Okay, strap yourself in for a harrowing tale of stage fright.
Imagine, gentles, we are back in the author’s undergraduate days, and his required history of drama course. One of the big projects was to put on a production of a text the class had studied. He was assigned to the group covering the Restoration period (roughly 1660-1700). It was possibly The Mistaken Husband, possibly written by John Dryden. Apparently, there is some controversy over the latter point, but don’t get too worked up about it, because it might not have been that play. How could he not know? Well, as the Bard would say–there’s the rub.
Enough with the third person
At the time, I enjoyed acting. I wasn’t particularly good at some parts of it. I was far too self-conscious for starters, and as my acting prof had discovered, I enjoyed getting laughs way too much. (You can read my apology to Fred here.) But memorizing lines was one thing I excelled at. I could get “off book” pretty quickly in the rehearsal process. So, I volunteer to play a lead role in this production, figuring that would be less work and more fun than designing costumes or sets, than directing or stage directing. And true to form, I memorized my lines quickly. I could even provide some of the other parts from memory. I had a pretty good time rehearsing that play. They didn’t have method acting in 17th century, but we did use some of those techniques in our rehearsals. (The performers were all taking acting classes, so we spent our time discussing what our motivations were in each scene, what feelings we should be having and blocking accordingly.)
The weird thing about this production was that while we had costumes and such, it was a one-off occasion. There would be only one show.
Enter the costume designer
The only difficulty was an interpersonal problem I had with the costume designer, who felt that I was “too chubby” for the part. He had not told this to anyone else, but somehow, he felt it was fine to share these reservations with me. I explained there would not be enough time for me to lose enough weight to make a difference before the play. A point he conceded.
“I’ll find a solution,” he said. I imagined some designer’s trick. Perhaps judicious use of the color black, which can be slimming. And went back to rehearsal.
The big day came. The only time I would wear the costume in question. It was quite spectacular, in the fashion of late the Restoration, including a long, collarless, sleaved coat, called a justacorps or surtout. Under that went the waistcoat, which was cut a bit shorter and entirely hidden by the surtout. And then instead of trousers, breeches, that showed off a gentleman’s calves to nice effect. This was the only portion of my anatomy that the designer described as “historically accurate.” The problem with this outfit was the waistcoat. Which I will note again, could not even be seen because of the coat.
The costume designer had applied to this waistcoat some of the tricks of corsetry he’d learned for the ladies costumes, and then some. I had to be cinched into this thing by him and the stage manager. It was so tight. If I bent too much, it seemed like the buttons would fly off like Congreve’s rockets. The effect was, indeed, slimming. But alas, it was also constricting. And frickin’ hot. Between this tight corset, the long coat, and the stage lights, I immediately started sweating profusely. The makeup stung my eyes. We got through the first scene.
Seriously, I’m not even sure what the title of this play was
Remember, this was a play that I had fully memorized and yet, cannot describe to you with any confidence at all. Not even its title.
That is because of what happened in the next scene, and every one after. I had what actors call “a dry” or “going dry.”
Normally, it’s just a word or a line. The heart rate goes up as you struggle to find it, and then it’s there. Or it’s not, and your colleagues have to help. They move onto the next line, or provide their own cue, if that’s what you’ve forgotten. But in this case, it was not just one line. It was the whole damned play. It was not just a dry, it was a parch. A frickin’ Sahara.
At the end of each scene, the stage manager was there, bless her heart, with the script. We quickly ran my lines (if I was lucky enough to have a scene that I wasn’t in it.) She’d prompt me, and I could reply with the correct line. Every time. I knew the text.
But back out on that stage? Nope. Gone.
The method thing saved us
So back to that method thing. The fact that we’d done that work–we’d figured out as a cast and as individual actors what our character’s motivations were. What we wanted to achieve in each scene. This was integrally connected to how we moved (the blocking) and what we said (the text). I was without that latter component, but I did still have the other pieces. Plus, because of the general knowledge I had of the play, I was able to ad-lib pretty effectively. (Yes, that means I made up my lines. All of them.) As we went, the other actors picked up on my non-verbal signs that this was their cue. I may have even gotten a few of those words correct.
My castmates were magnificent. They picked me up, metaphorically, and kept me upright as this horror continued. At a certain point, the event became a blur. We reached the end, and the audience applauded. It seemed as though nobody had noticed. The other actors gave me hugs at the end of the production, and tut-tutted as I apologized over and over.
“I don’t know what happened,” I’d say. “I knew it. I know it.”
After the play, the professor took me aside and told me I would be getting a B on the assignment, which was more than fair. “You know you barely got a single line correct.”
I was still too dehydrated and exhausted to do anything except say, “I know. I know. I really hope it doesn’t affect anyone else’s mark.”
“No, they were good. And it was a magnificent bit of extemporization. How did you come up with rhyming couplets like that?”
“Pure adrenaline.”
The evening had passed in a fugue state, punctuated by pure terror and anguish. It was only later that I deduced the extreme discomfort of that damned waistcoat was the inciting event. But who knows, it might have happened anyway. Maybe something else was going on that caused it. It was my last term. I was taking six courses, and directing a Queen’s Players show. Perhaps I just reached a breaking point and the costume had little to do with it.
I did get up on the stage a couple more times after that. I did spear-carrier roles in a production of Hamlet. Then I played Felix in The Odd Couple. It was torture. As before, I learned the lines, but what did that matter if they could leave one at the drop of a hat. (It didn’t happen in either production, thank god.)
But the worry that it could happen really did suck the fun out of the activity. That was when I got a bit more serious about writing for the theatre. (I was already doing skits for Queen’s Players and publishing short stories in the school arts paper.)
But that was it for me and acting. Not the theatre. I’m working on a play called Jackals. (Imagine Waiting for Godot meets The Mummy.) Last week at The Grand Theatre, I got to see some real actors perform the first five minutes of it, and I’m excited to be the orbit of the stage again.
As long as I don’t have to wear a waistcoat.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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