When Phillip Seymour Hoffman died, of a heroin overdose, it made me extremely sad. I loved watching Hoffman long before Hollywood caught on to how amazing he was. I remember watching some forgettable Showtime sitcom as a pregnant newlywed in 1986, seeing Hoffman, and thinking, "That guy is amazing." I think that one of the reasons he was relatively overlooked for so long was that people forgot that he was acting. They assumed that he was being himself, reciting memorized words. News flash - that's what good acting looks like. You believe that the actor is truly like the character(s) that they portray. When Hollywood finally caught on, I was both thrilled for him and proud of myself for having known it first.
After his death, the first time I heard someone say, "Why should we care about the death of a junkie actor?" I thought that it was an anomaly, spoken by a judgmental individual. Then I heard it over and over, from many different people.
They said it as though two things were true: actors were somehow less valuable than non-actors, and junkies had relinquished any chance of being valued or loved. Both assumptions made me very angry.
A few people called for understanding or compassion on the basis that "it could have been any one of us. It could have been me." I thought that they were missing the point, too.
It could not have been me. Why? I have never been intoxicated. I have never been drunk, high, buzzed or whatever. I don't drink; I never have. I have never recreationally taken anything intoxicating, mind altering or mood altering. (Even though I've had to use prescription painkillers and the like many times, they have never made me loopy, euphoric, giggly, sad or anything except sleepy and nauseated. I cannot imagine taking them recreationally.)
Should it matter if it could have been me? Not in the slightest; not for a moment.
Why? Because if you want to be a caring, compassionate, empathetic person, you will care about the pain and problems of others, even if they are different from yours, and even if they brought their problems on themselves. You should want to be a caring, compassionate, empathetic person, even if those qualities feel unnatural to you and do not come easily. This seems so obvious and self evident. This should be Human Interaction 101. We should all learn, before we are even out of diapers, that this is our goal.
Second, someone that you love will one day need that kind of understanding. Understanding is not condoning or encouraging. Even if all of the people you now value in your life have the same beliefs, standards and behaviors that you do, that does not mean that they always will. Some day someone - a grandchild, a cousin, a childhood friend - will do something ill advised or damaging. That does not mean that you should cut them out of your life and your heart. (And if you are not close to anyone with whom you disagree, you are living an extremely ill advised and isolated existence, but that's another discussion.) How do you want others to treat your loved one?
I often see people who are willing to accept the behavior of loved ones who drink too much or use recreational drugs, as long as they seem to be reasonably functional, and as long as they believe that their loved one could stop using if they wanted or needed to, but they have zero sympathy for anyone who is truly addicted. I think that's backwards. Addicts have my utmost sympathy. They have a physical and psychological dependence. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult that must be. Both their body and mind are convinced that they will cease to function, or even die, without their substance intake.
Aerosmith's Steven Tyler has given interviews about how he felt when he was forced into rehab. He would call his bandmates and say, "I'll never be able to write anything again. They're killing my creativity. I'll never be able to play or sing again. Is that what you want? Do you want to kill the group and take away my livelihood - to take away your own livelihoods?" He meant it, too. He wasn't trying to manipulate them with false facts; he truly believed that if he was sober, he couldn't work and couldn't create.
He's not alone. I've personally known people who felt this way, and I've heard and seen the stories of many more.
"Then," Tyler says, "I found out that my writing was better, and easier, sober, but I never would have guessed that before."
Even good fiction tells truths. I resisted reading "Doctor Sleep," Stephen King's sequel to "The Shining," for years, because Danny Torrance is one of my favorite fictional people, and I didn't want anything to ruin how I felt about him. When I finally picked up the book, I was so annoyed with Danny. I try not to, but I tend to be disappointed and a bit judgmental when people behave in stereotypical ways. I know that cliches and stereotypes exist specifically because so many people will react in predictable ways. Still, I think that the harder and less conventional roads are wide open enough that any reasonable bright or functional person can find and walk them, so it annoys me when they don't or can't. It made me angry that Danny, after watching his father fight alcohol and lose, after watching Jack's life (and that of his family) unravel in good portion because of this Achilles heel, became an alcoholic. I just thought he was smart enough to avoid that first drink.
I understand what he was thinking. He'd seen horrible things - unlike the rest of us, who have to in some way be present to witness horrors, Danny didn't. They let themselves straight into his brain. It was scary and uncontrollable, and he was a child. He tried to cope, and to silence the horrors, any way he could. For a moment, the alcohol shut the door; but it didn't stay shut. Then, Danny would drink more, sure that he needed more alcohol, not less, in order to stay sane.
What Danny was surprised to find out was that being drunk kept out any of the positive effects of his "shining," and only let the horrors in. He eventually discovers that being sober lets in the good stuff, and makes it easier to keep out the bad stuff. He was amazed; I was not. It's a universal truth that life works that way.
It's hard to trust that, though, especially if you've spent time teaching yourself that the opposite is true. I think that every one of us has been in physical pain and mental pain, sometimes at the same time, so acute that we would do almost anything to shut it off. It makes us frantic and panicky and unreliable. We can't hear anything but the noise inside our own heads. I've certainly been there. At one point or another, many people learned that they could momentarily silence the pain with a drink or a pill or a shot or a smoke. They didn't intend to become addicted - nobody does - but it happened, and now they cannot imagine that there's another way to quiet the pain. Their body tells them that this is the only way. Their brain tells them that this is the only way. All they know for sure is that they want the pain stopped, or at least blunted, and they'll do anything to get there. The motivation is understandable.
Sometimes, people start using for reasons other than pain. They might be lonely, easily influenced, bored, hoping to fit in, or afraid. There's nothing wrong with feeling that way, and nothing wrong with trying to fix it. The problem with trying to fix it with a substance is that the substance has zero effect on the actual problem, and you need more and more of it to feel any effect on your mood. It's a recipe for failure. Still, that momentary relief is enough to keep people coming back until they're physically and psychologically dependent.
When Hoffman died, he wasn't with friends. He wasn't at a party or a club - he wasn't "partying." He was alone, in his bathroom. His family was out of town. Maybe he was lonely; maybe he was in pain. We'll never know. We know that he'd fought this demon for years, and was currently winning most of the time, but on this night, he lost. It, unfortunately, happens. You can win them all, and then lose one, and that one will take you down.
He wasn't having fun. He wasn't being sociable. He wasn't following a crowd. That makes it all the sadder - that a man alone in his own home could be his own downfall. It hurts. It hurts me to think about, and I never met the man.
Don't tell me that I shouldn't care. Don't tell me that you don't care unless you're prepared for an angry reaction.
Also earning my ire is the belief that intoxication is unavoidable and even beneficial. People lose credibility with me when they start telling me how "impossible" it is to be sober - Hello! Standing right in front of you! Closing in on a half century old! - or insisting that I'm "ruining" my kids by expecting them to be sober. I have little patience with that kind of nonsense. I also have little patience with the idea that the sober are uncultured, unsociable, immature or somehow suspect.
For instance, even years later, I'm still pretty ticked off at a particular bartender.
When you're working on a theater production, it's very common to go somewhere afterwards to get drinks or a meal with the others working on the show. Quite often, that happens at a bar, because they're open and convenient. (Also, because quite a few people follow the "need alcohol at the end of a long, hard day" mindset, but that's another story.) I spent years working at one theater that shared its parking lot with a bar, so it received a lot of our business. We'd walk over after a rehearsal or show.
The usual bartender knew some of our names and most of our faces; a show typically rehearses for six weeks, and we'd often be the only faces in the bar at 10 o'clock on a weeknight. Depending on whether I'm more concerned about sugar or caffeine at the moment, in a bar I'll order a 7-Up or a Diet Coke. (You get a bigger tip if you give me marachino cherries in either one.)
One night, I ordered a 7-Up. The bartender said, "Awww. Would you like a milk? Do you want me to put a nipple on that?"
I am cutting him more slack than I think he deserves by assuming that he was trying to be funny. It was not funny.
You know The Mom Look, the one that means you've stepped over the line, and the boom is about to be lowered? Most small children figure out that look very quickly; it's a self preservation thing. I had That Look on my face. The bartender saw it, and momentarily froze.
The thing is, I was working very hard at making sure that the next thing that came out of my mouth was not outright offensive.
In that theater company, there were, at the time, at least two recovering alcoholics. One had spent years getting sober, and more years sober before he could face walking into a bar again. Now, he could walk into the bar with the rest of us, order a soft drink, have a good time and leave, but it hadn't always been that way. It was deeply offensive and inappropriate for the bartender to say this to anybody, but I was trying not to imagine the horror of saying it to a recovering addict, or someone teetering on the edge between social drinker and addict, or to a young person trying to decide if they'd become a consumer of alcohol. For all this bartender knew, I was a recovering alcoholic, and the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life was order this soda. Then there's that insidious and ridiculous idea that I was somehow not adult if I didn't want something intoxicating. All of this was running through my mind as I tried to choose my next words.
I was leaning toward, "Just shut up and serve me the soda" or another sentiment of the kind, but the bartender suddenly saw a Pandora's Box open up in front of him. He knew that 1. he'd blown his tip, and I'm a generous tipper, 2. I might never come back, 3. My friends might decide not to come back as well, and we'd find a new hangout, 4. I might be writing a letter of complaint to his boss the moment I got home (and I write a great complaint letter, let me assure you), and most importantly, 5. he'd blown it big time and needed to remove his foot from his mouth. As I opened my mouth, he opened his. "I'm sorry! I'll get you that drink!" He scurried away. I fumed, and he tried hard to be endearing. for the rest of the night.
I'm still angry about it.
Don't be a jerk and express any kind of similar sentiment to me. Addicts deserve my patience; jerks do not.
Also, just for a moment, let's look at the idea that Hoffman didn't count because he was an actor. That, too, makes me angry.
First, I can't stand job snobs. It's obnoxiousness. My ideas about jobs are very Sesame Street; when they named jobs that began with the letter D, they put "doctor" right next to "ditch digger," with no value judgement attached. Any job that is not inherently immoral (say, child pornographer or crack dealer) is valuable. Society needs every job to be done, and done well. Plus, I grew up during the Cold War, trying to gauge how we'd all function After the Nukes Fell, so people with "menial" skills might end up being far more important to survival and wellbeing than, say, securities analysts.
Second, artists are valuable. We tend to judge past civilizations in large part based on their arts. A robust, flourishing culture would have thriving, well paid artists. Even people barely scratching out enough to eat, centuries before large cities, municipal governments and the like existed, took the time to paint and carve and tell stories.
I don't understand deciding that artists are unintelligent or of little value. I really don't understand disliking actors if you watch TV or go to the movies.
I don't like the frequent complaint that, since popular actors make more than the average Joe, they shouldn't have any problems. I expect anyone past childhood to have enough life experience to know that life is hard, no matter how much money you have. Complaining because someone rich has problems or disappointments is a childish manifestation of Sour Grapes Syndrome.
(Don't understand the reference? It's from Aesop's Fables, from the story of The Fox and the Grapes. Go Google it and read it.)
In short, I'm back to the idea that developing sympathy, compassion and empathy should be Human Interaction 101. You should want to be a caring, compassionate, empathetic person, even if those qualities feel unnatural to you and do not come easily. We should all learn, before we are even out of diapers, that this is our goal.
None of us are perfect at this, but please, for the sake of us all, start down the road towards it.
Showing posts with label actors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label actors. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Turn the Page
"On a long and lonesome highway..."
The American West is filled with "lonely" highways, stretches of asphalt ribbon stretching to the horizon across sparsely populated, sagebrush studded land. I spent my childhood in the family car or pickup truck, driving for hours between small towns, mountains, lakes and other isolated places.
Some of my favorite memories from those roads, though, come not from my childhood, but my adult years before I was a wife and mother. They includes lots of time on the highway, spending hours en route between small towns, on tour with the local university theater company.
"You can listen to the engine moaning out its one note song..."
There were two dozen or so of us packed into vans and a single large truck, hauling scenery, costumes and the like to places with names like Winnemucca and Tonopah. I was 19, but not a full, or even part, time student. The university theater company was open to the community. Members like me, unenrolled at the U, were exempt from some of the requirements the students had - for instance, always having to stay after a show closed to "strike," or tear down and put away, the set, props, costumes and everything else. I held myself to the higher standard, though, expecting from myself everything required if I was being graded. It was important to me to be a "real" member of the company.
I'd spent almost two seasons with the company by the time I went on tour. I'd already watched the group go on an international USO tour and another state tour, and I was so deeply jealous of those who got to go. But, I was living on my own, working for minimum wage, and I couldn't afford the time off work or the expense of travel. I'd juggled a lot to make sure I could spend two weeks on tour before I applied to go, and I wanted it so badly I could taste it.
The show was "The Passion of Dracula," and I was crew. We'd already had a great run in the university theater. Having worked the show already didn't guarantee me a spot on tour. I had to apply and wait. When my name showed up on the list tacked to the "call board," the theater bulletin board, my best friend and I shrieked so loudly, jumping up and down and hugging, that a professor had to come out of his office and shush us.
"But your thoughts will soon be wandering, the way they always do..."
We all got a small per diem allowance from the university, designed to cover our food and other travel expenses. The professors and other faculty, of course, got paid wages as well. The other students were typical college kids whose parents footed most of their bills. Most of them lived with their parents or in dorms that their parents paid for. For them, the per diem was just a nice perk. For me, it was my only income for half a month. I had to save enough out of it to pay my rent and my half of the living expenses at the place I shared with a roommate. I'd done the math; I watched every cent like a hawk. A couple of the casinos gave us coupon books, $2 in nickels, or both, when we checked into their rooms. I hoarded them like a miser. I skipped some of the things the rest of the company did, like the night everyone else ate at a renowned Basque restaurant. Then and now, it was considered a "must do" in some of the towns we visited. I had the ham and eggs special ($1.99) in the coffee shop at the hotel/casino where we were staying. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I had to have somewhere to live when we were done.
"And you don't feel much like riding; you just wish the trip was through..."
We had no "spare" time. We'd roll into a town before lunch, put on a show of various fairy tales at the local elementary school, then go to wherever the play would be that night - usually the local high school - and set up, then eat dinner, do the show, tear it all down, pack it up, fall into bed and be up early the next morning to do it again in a different town. There was no pool time, and no nap time unless you slept in the van. It was hard work. I loved it all.
"Here I am, on the road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playing the star again
There I go, turn the page..."
I played characters like Jack's Mother in Jack and the Beanstalk in the children's show. We changed wherever there was room; once all of us packed into a broom closet to dress and undress. We performed in lunch rooms, mostly. The kids and teachers seemed to love it. These shows were freebies, designed to spread both goodwill and word of mouth. We ended every show by passing out flyers for that night's performance. The kids weren't our target "Dracula" audience, but their parents were.
We also did scenes from "Dracula" at the high schools, because they were our target audience. One scene involved our Lucy, under the vampire's spell, biting our Dracula's chest and licking up the blood while she made, well, "yummy noises" - noises indicating pleasure. It was my job to fill the squeeze bulb on the back of Dracula's brooch with stage blood, so that he could bleed on cue. Yeah, pretty racy stuff for us big city folk to be presenting to rural teens. Our Lucy and our Dracula had very different takes on this scene. He saw it as pulling her over to the Dark Side, whereas she saw it as being deeply suggestive of sex. Nobody polled the kids, but they gasped, every time.
"Well, you walk into a restaurant, strung out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you, as you're shaking off the cold
You pretend it doesn't bother you, but you just want to explode..."
After every show, we'd have people say things like, "Thank you so much for coming to our town! We never get the opportunity to see productions like this!" They didn't just tell the actors, they'd tell all of us. Those, of course, were the folks who sought us out deliberately. Walking into a restaurant, gas station or casino could elicit a different response. We piled out of our vans, many of us in head to toe black, with shirts with the word "Passion" in large letters, and graphics of a vampire, long before they were mainstream. We felt conspicuous.
"Most times you can't hear them talk
Other times, you can
All the same old cliches
'Is that a woman or a man?'"
It was the mid 80s; popular looks included long, curled hair on men, shorn or shaved hair on women, and mullets on everyone. I don't think that any of us looked outlandish; no guyliner, no animal print leggings that I recall. I thought that we looked pretty normal. Our Dracula looked downright Mr. Rogers, wearing a sweater vest and a bow tie every day. Still, we were theater people in a town full of ranchers and cowboys. We stood out.
"And you always seem outnumbered
You don't dare make a stand..."
I remember hearing about a couple of times that minor words were exchanged, maybe when one of us physically bumped into a guy our age in flannel and boots, but we had a very strict conduct code, a tight schedule and a short leash. I only remember one particular time when I felt unwelcome. We swept into a restaurant that had offered us a discount on their buffet; they apparently did this every time the group toured. Cheap food and young people - yes, please! I remember a few horrified looks and pointed comments about how "crowded" and "noisy" we made the place. I tried to smile sweetly, hoping to demonstrate how harmless and fun we were.
"Out there in the spotlight you're a million miles away..."
There's a reason that people "talk shop" with others of their profession or hobby or vocation. No one else really understands. As an actor, you're both acutely aware of the audience, and oblivious to their presence. As a stage technician, you're a cog in a complicated machine, both independent and interconnected. Either way, you live for the work itself, but also for the reaction it elicits. Trying to describe how you feel sounds self absorbed. Others like you, though, "get" it. You don't have to explain.
"Every ounce of energy you try to give away..."
Our set was gorgeous. All the carved wood elements were actually made of styrofoam, so they were light enough to haul around. The Victorian "wallpaper" was painted on. The costumes were equally stunning. We had staircases, fancy furniture, crates and boxes of things to transform the high schools into an English mansion, and our actors into characters.
Besides the stage blood, my favorite jobs involved the wind and fog machines and flash paper.
Our wind machine was low tech, my preferred method of doing things. It was a wooden cylinder with slats attached to the round end units. Over that was stretched heavy canvas. A hand crank came out of one end of the cylinder. Turning it made a remarkably realistic wind noise. It was my job to create everything from low moaning wind to shrieking gusts.
The fog was higher tech, produced by a small machine into which I poured chemical fog juice. At certain points, I'd slide the machine close to the edge of the set and turn it on. Its motor made only a whisper, and the fog would pump out of one end. It was glorious stuff, reflecting the lights, swirling when the actors walked, filling the familiar drawing room with an otherwordly air. By the end of one scene, the air would be thick with fog. Turn off the machine, and it dissipated, like magic.
We had several large and small wooden crosses. At one point, our Van Helsing held up a dramatic, ornate cross about 2 1/2 feet long. Our Dracula would grab the cross, and it would burst into flame - truly, actual flame. Both of them would then drop the cross, and the fire would die. It was visually spectacular.
The crosses were painted to look like metal, but they were all wood - lighter, easier to fabricate, easier to rig. The large cross had a hollowed out portion on the back where we fastened a cigarette lighter, right at the junction of the beams. My job, every night, was to wind flash paper across the back of both beams, wound into a spiral and stapled. When Dracula grabbed it, Van Helsing flicked the lighter on. The flame would race along the paper, providing a fantastic, but brief, flash of real fire. It was another moment that always elicited gasps, and it made me smile, every night.
I learned to make stage blood when we opened our trunk one day and discovered that the entire gallon container had leaked, coating the inside of the packing crate, and leaving us with no blood for a fairly bloody show.
I panicked a bit, but our Lucy said, "No problem. Come with me." She whisked me off to the grocery store, where we bought light corn syrup, red food coloring, and blue dish detergent. I still make "blood" the same way, whether I'm using it onstage, for Halloween, or, as I did once, for a zombie themed promo video.
"Later in the evening, as you lie awake in bed
With the echoes from the amplifiers ringing in your head..."
I didn't know it at the time, but within a year I'd be a pregnant newlywed, living in one of the small towns where we'd performed.
The tour is such a fond memory that the smell of chemical fog, or hearing Bob Seger sing "Turn the Page," makes me instantly nostalgic.
I think that everyone who works in entertainment, whether they're a slam poet, concert violinist or lighting tech, should get the chance to tour with a show; even if it's just for two weeks, through the Nevada desert.
"Here I am, on the road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playing the star again
There I go
There I go."
The American West is filled with "lonely" highways, stretches of asphalt ribbon stretching to the horizon across sparsely populated, sagebrush studded land. I spent my childhood in the family car or pickup truck, driving for hours between small towns, mountains, lakes and other isolated places.
Some of my favorite memories from those roads, though, come not from my childhood, but my adult years before I was a wife and mother. They includes lots of time on the highway, spending hours en route between small towns, on tour with the local university theater company.
"You can listen to the engine moaning out its one note song..."
There were two dozen or so of us packed into vans and a single large truck, hauling scenery, costumes and the like to places with names like Winnemucca and Tonopah. I was 19, but not a full, or even part, time student. The university theater company was open to the community. Members like me, unenrolled at the U, were exempt from some of the requirements the students had - for instance, always having to stay after a show closed to "strike," or tear down and put away, the set, props, costumes and everything else. I held myself to the higher standard, though, expecting from myself everything required if I was being graded. It was important to me to be a "real" member of the company.
I'd spent almost two seasons with the company by the time I went on tour. I'd already watched the group go on an international USO tour and another state tour, and I was so deeply jealous of those who got to go. But, I was living on my own, working for minimum wage, and I couldn't afford the time off work or the expense of travel. I'd juggled a lot to make sure I could spend two weeks on tour before I applied to go, and I wanted it so badly I could taste it.
The show was "The Passion of Dracula," and I was crew. We'd already had a great run in the university theater. Having worked the show already didn't guarantee me a spot on tour. I had to apply and wait. When my name showed up on the list tacked to the "call board," the theater bulletin board, my best friend and I shrieked so loudly, jumping up and down and hugging, that a professor had to come out of his office and shush us.
"But your thoughts will soon be wandering, the way they always do..."
We all got a small per diem allowance from the university, designed to cover our food and other travel expenses. The professors and other faculty, of course, got paid wages as well. The other students were typical college kids whose parents footed most of their bills. Most of them lived with their parents or in dorms that their parents paid for. For them, the per diem was just a nice perk. For me, it was my only income for half a month. I had to save enough out of it to pay my rent and my half of the living expenses at the place I shared with a roommate. I'd done the math; I watched every cent like a hawk. A couple of the casinos gave us coupon books, $2 in nickels, or both, when we checked into their rooms. I hoarded them like a miser. I skipped some of the things the rest of the company did, like the night everyone else ate at a renowned Basque restaurant. Then and now, it was considered a "must do" in some of the towns we visited. I had the ham and eggs special ($1.99) in the coffee shop at the hotel/casino where we were staying. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I had to have somewhere to live when we were done.
"And you don't feel much like riding; you just wish the trip was through..."
We had no "spare" time. We'd roll into a town before lunch, put on a show of various fairy tales at the local elementary school, then go to wherever the play would be that night - usually the local high school - and set up, then eat dinner, do the show, tear it all down, pack it up, fall into bed and be up early the next morning to do it again in a different town. There was no pool time, and no nap time unless you slept in the van. It was hard work. I loved it all.
"Here I am, on the road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playing the star again
There I go, turn the page..."
I played characters like Jack's Mother in Jack and the Beanstalk in the children's show. We changed wherever there was room; once all of us packed into a broom closet to dress and undress. We performed in lunch rooms, mostly. The kids and teachers seemed to love it. These shows were freebies, designed to spread both goodwill and word of mouth. We ended every show by passing out flyers for that night's performance. The kids weren't our target "Dracula" audience, but their parents were.
We also did scenes from "Dracula" at the high schools, because they were our target audience. One scene involved our Lucy, under the vampire's spell, biting our Dracula's chest and licking up the blood while she made, well, "yummy noises" - noises indicating pleasure. It was my job to fill the squeeze bulb on the back of Dracula's brooch with stage blood, so that he could bleed on cue. Yeah, pretty racy stuff for us big city folk to be presenting to rural teens. Our Lucy and our Dracula had very different takes on this scene. He saw it as pulling her over to the Dark Side, whereas she saw it as being deeply suggestive of sex. Nobody polled the kids, but they gasped, every time.
"Well, you walk into a restaurant, strung out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you, as you're shaking off the cold
You pretend it doesn't bother you, but you just want to explode..."
After every show, we'd have people say things like, "Thank you so much for coming to our town! We never get the opportunity to see productions like this!" They didn't just tell the actors, they'd tell all of us. Those, of course, were the folks who sought us out deliberately. Walking into a restaurant, gas station or casino could elicit a different response. We piled out of our vans, many of us in head to toe black, with shirts with the word "Passion" in large letters, and graphics of a vampire, long before they were mainstream. We felt conspicuous.
"Most times you can't hear them talk
Other times, you can
All the same old cliches
'Is that a woman or a man?'"
It was the mid 80s; popular looks included long, curled hair on men, shorn or shaved hair on women, and mullets on everyone. I don't think that any of us looked outlandish; no guyliner, no animal print leggings that I recall. I thought that we looked pretty normal. Our Dracula looked downright Mr. Rogers, wearing a sweater vest and a bow tie every day. Still, we were theater people in a town full of ranchers and cowboys. We stood out.
"And you always seem outnumbered
You don't dare make a stand..."
I remember hearing about a couple of times that minor words were exchanged, maybe when one of us physically bumped into a guy our age in flannel and boots, but we had a very strict conduct code, a tight schedule and a short leash. I only remember one particular time when I felt unwelcome. We swept into a restaurant that had offered us a discount on their buffet; they apparently did this every time the group toured. Cheap food and young people - yes, please! I remember a few horrified looks and pointed comments about how "crowded" and "noisy" we made the place. I tried to smile sweetly, hoping to demonstrate how harmless and fun we were.
"Out there in the spotlight you're a million miles away..."
There's a reason that people "talk shop" with others of their profession or hobby or vocation. No one else really understands. As an actor, you're both acutely aware of the audience, and oblivious to their presence. As a stage technician, you're a cog in a complicated machine, both independent and interconnected. Either way, you live for the work itself, but also for the reaction it elicits. Trying to describe how you feel sounds self absorbed. Others like you, though, "get" it. You don't have to explain.
"Every ounce of energy you try to give away..."
Our set was gorgeous. All the carved wood elements were actually made of styrofoam, so they were light enough to haul around. The Victorian "wallpaper" was painted on. The costumes were equally stunning. We had staircases, fancy furniture, crates and boxes of things to transform the high schools into an English mansion, and our actors into characters.
Besides the stage blood, my favorite jobs involved the wind and fog machines and flash paper.
Our wind machine was low tech, my preferred method of doing things. It was a wooden cylinder with slats attached to the round end units. Over that was stretched heavy canvas. A hand crank came out of one end of the cylinder. Turning it made a remarkably realistic wind noise. It was my job to create everything from low moaning wind to shrieking gusts.
The fog was higher tech, produced by a small machine into which I poured chemical fog juice. At certain points, I'd slide the machine close to the edge of the set and turn it on. Its motor made only a whisper, and the fog would pump out of one end. It was glorious stuff, reflecting the lights, swirling when the actors walked, filling the familiar drawing room with an otherwordly air. By the end of one scene, the air would be thick with fog. Turn off the machine, and it dissipated, like magic.
We had several large and small wooden crosses. At one point, our Van Helsing held up a dramatic, ornate cross about 2 1/2 feet long. Our Dracula would grab the cross, and it would burst into flame - truly, actual flame. Both of them would then drop the cross, and the fire would die. It was visually spectacular.
The crosses were painted to look like metal, but they were all wood - lighter, easier to fabricate, easier to rig. The large cross had a hollowed out portion on the back where we fastened a cigarette lighter, right at the junction of the beams. My job, every night, was to wind flash paper across the back of both beams, wound into a spiral and stapled. When Dracula grabbed it, Van Helsing flicked the lighter on. The flame would race along the paper, providing a fantastic, but brief, flash of real fire. It was another moment that always elicited gasps, and it made me smile, every night.
I learned to make stage blood when we opened our trunk one day and discovered that the entire gallon container had leaked, coating the inside of the packing crate, and leaving us with no blood for a fairly bloody show.
I panicked a bit, but our Lucy said, "No problem. Come with me." She whisked me off to the grocery store, where we bought light corn syrup, red food coloring, and blue dish detergent. I still make "blood" the same way, whether I'm using it onstage, for Halloween, or, as I did once, for a zombie themed promo video.
"Later in the evening, as you lie awake in bed
With the echoes from the amplifiers ringing in your head..."
I didn't know it at the time, but within a year I'd be a pregnant newlywed, living in one of the small towns where we'd performed.
The tour is such a fond memory that the smell of chemical fog, or hearing Bob Seger sing "Turn the Page," makes me instantly nostalgic.
I think that everyone who works in entertainment, whether they're a slam poet, concert violinist or lighting tech, should get the chance to tour with a show; even if it's just for two weeks, through the Nevada desert.
"Here I am, on the road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playing the star again
There I go
There I go."
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Out of the Dark
I always figured that I'd pretty much breeze through the physical signs of aging. When a friend despaired to me that, "Heads don't automatically turn when I walk into a room anymore," it was all I could do not to snort. I did say, "Welcome to the real world!" Heads have never turned when I walk into a room. Not only do 99% of my male friends not see me as female, a good portion of my female friends don't, either. I am gender neutral. This is totally OK with me. It weeds out the shallow men who don't want to talk to you unless they're hoping to have sex with you, as well as the catty, plastic looking Barbie women who are afraid that ordinariness is contagious.
Gray hair and wrinkles? Pfffttt. I earned these. Besides, I have NO desire to look ridiculously artificial.
Weight gain terrified me at 15, annoyed me at 25, and has since dropped totally off my radar. (Save the comments about how, "I can tell." It is not my job to impress anyone.) I have never been on a diet or purchased a weight loss product. This makes me a distinct minority (and horrifies some folks); I can live with that.
Not being fashionable? Please! First, you don't generally miss what you never had. Second, trends are short lived, superficial, contradictory and driven by the need to 1. make somebody money and 2. feel superior. Being fashionable now means being out of fashion in the future; it's a never ending cycle. If you're me, you're still happily wearing pants you bought 10 years ago, and you have no 1980s MC Hammer pants in your past.
I watched my mother breeze through menopause like it was a total non event, and was glad I'd inherited her genes. I'm hoping I'll have the same luck.
I found myself in my teens and already planning for what I would do if arthritis hit. So far, it hasn't; so much for being prepared.
I was prepared for night blindness, I thought. I'd watched my mother and my older friends first stop driving distances at night, then stop driving after dark, period. I expected it to come on gradually, though, and probably after 50.
It hit without warning, in my late 30s, in the middle of a nighttime drive down a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere. I could not quite figure out what was happening. I had a sinus headache, the kind that pushes on the backs of your eyeballs, so I wondered if the congestion was bad enough to pinch off the optic nerves. I had never noticed any kind of trouble, strain or squinting, and suddenly I was unable to see, at 75 MPH.
If you've ever driven between Reno and Las Vegas on Highway 95, you know how much space is out there. You can go for hours between one stoplight towns. We'd left Reno when my husband left work, about 3:00 in the afternoon, hoping to make Vegas before we stopped for the night, on our way to Phoenix. We had a loooong way to go, and I couldn't see.
My husband was coming off seven days straight of 12 hour shifts, and had told us at 3 that he didn't feel up to driving. My oldest daughter was with us, but she hated driving our Suburban in town, in broad daylight. I couldn't imagine her tackling hours in the dark.
I kept slowing down until I was going about 45 MPH. My husband would snap at me, "You can't go that slow! Someone will come up behind us and smash into us! You're going to kill us!" I'd snap back, "I can only see about 5 or 10 feet in front of me!"
Maddeningly, he'd say, "That's all you need to see!"
"At 75 miles an hour?"
"What's most important is what's directly in front of you. Do you think the road is going to disappear?" he asked. He never quite "got" my thought process until a couple of years later, after many similar conversations, when I asked, "When you walk into a familiar dark room, like our living room, do you run full speed through it, assuming that you'll know where everything is?" Then, it finally made some sense to him, but is still at odds with one of his firmest convictions, the idea that slowing down on a freeway or highway is unacceptable under all but the rarest and most extreme of circumstances. He's also sure that any kind of hesitation, or being unsure of anything while behind the wheel, is a perilous thing.
Making things worse was the constant stream of oncoming traffic, mostly semis. Cars passing in the opposite direction were aggravating, with their headlights starbursting in my field of vision, but in my Suburban, I am at almost the exact height of the headlights of semi trucks. Their lights were right in my eyes and obliterated my vision for about a full second, even when I kept my eyes fixed on the opposite side of the road, toward the shoulder on my side. A second doesn't sound like a very long time, until you count it out, saying, "one one thousand." Imagine that at highway speed, and you'll understand why it freaked me out.
Needless to say, my husband and I were both at our wits end on this particular drive.
When we hit the next town, we stopped for dinner and got a hotel room as well. None of the adults in the car felt capable of driving, and no one wanted to end up as roadkill.
I couldn't make up my mind on that trip whether this was a temporary or permanent thing. It seemed so sudden and so complete - I'd expected age related night blindness to sneak up on me.
It soon became clear, though, that this was my new reality. I can drive all right in town, where everything is lit, but forget highway driving after dark. My depth perception is also completely unreliable in the dark. I can't reliably recognize curbs, for instance. Pushing my elderly mother in a wheelchair at Disneyland, I ran the chair off the curb and dumped my mother out onto the ground, where the wheelchair fell on top of her. My middle daughter stepped in - "Give Grandma to me! Just give her to me!" I was relieved of further wheelchair duty as soon as dusk approached every day for the rest of the trip.
Mostly, I function without falling or wreaking havoc. I run my hands along a lot of walls, though.
I didn't think much about how I would cope backstage; it never really occurred to me that it might take some adjusting. I've spent pretty much my whole life onstage or backstage - it feels as comfortable as my own home. Then I found myself backstage in the dark on the world's largest indoor stage.
I was playing a chorus part in the Disney version of "Beauty and the Beast." I'd wanted to be Mrs. Potts, but hey, so had every other actress too old to play Belle. Anymore, I only take chorus parts if it's a show that I'm really passionate about, and this one fit the bill.
It was performed in the Grand Theater at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort. The stage was built back when the building was the MGM Grand, and it's impossible to describe how enormous it is if you haven't been on it. Normally, everyone has to whisper in dressing rooms, but these are so far back that you can hold normal conversations, and even laugh, and not be heard onstage. There's usually several rows of thick velvet drapes across the backstage area between the dressing area and the performance area. A 727 airplane, left over from the first show produced in the space ("Hello, Hollywood, Hello!") sits permanently backstage, along with a sweeping staircase, huge columns and other set pieces.
At several points, I had to cross behind the set, which has never been a big deal before. Suddenly, it was. I had to follow someone else, or creep along with my hands out in front of me like a ridiculous cartoon.
During one performance, I was making my way from stage right to stage left, headed eventually to the dressing room. I thought I knew where I was going, and I blundered into some of the ropes used to secure the drapes. This is a huge, huge no-no. I wasn't hurt, and I didn't goof anything up, but it underscored for me how much I could screw up by wandering around blind.
I put my hands out in front of me and crept along with tiny steps. The show had a huge cast, with performers as young as 8, and I nearly ran into one of the children in the cast. I apologized for my clumsiness. "I just ran into the ropes too," I whispered. "I can't see in the dark."
A tiny voice came out of the dark at about my chest level. "That's OK. You know me. Take my hand."
I couldn't see the offered hand, but I held mine out. A small hand grasped it, and led me gently through the dark. As soon as I could see the lights of the dressing area, my guide said, "I've gotta go," and scurried off back into the dark behind me.
I was almost absurdly grateful. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my benefactor and say, "Thank you," since I couldn't even be sure of the child's gender or age, much less identity. It was a kindness I couldn't repay in any way. We had a cast of over 100, many of them children or teens - it could have been any one of dozens of pint sized actors. It's a delight to work with responsible kids, just as it's a headache to deal with the opposite.
I'm usually pretty good at admitting when I'm out of my depth. Unfortunately, I'm more comfortable continuing to blunder along than I am asking for help. I don't feel I have anything to prove; I just dislike having to count on anyone else. "If you want something done right..." and all that jazz. (Yes, it is entirely possible that I have trust issues.)
Sometimes, the universe sends you unmistakable messages. This one reminded me that there are times when someone, even someone unlikely, will have my back. It reminded me that there are times when I'd be an idiot not to ask for help. It also reminded me that, occasionally, even if you don't ask for help, it will appear out of the dark and guide you through.
Sometimes, we all hear the equivalent of that small voice in the darkness, and we can take comfort knowing that we'll be well cared for (even if we really aren't sure by whom or how). As I get older, there will undoubtedly be many more of those moments, both literal and figurative. At those times, I'll think back to the gratitude I felt at that moment.
"It's OK. You know me. Take my hand."
Gray hair and wrinkles? Pfffttt. I earned these. Besides, I have NO desire to look ridiculously artificial.
Weight gain terrified me at 15, annoyed me at 25, and has since dropped totally off my radar. (Save the comments about how, "I can tell." It is not my job to impress anyone.) I have never been on a diet or purchased a weight loss product. This makes me a distinct minority (and horrifies some folks); I can live with that.
Not being fashionable? Please! First, you don't generally miss what you never had. Second, trends are short lived, superficial, contradictory and driven by the need to 1. make somebody money and 2. feel superior. Being fashionable now means being out of fashion in the future; it's a never ending cycle. If you're me, you're still happily wearing pants you bought 10 years ago, and you have no 1980s MC Hammer pants in your past.
I watched my mother breeze through menopause like it was a total non event, and was glad I'd inherited her genes. I'm hoping I'll have the same luck.
I found myself in my teens and already planning for what I would do if arthritis hit. So far, it hasn't; so much for being prepared.
I was prepared for night blindness, I thought. I'd watched my mother and my older friends first stop driving distances at night, then stop driving after dark, period. I expected it to come on gradually, though, and probably after 50.
It hit without warning, in my late 30s, in the middle of a nighttime drive down a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere. I could not quite figure out what was happening. I had a sinus headache, the kind that pushes on the backs of your eyeballs, so I wondered if the congestion was bad enough to pinch off the optic nerves. I had never noticed any kind of trouble, strain or squinting, and suddenly I was unable to see, at 75 MPH.
If you've ever driven between Reno and Las Vegas on Highway 95, you know how much space is out there. You can go for hours between one stoplight towns. We'd left Reno when my husband left work, about 3:00 in the afternoon, hoping to make Vegas before we stopped for the night, on our way to Phoenix. We had a loooong way to go, and I couldn't see.
My husband was coming off seven days straight of 12 hour shifts, and had told us at 3 that he didn't feel up to driving. My oldest daughter was with us, but she hated driving our Suburban in town, in broad daylight. I couldn't imagine her tackling hours in the dark.
I kept slowing down until I was going about 45 MPH. My husband would snap at me, "You can't go that slow! Someone will come up behind us and smash into us! You're going to kill us!" I'd snap back, "I can only see about 5 or 10 feet in front of me!"
Maddeningly, he'd say, "That's all you need to see!"
"At 75 miles an hour?"
"What's most important is what's directly in front of you. Do you think the road is going to disappear?" he asked. He never quite "got" my thought process until a couple of years later, after many similar conversations, when I asked, "When you walk into a familiar dark room, like our living room, do you run full speed through it, assuming that you'll know where everything is?" Then, it finally made some sense to him, but is still at odds with one of his firmest convictions, the idea that slowing down on a freeway or highway is unacceptable under all but the rarest and most extreme of circumstances. He's also sure that any kind of hesitation, or being unsure of anything while behind the wheel, is a perilous thing.
Making things worse was the constant stream of oncoming traffic, mostly semis. Cars passing in the opposite direction were aggravating, with their headlights starbursting in my field of vision, but in my Suburban, I am at almost the exact height of the headlights of semi trucks. Their lights were right in my eyes and obliterated my vision for about a full second, even when I kept my eyes fixed on the opposite side of the road, toward the shoulder on my side. A second doesn't sound like a very long time, until you count it out, saying, "one one thousand." Imagine that at highway speed, and you'll understand why it freaked me out.
Needless to say, my husband and I were both at our wits end on this particular drive.
When we hit the next town, we stopped for dinner and got a hotel room as well. None of the adults in the car felt capable of driving, and no one wanted to end up as roadkill.
I couldn't make up my mind on that trip whether this was a temporary or permanent thing. It seemed so sudden and so complete - I'd expected age related night blindness to sneak up on me.
It soon became clear, though, that this was my new reality. I can drive all right in town, where everything is lit, but forget highway driving after dark. My depth perception is also completely unreliable in the dark. I can't reliably recognize curbs, for instance. Pushing my elderly mother in a wheelchair at Disneyland, I ran the chair off the curb and dumped my mother out onto the ground, where the wheelchair fell on top of her. My middle daughter stepped in - "Give Grandma to me! Just give her to me!" I was relieved of further wheelchair duty as soon as dusk approached every day for the rest of the trip.
Mostly, I function without falling or wreaking havoc. I run my hands along a lot of walls, though.
I didn't think much about how I would cope backstage; it never really occurred to me that it might take some adjusting. I've spent pretty much my whole life onstage or backstage - it feels as comfortable as my own home. Then I found myself backstage in the dark on the world's largest indoor stage.
I was playing a chorus part in the Disney version of "Beauty and the Beast." I'd wanted to be Mrs. Potts, but hey, so had every other actress too old to play Belle. Anymore, I only take chorus parts if it's a show that I'm really passionate about, and this one fit the bill.
It was performed in the Grand Theater at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort. The stage was built back when the building was the MGM Grand, and it's impossible to describe how enormous it is if you haven't been on it. Normally, everyone has to whisper in dressing rooms, but these are so far back that you can hold normal conversations, and even laugh, and not be heard onstage. There's usually several rows of thick velvet drapes across the backstage area between the dressing area and the performance area. A 727 airplane, left over from the first show produced in the space ("Hello, Hollywood, Hello!") sits permanently backstage, along with a sweeping staircase, huge columns and other set pieces.
At several points, I had to cross behind the set, which has never been a big deal before. Suddenly, it was. I had to follow someone else, or creep along with my hands out in front of me like a ridiculous cartoon.
During one performance, I was making my way from stage right to stage left, headed eventually to the dressing room. I thought I knew where I was going, and I blundered into some of the ropes used to secure the drapes. This is a huge, huge no-no. I wasn't hurt, and I didn't goof anything up, but it underscored for me how much I could screw up by wandering around blind.
I put my hands out in front of me and crept along with tiny steps. The show had a huge cast, with performers as young as 8, and I nearly ran into one of the children in the cast. I apologized for my clumsiness. "I just ran into the ropes too," I whispered. "I can't see in the dark."
A tiny voice came out of the dark at about my chest level. "That's OK. You know me. Take my hand."
I couldn't see the offered hand, but I held mine out. A small hand grasped it, and led me gently through the dark. As soon as I could see the lights of the dressing area, my guide said, "I've gotta go," and scurried off back into the dark behind me.
I was almost absurdly grateful. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my benefactor and say, "Thank you," since I couldn't even be sure of the child's gender or age, much less identity. It was a kindness I couldn't repay in any way. We had a cast of over 100, many of them children or teens - it could have been any one of dozens of pint sized actors. It's a delight to work with responsible kids, just as it's a headache to deal with the opposite.
I'm usually pretty good at admitting when I'm out of my depth. Unfortunately, I'm more comfortable continuing to blunder along than I am asking for help. I don't feel I have anything to prove; I just dislike having to count on anyone else. "If you want something done right..." and all that jazz. (Yes, it is entirely possible that I have trust issues.)
Sometimes, the universe sends you unmistakable messages. This one reminded me that there are times when someone, even someone unlikely, will have my back. It reminded me that there are times when I'd be an idiot not to ask for help. It also reminded me that, occasionally, even if you don't ask for help, it will appear out of the dark and guide you through.
Sometimes, we all hear the equivalent of that small voice in the darkness, and we can take comfort knowing that we'll be well cared for (even if we really aren't sure by whom or how). As I get older, there will undoubtedly be many more of those moments, both literal and figurative. At those times, I'll think back to the gratitude I felt at that moment.
"It's OK. You know me. Take my hand."
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