Revenge of the Theatah I: A Dramatic Fall From Grace

When Haley and her best friend Robin came to me for help finding a dramatic scene for their high school speech tournament, I was flattered. Flattered, and totally confident in my ability to find the dynamite, unique power skit that would rocket them to first place.

But the pages of my various actors’ guides flipped and flipped without yield. I was at the point of admitting to them that I couldn’t produce a winner, when inspiration suddenly shone like the lights over Broadway: the Tennessee Williams one-act Hello from Bertha. Hadn’t that scene impressed my professors in Intro to Acting? True, most (if not all) of the success was due to the classmate who played Bertha (an aging prostitute in the last stages of syphilis) to my Goldie (a sister-in-trade with the unpleasant job of telling Bertha she is being turned out of the whorehouse because she can no longer earn her keep). This classmate was an amateur actress so gifted she could have earned a Tony nomination playing a wad of gum. If it worked for us, I thought, surely Haley and Robin could do as well – or better.

Yes, you’ve already spotted the fatal flaw in my thinking – namely that just because I might have a natural affinity for playing a disease-ridden raddled old whore, there was absolutely no reason to imagine that two fresh-faced sixteen-year-olds could pull it off. But at the time it seemed like a saving inspiration. I brought photocopies of the script to the girls with rash assurances of sure success.

It seemed to go well at first. Racking coughs and heartbroken moans issued from behind Haley’s door as they threw themselves into rehearsal. I delivered snack trays, suggestions of bits of business I had used, and mini-lectures about Tennessee Williams during their breaks.

Two days before the tournament one of the teachers who was going to accompany them as a judge bowed out, which jeopardized the whole delegation from our high school. I found myself volunteered for the job. No worries, the speech club president would come over and tell me how it was done. I was a little leery at first, but then agreed. Prostitute, stage mother, tournament judge: what role couldn’t I play if I put my mind to it?

We left for Gainesville in the dark hours of Saturday morning and arrived at the hosting high school in time for coffee and pastries in the cafeteria. I had a full judging schedule and Haley and Robin would perform their scene about six times during the day. The three of us nibbled cardboard-tasting cheese danishes and felt like favored handmaidens of Thalia, shining jewel-like among the other participants, who, poor leaden things, didn’t suspect that Bertha and Goldie would soon climb over their untalented bodies to take first place in Dramatics. We heard the call for the first round of presentations and parted smiling. That was the last good moment of the day.

Their first round was praised by one of the judges but panned by the others on the panel. Haley and Robin were a little puzzled but decided it was a fluke. It turned out to be an unfortunately consistent fluke. Each subsequent performance brought uniformly not poor, but rotten ratings. That was bad enough, but the girls were terribly embarrassed to see that one judge had written: “Don’t dress the part!”

Haley and Robin discussed spending the rest of the day in a supply closet, but decided the show had to go on. They became increasingly rattled. Robin forgot her character’s name, Goldie, at one point, and said to the ailing, confused Bertha/Haley: “It’s me, Bertha ---aaaaaaa?” trying to slide into a questioning inflection without anyone noticing.

In the next performance Haley simply dropped about four pages of script out of her consciousness, responding to Robin/Goldie’s query, “What was the name of that guy you knew?” with “Don’t tell ME to calm down!” Long pause. Robin adlibbed: “I . . . didn’t.” They batted miscellaneous lines back and forth until they found a section they both recognized, and lurched miserably through the rest of the scene.

Desperation set in. Having nothing to lose, the girls contemplated a more arresting introduction to their scene:

“Chicago.
1935.
A burnin’ summer night in the whorehouse.
Your crotch itchin’ like wildfire.
You reach for the cream.
There . . . is . . . NONE.
Hello. . . from Bertha.”

But somehow they knew it wouldn’t help. Like Bertha at the scene’s end, Haley and Robin accepted their fate.

I was not much better off, trying desperately to keep up with my simple, no-sweat fill-in judging job. I ran around the echoing high school, whipping into one classroom after another and plastering what I hoped was an interested look on my face, and listening to yet another speech on foreign policy or dramatic monologue about incest or losing the farm. I’d mark my assessment form, throw out some words of encouragement, and hurl myself out of the room toward the next session.

At one point in the early afternoon I was desperate for a break but already late for my next session. I flew into a bathroom cubicle intending to transform myself into a human tornado that would do everything I’d been needing to do since late morning in 30 seconds or less – sort of like Superman in the phone booth: pulling off my glasses, undoing clothes, finding makeup and hairbrush. I would enter mild-mannered, uncombed and stressed, but emerge refreshed and re-energized. Instead I popped my slacks button, dropped and shattered my compact, and flung my eyeglasses into the toilet where they slid quickly out of sight.

It is truly amazing how far a person can insert an arm into a toilet. For several panicky seconds I was sure I was really stuck and the fire department would have to rescue me. But the thought of the ensuing newspaper articles gave me desperate strength and I wrenched it free. I lathered and rinsed my arm furiously, and galloped off, late and ten times more disheveled than before, to the U.S. Senate competition.

It was a crestfallen little group that convened in the late afternoon. We huddled in a back corner of the auditorium watching the other students receive first, second, third place awards. Bertha and Goldie would have welcomed a fatal case of syphilis at this point, judging by the looks on their faces, and I didn’t feel much better. Was there an award for most disasters occurring to one family in an eight-hour period? How about Worst Choice of Scene by a Clueless But Well-Intentioned Mother? Or maybe the Porcelain Heart -- I was pretty sure I had hurt myself setting some world record with that toilet.

“Never mind, it’s just been a rotten day,” Haley consoled me. “Here, have a candy.”

It was a sour apple hard candy and tasted startling and great as it worked its way to the back of my mouth and superglued itself to my right rear crown. I took them both out of my mouth with a sense of horrible inevitability.

We did eventually reach home, and life went on. After recovering from a miserable flulike disease probably caused by unnatural communion with a public commode, I had the tooth repaired; sewed the button back on my pants; bought a new compact; and replaced my glasses (lying about how I lost the originals, though I bet it happens more than people admit). I also noticed that Haley and Robin seemed somehow older and more worldly-wise. Or maybe they just weren’t asking me for advice as much as they used to.