious "talk-backs"--a terrible practice currently in vogue in theatre. To my way of thinking, there is a contract between audience and performer, and I fulfilled my part of it by giving my all on stage. I never slack, I never phone it in. And I have nothing further to add than my performance. If your production needs the talk-back to illuminate the show, then the production is wanting. I know a lot of actors who enjoy talk-backs, but I guess I have always been old school that way. Weathervane doesn't do the afterschool special thing, but you have to stand there while the folks file by, shake your hand raw, and smile while all you really want to do is get to the bar or Rally's for an American Cheddar Melt.
I bring this up because, against my will, I started to enjoy it. I appreciated that people responded to my work so favorably, with hugs and back slaps, questions like "Will we see you in anything else this summer, I hope?"...even the tired old questions most civilians ask " How do you remember all those lines?" (My stock answer to that one is " How do you know I did?") Because Weathervane exists outside the normal theatre hubs of a big city, there is a proprietary feeling that comes from the patrons--it's their theatre, and they have a stake in it. And that's valuable. And the exchange takes on a more personal tone than it does in the cities.
The meet and greet for the next show was an entirely different color altogether, however...
On the final day of My Fair Lady, we did a matinee, an evening performance, and then struck the set, which lasted well into the wee hours. I was determined to sleep in my own bed, in Grove City (about 60 miles away), so at 3 am I said my goodbyes, and hit the highway, looking forward to my one day off, and hit my pillow around 4:30 am-- the roads were so foggy I had to travel about 30 mph most of the way home. At about 9am, I was awakened by a phone call from my pal Tim, informing me that Matt Trombetta, the artistic director and director of The Miracle Worker (which was a week into the 2 week rehearsal), had been killed in a head-on car collision, on the same road I had traveled, about 20 minutes behind me. I dressed and headed back to Newark, too late for the meeting with the board and admin staff, but in time to commiserate with the stunned and grieving company. Many of them had known Matt for years, to the point that he was like family to them.
One of these "family" members, Erika, who had directed MFL, had to step in and finish MW. It was a heroic effort on her part, a sort of focus I can only imagine. That final week of rehearsal was surreal, the usual joy and nerves replaced by a grim sort of realization that we had to get it done. Not for Matt, necessarily. But because in theatre, that's what you do. Theatre people attend. Life exists outside the building, not in it. I will often make that speech to my high school kids--theatre.people.attend. If your mom dies, schedule the funeral for a day that won't coincide with the rehearsals or performance.
And so we got the thing up. To standing Os every night, but I'm sure they were in honor of Matt and our ability to put aside the shock, rather than for our performances (though the little girl who played Helen Keller had some serious chops).
The people in the meet and greet lines hugged us all, and it became a situation where you had to remember why they were doing it. In their minds, we were heroic to get a show up under the circumstances. People would say, " This must have been hard for you.", and I would start to answer, well, the accent was challenging to bring off, then I would realize they were thinking about Matt. But in the adrenalined after-moments of performance, the mind, at least MY mind, wasn't on that at all. I was thinking about certain moments that could have been better, or why wasn't my prop in its place tonight, or "wonder who is at the bar" or "hope Rally's is still open". I didn't know Matt as well as most. My sadness was the sadness of a young life, any young life, suddenly gone-- not for someone who was an intimate part of my world, which he wasn't-- and I moved on as other priorities rose up. Selfishly, I discreetly lamented the loss of future work--Matt and I had discussed my returning in 2011 to direct a children's play, and act in Boeing, Boeing, but those plans were lost on that foggy night.
So, that get us up to July of 2010. Act Two of " Mark's Theatrical Self-absorption" comes up after these messages from our sponsors...
All my directing occurred at the high sch
ool where I work. We did Tira Palmquist's The Island of Dr. Moreau in January, which was a fantastic experience for the kids involved. They got to create something no other high school had ever done. We took it to the state thespian conference, where the kids were received like rock stars when it was over. They were never better, and I had a rollicking good time working with them. Later that spring, I directed my own little comic 15 minute adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which was performed during an evening of one acts.Then I left town to spend 5 weeks in beautiful Granville, Ohio, where I was engaged for a 2 play contract at Weathervane Playhouse in nearby Newark, a summer stock theatre that puts up five plays a summer. I had a grand time, for the most part, met some wonderful people, got to play a bucket list
role (Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady) and Captain Keller in The Miracle Worker.MFL was a terrifying experience, initially. Those who know me know I am not much for the musical theatre genre. I respect it a lot more than I used to, but I still find it a little frivolous and too filled with "fabulosity" for my taste. But I always thought Higgins was in my wheelhouse, and a friend emailed me that spring to say she'd recommended me to Matt Trombetta ( the artistic director) for the role. I heard nothing from them and was mentioning to another friend how this tempting tidbit had been dangled in front of me, and then--nothing. She said she was seeing Matt that evening, and would mention it to him. She did, and he contacted me the next day, we arranged an audition, and I got the role, and was offered Captain Keller in the bargain. We set a fair price for my services, which included putting me up for the length of the contract.
I knew my Waterloo would be the songs, and learning them in a 2 week, summer stock format. I had a month between casting and first rehearsal, so I downloaded karaoke versions of Higgins' numbers, and drilled them into my head, every day. I decided against watching the movie (which I had never seen in its en
tirety), and figured I'd go it my way.Rehearsals were long and intensive, and I learned a new respect for the musical theatre performer, and what it takes for them to get it all down. My main trouble was that, being deaf as a post, I couldn't hear the piano if I was singing (being profoundly deaf from birth, my life has always been mono, never stereo). Plus they placed the piano far, far away, in our echo-ridden rehearsal room. It was enormously frustrating--one of the few times I have really felt handicapped (another time was when I was fired from a convenience store job in college, because I couldn't hear the people talking on the speakers from the gas pumps). As a result, I was constantly going off rhythm, and slowing the progress of the show.
My pride wouldn't let me back out, however--I think one of the great things about the theatre is that there is always something you need to increase your reach for, and I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd taken the easy way out. Finally, I did the actorly thing--I threw a hizzy, and announced it was pointless for me to continue until they moved the piano closer, in the approximate with where it would be on the stage . I had asked for this before, but no one seemed to hear it (maybe they were deaf too). It took a raised voice and a scary countenance ( I can do both pretty well when I wanna) for people to pay attention, and they moved the piano, and I started to line up with the runway, finally.
Opening night was one of the few times I have ever been stricken with nerves before a show. Though the sound level was better (this was the 2 piano arrangement of MFL), there were still many times when, if I was loud, I couldn't hear the pianos. Throughout the run, I did much of it by guess--I would sing, or sing/talk my line, then listen to the filler notes between the melody to see if I'd timed it right. There wasn't a single performance where I got it all on the bead, but I started to relax and actually look forward to the numbers. Most of them, anyway. I always dreaded " Ordinary Man", because of all the tempo shifts, and all the movement within it. But, strangely, a number of people told me afterward that was one of their favorite moments of my performance. That and "Accustomed to her Face", the final number, which was my personal favorite.
Weathervane has a terrible policy of lining the actors up outside after the show, so the audience can file by and shake your hand. It felt like an inspection line, or like I was a preacher standing by the church door and shaking the hands of the exiting congregation. I have always tried to eschew meeting the public after my shows. I prefer doing my monkey dance, get the applause, and then slip out the side door to my car. I hate all manner of pretentious "talk-backs"--a terrible practice currently in vogue in theatre. To my way of thinking, there is a contract between audience and performer, and I fulfilled my part of it by giving my all on stage. I never slack, I never phone it in. And I have nothing further to add than my performance. If your production needs the talk-back to illuminate the show, then the production is wanting. I know a lot of actors who enjoy talk-backs, but I guess I have always been old school that way. Weathervane doesn't do the afterschool special thing, but you have to stand there while the folks file by, shake your hand raw, and smile while all you really want to do is get to the bar or Rally's for an American Cheddar Melt.
I bring this up because, against my will, I started to enjoy it. I appreciated that people responded to my work so favorably, with hugs and back slaps, questions like "Will we see you in anything else this summer, I hope?"...even the tired old questions most civilians ask " How do you remember all those lines?" (My stock answer to that one is " How do you know I did?") Because Weathervane exists outside the normal theatre hubs of a big city, there is a proprietary feeling that comes from the patrons--it's their theatre, and they have a stake in it. And that's valuable. And the exchange takes on a more personal tone than it does in the cities.
The meet and greet for the next show was an entirely different color altogether, however...
On the final day of My Fair Lady, we did a matinee, an evening performance, and then struck the set, which lasted well into the wee hours. I was determined to sleep in my own bed, in Grove City (about 60 miles away), so at 3 am I said my goodbyes, and hit the highway, looking forward to my one day off, and hit my pillow around 4:30 am-- the roads were so foggy I had to travel about 30 mph most of the way home. At about 9am, I was awakened by a phone call from my pal Tim, informing me that Matt Trombetta, the artistic director and director of The Miracle Worker (which was a week into the 2 week rehearsal), had been killed in a head-on car collision, on the same road I had traveled, about 20 minutes behind me. I dressed and headed back to Newark, too late for the meeting with the board and admin staff, but in time to commiserate with the stunned and grieving company. Many of them had known Matt for years, to the point that he was like family to them.
One of these "family" members, Erika, who had directed MFL, had to step in and finish MW. It was a heroic effort on her part, a sort of focus I can only imagine. That final week of rehearsal was surreal, the usual joy and nerves replaced by a grim sort of realization that we had to get it done. Not for Matt, necessarily. But because in theatre, that's what you do. Theatre people attend. Life exists outside the building, not in it. I will often make that speech to my high school kids--theatre.people.attend. If your mom dies, schedule the funeral for a day that won't coincide with the rehearsals or performance.
And so we got the thing up. To standing Os every night, but I'm sure they were in honor of Matt and our ability to put aside the shock, rather than for our performances (though the little girl who played Helen Keller had some serious chops).
The people in the meet and greet lines hugged us all, and it became a situation where you had to remember why they were doing it. In their minds, we were heroic to get a show up under the circumstances. People would say, " This must have been hard for you.", and I would start to answer, well, the accent was challenging to bring off, then I would realize they were thinking about Matt. But in the adrenalined after-moments of performance, the mind, at least MY mind, wasn't on that at all. I was thinking about certain moments that could have been better, or why wasn't my prop in its place tonight, or "wonder who is at the bar" or "hope Rally's is still open". I didn't know Matt as well as most. My sadness was the sadness of a young life, any young life, suddenly gone-- not for someone who was an intimate part of my world, which he wasn't-- and I moved on as other priorities rose up. Selfishly, I discreetly lamented the loss of future work--Matt and I had discussed my returning in 2011 to direct a children's play, and act in Boeing, Boeing, but those plans were lost on that foggy night.
So, that get us up to July of 2010. Act Two of " Mark's Theatrical Self-absorption" comes up after these messages from our sponsors...
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Bad Haircuts
I have come to the conclusion that the greatest blessing (and perhaps the only one) in growing bald is that you don't have to endure bad haircuts anymore. Every day is a bad hair day, and so you get over it and begin to celebrate it. Well, not celebrate it, exactly, but...tolerate it, I guess. "Tolerate" is a good way to think of it. You can walk down the street, and actually forget about it, till you look at your reflection in a shop window and wonder why your father is looking back at you through the glass--then you realize the truth of the matter, and you sigh, and turn around and go home, and eat a bag of Fritos.
Back in the day, though, my proud, thick head of rich brown hair, with its gentle waves and interesting cowlicks, billowed in the wind like the banner of a triumphant army. Actually, "back in the day" is a perfectly accurate description. A day. A solitary day it did that. Most other days that banner was under assault by my father and his dark legion of tonsorial berserkers. I fought a constant, retreating, defensive action against this barrage of barbers, all of whom had the word "stylist" printed on their shop windows, which was about as textbook a definition of "irony" as I have ever seen.
My first haircut, I am told, occurred when I turned six months old. I was born bald, or nearly so, and my father waited impatiently through the months for the mousey down on my head to develop into a patch just thick enough to take the clippers to. My mother had entertained notions of letting my hair grow shoulder length, the way people used to do in generations past. I have seen pictures of my older male cousins at age 2, with long wavy hair and wearing some sort of communion dress-like thing. These were two guys who grew up to play football and enter body-building contests.
But, this was 1959, and my dad was determined his first born son would have a manly appearance (never mind that like every other 6 month old, I already looked like a retired Trappist monk), so my little baby hair was buzzed off. He got to take his son to the corner barbershop, and watch while his little nipper was propped up in the chair, swaddled with a barber's smock, and terrorized by a large, buzzing electrical shear.
That set the pace for the next 6 or 7 years. Every six months, I was taken to the barbershop, kicking and screaming, and whatever amount of hair I'd managed to accrue was forcibly taken from me. It was a regularly scheduled tonsorial mugging.
One day in my second grade year, I saw a kid with a hairstyle I'd never seen before. He had a nearly bald head, except for two inch bangs. I followed him around during recess, committing to memory every detail of his scalp, till he threatened to go to the safety patrol. When barber time came round again, I suggested this style to my father as a fair compromise--he got 95% shaved head, I got 3% hair. I left 2% for margin of error. To my utter surprise, dad agreed to it. The barber said this style was called The Princeton, but looking back on my Appalachian childhood, it's clear this style was about as Ivy League as a turkey call. Anyway, I had won an important battle. The war was still far from over, but I had established a beachhead (or rather, forehead) of hair.
But there the march of my column stalled. Over the next few years I was bogged down in the mud of either The Princeton, or the Buzz. My hair grew very fast, and unevenly for some reason, so in between haircuts my head usually looked like it had been grazed by goats. It seemed to me dad kept a team of barbers on retainer, in case a patch of hair got loose and threatened to touch my ears. Once I actually asked for a Crew Cut, also know as the Flattop, and that request was cheerfully granted. When you have been a prisoner for a long time, captivity begins to be important to you.
The Flattop was actually a move in solidarity with John Greene, my best friend during my sixth-grade year, my blood-brother in fact (we'd actually cut our thumbs and mixed blood--the Indian way, according to our Cub Scout literature--this was long before such actions would produce hysteria in both the Medical and Overprotective Mom professions). His father had forced a flattop on him, and to make him feel better I decided to get one too. Now it was sort of a greasy, bristly badge of courage, to have a stupid looking head. We were blood-brothers in arms and Brycream, instead of being two hapless boys defined by the unreasonable control exerted by their fathers-- sample from conversation with my father an hour before every hair appointment for over ten years--
Me: "But it's MY hair!"
Dad: No, it's MY hair. It's mine until you are 18. After that you wear it down to your ass for all I care, but till you turn 18--if I let you live that long-- it's MINE!"
For a short while during that same year, my father decided he could save money by cutting our hair himself--by this time my younger brothers were in the same fix as I. There was nothing I could to save them. He must have figured that he could make his sons look like retards as well as any professional, so why not save all that money? He invested in some cruel-looking barbering tools that he ordered from a catalogue that featured the Marqus de Sade on the cover.
On barbering night, he set up a stool in the basement, laid out his instruments on a tray like a surgeon, and went to work. I was the oldest of my brothers--the Abbe Ferrara of this dungeon--and was already broken. I sat passively on the stool while dad clipped and buzzed away. I took myself away, to a happy place where the sun shone on a field of long, tall curly grass, while I ran free and easy, my Jim Morrison-like hair billowing behind me in the Pepsi-scented breeze. Of course, I was snapped back to reality when the clippers went silent and my father held a hand-mirror up to my face, and an inmate from a French tropical prison stared back at me in the reflection.
My brothers, Barry and Erich, being younger and more nimble, weren't as broken and reservation-bound as I'd become. They weren't about to sit on that stool and let dad do to them what he'd just done to me. They had wild and untamed spirits. They began to run--stampede, really--around the basement, whooping and yelping, hoping that by amping up some top shelf chaos, they might be able to escape in the confusion-- but it's hard to create a really good stampede when there are only two of you, and after a minimum of effort, my dad caught Barry by the arm, and pulled him in.
Barry struggled, but was no match for our powerfully built, 6'3" father. Dad had decided Barry would never be broken to the stool as I'd been, so he pinned him between his knees, like a farmer pins a sheep he is about to shear, and went to work. Ten seconds later, he released my wriggling, bleating brother, who ran up from the basement and out the backdoor, and was soon seen peacefully grazing in the yard.
My father turned next to Erich. Cornered, my baby brother's "fight or flight" reflex kicked in. With a bellow, he charged, his little four year old hands curled into claws. Ten seconds later, he too was nibbling the rich green grasses of our backyard, his head looking as if it were covered with mange.
This terrible dance of death between my father and I finally stopped later that year. Dad had given up cutting our hair himself, when he realized that the time he spent corralling and pinning us down could better be spent doing ANYTHING else. The clippers lay dormant for a short while, till Erich discovered how fun it is to shave cats. Talk about the descending ladder of abuse!
Dad took me to a new barber one particular Saturday morning, a guy who'd opened a shop in a little strip mall just outside the Athens city limits. Looking back, that fact seems somehow ominously significant--outside. city. limits.--a no man's land, where a barber isn't bound the laws of civilized society. Where rusty scissors and chainsaw-strength clippers won't be sidelined by some weasly little safety inspector. I was doomed.
I had also been thinking about something I overheard my dad, who was a cop, say to one of his cop buddies--he said most barbers in Ohio, of a certain age, were ex-offenders. It seems the state's reform school system taught most of its juvenile delinquents the trade of barbering, to help them build a solid, respectable life on the outside. This seemed like madness to me. To put these tools in the hands of dangerous, angry men seemed like a massive failure on the part of the Ohio penal system. To let these same desperadoes ply their trade on an innocent boy who only wanted to see if his hair would curl if left to grow for a few years, seemed like negligence of the first rank.
So, I went to the chair as if I were going to the CHAIR. My father sat by the front picture window, and picked up a hunting magazine, and was lost to the eye signals I was trying to flash to him. The barber whipped the smock around me, and tied it with some serious Boston Strangler torque. I placed my hands along the arm rest, half-expecting to be strapped in. The barber sprayed down my head with water--I thought of the wet sponge they use as an electrical conductor. Then, he went to work.
When I came to, my father was frowning down at me. I was still in the barber chair, but someone had removed the smock. I thought at first I'd done something to make him mad, but then I realized he wasn't frowning at me, he was frowning at my head.
"Oh, boy, " I thought, " this is not good."
My father's frown lifted from my scalp, to the barber.
" Thanks," he said, passing over some money. " Keep the change."
By my dad's expression, I knew this barber had done a particularly horrific job on my scalp. I also knew my dad had just tipped him for it. This was just one of many of life's nuances that puzzled me about the grownup world. I was afraid to look in the mirror, but when the barber spun me around in the chair, I was suddenly confronted with a visage that, years later, I would recognize as "middle-stage radiation therapy."
Dad said nothing as we left the barber shop. I wasn't able to. We sat in the front seat of the car in silence for a while, and then he seemed to make a decision. We sped to the exit lane of the parking lot, but instead of turning left toward home, dad gunned the car across the street, into the parking lot of a little private airport. This was one of those airports that had a pretty small runway, designed for Piper Cubs and planes like that. I believe there was a little flight-training academy in residence. It was an odd place for a landing strip, it seemed to me--one missed approach, and you were landing on the Ohio University campus green.
But dad ushered me into the office at a pretty fast clip, as if we were late for something. He spoke to a man he seemed to know pretty well, and they laughed a bit (I was sure I was the subject of that laughter), and then the guy called me over and had me stand on a large cargo scale. Then he weighed dad. Then some money passed between dad and the guy, and before I could say " I am not an animal!" I was strapped into the backseat of a little four-seater plane, and dad next to me. The man, who was a pilot, or least I hoped so, climbed in front at the controls, started the engine, began to taxi down the runway, and that's how I got to have my first airplane ride.
The man yelled back for us to keep swallowing, that our ears were about to pop, and swallowing would help ease the pain. It didn't. Or maybe I didn't follow the proper swallowing procedures, but either way it hurt like hell for a little while. Then it subsided, and as we leveled off, I realized that hideous as I looked right then, I could very well be the coolest kid in Athens County. At least I was higher than any kid in the county, if you didn't count the hippies on campus.
We took a long lazy flight all over the county. My dad was grinning--he'd always been interested in planes, and as a kid had cut out all sorts of pictures of aircraft and pasted them into a scrapbook. He joined a Civil Air Patrol summer camp as a teen ager, and got to fly around in small military planes for a few months. He'd hoped to be an Air Force pilot in Viet Nam, till I came along and ruined his life's dreams. He pointed out various Athens landmarks to me, and for a while we traced above the brown ribbon of the Hocking River, and passed directly over our house, where I fancied I could see my brothers grazing in the yard.
Then we cruised back to the airstrip, landed, and we both shook the pilot's hand as we stood beside the plane, then got in our car and headed home. After a few minutes in which nothing at all was said, dad finally cleared his throat.
"You...uh... don't have to tell the other kids about this, you know. This can just be our thing. They don't need to know."
And I agreed to keep it as just our secret. This was to be, as he said, "our thing." Two guys, two pals, slipping "the surly bonds of earth" together.
When we got home, I immediately ran in the house and told everybody. The outcry of jealousy was exactly what I was hoping for, the mad, clammering rush of my five siblings to dad's side was as good a feeling as I'd ever experienced. In the week that followed, all five got to have their turn circumnavigating the county from the clouds, but for that moment, I was special. I was first. And it was still, even though I ratted dad out as soon as possible, "our thing." The difference was, of course, my brothers and sisters all landed looking the same as ever. Only I landed still looking like a victim of a grievous head wound.
In the years afterward, dad relented on the hair thing, so much so that by high school I had shoulder-length hair for a short while. But it wasn't for me, ultimately. I began to schedule haircuts on my own volition-- but to this day something in me tightens when I meet a barber. I look for jailhouse tats, for a certain Sweeney Todd glint to the eye. I move around a lot, never settling on one barber for too long. Maybe someday, I'll come across a barbershop with a little airstrip across the street, and if I do, I will let the barber do his worst to the dwindling stock of hair I have left, and maybe afterward, I will reward myself with a nice little flight over the Athens county of my baldheaded childhood.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Little League
Found this while searching through my email for something else...sent it to a professor of mine...it was in response to a question about lessons learned when young, I think...
When I was ten, I was the starting centerfielder for the Athens Medics, a Little League team that was the most amazing team anyone had seen in that town in a long time--certainly more successful than the Ohio University sports teams were in the late sixties. We were undefeated for the three years I was on the team, though I had very little to do with our success during the first two.
I first joined the team when I was eight. It was supposed to be the last year of PeeWee baseball, but you could take a test and if you were skilled enough, you could be drafted up to the next level. You had to score 50% to be eligible for the draft, and the scoring was, as I recall, pretty subjective. They watched you hit, throw, run, slide, and catch, and gave numerical scores. I scored 51%, but I’ve always suspected that I got a break due to the fact that several of the judges were my father’s friends.
Anyway, I was drafted by the Medics, and I was thrilled. They were the Yankees of the Little League in Athens. The coach was a decent, religious man who never yelled, never allowed us to yell, and who drilled us constantly, teaching skills patiently, holding practices much more often than other coaches did. The team had a few ringers on it—a fireballing lefty who was the coach’s son, who was taller then me by half. I idolized this kid, who was three years older than me and seemed much, much older. He was a nice guy, who didn’t abuse the “rookies” like some kids did. His cousin, though, another lefthanded pitcher who came from Indiana for the summers to stay with the coach, was another matter. He was an arrogant, aggressive jerk, and no one on the team liked him, though he was talented. He picked on me a little at first, when his uncle wasn’t looking, but soon he just ignored me, completely ignored me, as if I weren’t worthy of his abuse any longer.
For the first two years of my tenure on the team, I was that sub you have to bring in because the rules dictate everyone gets to play. We usually had the games sewed up by the time I was put in the game. I was always stuck in right field, the position of dreamers and misfits, the place where you were least likely to hurt the team. And I always batted last. And I always struck out. Always. A personal victory could be counted if I actually made contact with the ball and fouled it back. But the coach was always supportive, and patient, and seemed to like me. I was a pretty sensitive kid, easily hurt, and after a while dreaded going to the games, because I knew I was going to fail, and my jock dad would be disappointed.
In the spring of my last year, something changed. I had a growth spurt, and my eye/hand coordination improved dramatically. My father tells me he immediately noticed something was different the first day he and I played catch that spring. I started throwing the ball overhand, instead of the sidearm style most often employed by weaker kids. I could also, all of a sudden, really fire the ball, with a lot of mustard on it. And I caught everything that was thrown my way. I didn’t seem to be afraid of the ball anymore, and most importantly, I was swinging the bat with authority, and made contact.
When practices began, the coach too noticed I was a different player than the timid boy of the previous year. He tried me out at third base, and when I took my first grounder and threw it across the diamond to the first baseman, it sailed five feet over his head and into the far dugout. The coach laughed and said, “ Been throwing with your dad, huh?” My dad was 6’3”.
By the time the season began, I was the starting centerfielder, because I had the strongest arm on the team. I also would play third base when our regular kid was out. I batted sixth, and ended the season with a .502 batting average, and most importantly to me, was the only kid on the team to never strike out all season.
The coach awarded me the Most Improved Player Trophy at the end of season banquet, and put his arm around me, and told the crowd I was an amazing kid, and most hardworking one he’d ever seen. But by the time of the banquet, I never wanted to see him again.
A week before the banquet we were playing the final game of the season, against the second best team. We were undefeated, as were they, and for once we weren’t rolling over the opposing team. Usually we had a 10 run cushion by the final inning (this was before the “mercy rule”), but this game was tight. As I recall, we were leading by one run in the bottom of the seventh inning (the final one in Little League), but the other team was at bat and had a runner on second base with two outs. Unfortunately for the other team, the “everybody plays” rule came into effect for them, and they had to let one of their lowly scrubs bat in this most crucial of moments.
He was a chubby little guy, and as I looked at him standing at the plate, his eyes looked huge, and I could see the fear in them from where I stood covering the third base line. Our coach stood up from the bench, walked halfway to the mound, and began clapping his hands, and repeating to his son, the pitcher. “ It’s OK, Scotty, it’s OK…he’s only a substitute…ONLY A SUBSTITUTE!”
I saw the look in the batters eyes. To this day I can’t describe it accurately. From 40 years away they look hurt, the pressure from a strange grownup, belittling him in front of everyone, his own parents included. I had been that kid for the previous two years. I looked at my coach, and I don’t think I was ever so disillusioned in my life. To think he’d preached these rules about respect and sportsmanship, wouldn’t even let us say, “ Hey batter batter batter” because it was razzing the other team, and we were supposed to be better than that, you don’t razz people, you support your own guys, but here, when the game was on the line, and the chips were down, he stood in front of the world and announced that this little kid was a loser, and nothing to be worried about.
This man used to take me to church with his family, and invited me once to go on a picnic at a local lake with his family. He was a deacon in his church, and a swell guy. And I learned a bitter lesson about people under pressure, how most times the best intentions crumble under adversity. He was a great coach, the best teacher of skills I ever saw, and unwittingly he taught me a lesson about character I’ve never forgotten.
I’d like to be able to tell you the chubby little substitute struck gold, and caught a break and hammered a ball down the left field line, and slide into home for the winning run. That’s the Hollywood ending, the one we want rather than the one we ought to have. No, he struck out on three pitches, the Medics won again, and years later, the substitute could well be writing an essay just like this one, about the time an opposing coach humiliated him in front of the world, and it was that moment that was in his mind right before he chopped up his whole family.
But that’s, as they say, another story. But I will give you a Hollywood ending that’s a true. About fifteen years later, Randy, the jerk from Indiana who used to pick on me, had relocated to Athens permanently, and was playing in a softball league, and got into a violent argument with the umpire, so violent that the umpire was fearful for his safety, and the Athens Police was called to escort Randy from the ballpark, and yours truly, by then one of Athens Finest, got to drag his beer sodden ass off the field and into my cruiser. Life, my dear Dr. Jan, can be sweet sometimes.
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Fatal Glass of Beer 1
In honor of all the snow we've had--which looks a lot like the snow in this film--I thought I'd post this. I have very fond memories of watching this with my father years ago, and the two of us laughing so hard we couldn't catch our breaths. I seem to remember every movie or TV show I ever laughed at with my dad, which includes all the Pink Panther movies, and Charlie Brown's Halloween show...
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Movie Titles With Colons in Them: Bad Idea
I have never seen a good movie with a colon in the title. Or any punctuation, for that matter, except an apostrophe. It always seems to me that a group of marketers got together in a room and tried to settle on one title, but could only narrow down the possibilities to two, and as a compromise they put a colon in there. Roger Ebert has a list of movie cliches and rules, and that should be in there: Movies with punctuation in the title always suck.
Also sucking is any movie with the producer's name in the title, as in Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon. Or the writer's name.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Our Wedding Dog
We got her the weekend we were engaged. Dani and I were living in an attic apartment on the Hilltop, and the guy in the downstairs apartment raised and trained little terriers, and when Dani and I came home from a weekend's touring performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream (where we had announced our engagement to the stunned cast), he was outside with his kids playing with some little dogs, and when he saw us he asked if we wanted a dog. It seems he had given his mother one of his little puppies 2 years earlier, and when she moved to an apartment complex that didn't allow pets, she had to return Pepper to her son.
I think he was asking out of reflex, just something you say as a conversation starter, especially if you are a dog trainer. But I looked at her, and though it sounds lame, something passed between us. Maybe I was open because I had just gotten engaged to a woman I was deeply in love with, and had just finished a wildly successful weekend's worth of performances, and here was an offer to begin something like a little family. It felt right. I looked at Dani and she laughed--she later said she could tell right away this was going to happen. So we took her upstairs.
I spent a week holding her like a baby, protecting her from my cat Sugar, who was deeply offended that a dog had been brought into the mix. Sugar never warmed to her, and never missed a chance to swat her and send her yelping into another room. That whole week we looked into each other's eyes, bonding the way I imagine parents do with new-born babies. When the weekend came, we had to leave to do another set of shows out of town, and I asked the fellow downstairs to watch her for us. All weekend I worried she wouldn't remember us, that the week-long bonding hadn't been enough, but when we came home, it was like a scene from a movie: Pepper was in the yard playing with one of the neighbor's kids, and when she saw me, she ran top speed and launched into my arms and licked my face all over. That's when I knew she was ours for keeps.
Right away she established herself as my chair companion, and later she became part of our sleeping arrangement as well. Dani on my left, Pepper on my right, under my arm. I became quite used to this--in fact, once when I was in the hospital for a surgery, Dani was concerned I wouldn't sleep without a little creature nestled under my right arm, so she bought a little stuffed dog to tuck in with me during my week long stay.
Pepper has endured many moves, and many comings and goings of other pets, and not always happily. In fact, never happily. I don't think she has quite understood what we thought we were doing bringing all those other critters into the house. Especially Sonny, out Golden, who spends a generous part of his day, every day, for the last 6 years, finding ways to annoy her.
It has always been Mark, Dani and Pepper to our families. When my mother calls, her sign off is "give my love to Dani and Pepper." Family members have actually had her for sleepovers--she used to go with my sisters on their camping trips. Actors I worked with years ago, after getting back in touch, will ask after her health--she had a brief career on the stage herself, playing Toto in WoO, Sandy in Annie, and the family dog in Cheaper By The Dozen. But she's retired now. She lies on her warm blankets and dreams of her former stage glory.
Someday soon, the unbearable will happen. She has a bad heart murmur, and the vet assures us this will be the thing that takes her out. The day I got that diagnosis, two years ago, I drove her home from the vet, after first stopping at the store for some treats. I held her for a while, and we looked into each other's eyes, as we often do. Her bristly intelligent gaze was a bright as the day we got her ( and still is). I felt better that the knowledge of mortality is not a gift given to a dog. They live entirely and utterly in the moment. This makes it easier. We are entrusted with that knowledge for them.
So, these days, I let her have her way. She eats when she feels like it, goes outside whenever she asks, and sleeps when and wherever she chooses. She has given great value, our little wedding dog. She deserves our respect, and our love. Those of us who are childless need an outlet for our parenting instincts, I believe, and Pepper is in many ways my first child.
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