Chapter 13

THURSDAY MORNING, I got to PCAD ready for my first class. It was a good thing I was early. Jon stopped me the hallway as I was just locating my office.

“Terry, what Shakespeare do you want to do? We’re late getting the season brochure printed and we need to distribute it at the show coming up in two weeks.”

“A Shakespeare? When am I directing a Shakespeare?”

“Early spring. We have a small cast production before winter break, then your show goes into rehearsal as soon as we get back. As soon as you are well underway, we’ll be casting the musical for late April. We should have talked about this when you were here during the summer but somehow it got missed.”

“Can I get the selection to you tomorrow? I’m going to be late for my class if I don’t get moving.”

“Of course, of course. Sorry to throw this at you in your first hour here. Your office is just down the hall there on the left. I need to run, too.”

“Sure. See you.” I rushed to my office and ran face-first into a gorgeous young blonde standing just inside the door.

“Sorry! I’ll get out of your way. Just came by to make sure you knew where your first class was.”

“Thank you. I was held up in the hall. I’m Terry Reichert. And you?” I held out my hand to accept her offered shake. Good, firm, warm handshake.

“El Andrews. Not an initial. Just short for Elinore. I’m your TA.”

My what? Oh, my god. I had a teaching assistant. When she’d said ‘TA,’ I had a completely different thought. I looked her up and down quickly and critically. She wore a form-fitting black leotard with a low scoop neck that showed the start of impressive cleavage. Her skirt was as tight and form-fitting as the top. She had golden blonde hair, perfectly applied makeup with bright red lipstick, and matching painted nails. Everything about her screamed ‘High maintenance!’ I liked my definition of TA better.

“El, I didn’t know I had an assistant. Let me drop my pack here and you can show me where my class is held.”

“Sure. Here’s your office key. Don’t know what you have in your pack, but better safe than sorry. Need any books or anything?” I shook my head no as I backed out of the office. She followed and locked the door behind us. “This way.”

She led me to a classroom with about twenty students already seated at neat rows of desks. A soft chime sounded over the speaker system, PCAD’s reminder that the class period had begun. El stepped confidently in front of the class and called their attention.

“Hey, everybody. Let’s get started. I’m supposed to take attendance. If you aren’t here say, ‘aye.’ Okay, all present and accounted. This is Terry Reichert, our new acting instructor and coach. Terry, it’s all yours.” El stepped to the back of the room. Everyone focused on me. This wasn’t going to work at all.

“Okay. We can’t get started until we get some space to work in. Push all these desks back against the walls and stand in a circle in the middle.” Students hopped up at once and in just a couple of minutes were standing and laughing in a rough approximation of a circle. “We’ll be doing a lot of movement in this class so we need the floor space. If we’re going to sit, we’ll sit on the floor. Let’s start with some stretches.”

I was prepared, of course. I’d worn jazz pants and a T-shirt—standard rehearsal dress in Ashland. I grinned at a couple of the guys who couldn’t quite stretch in their tight jeans. I watched as El simply unzipped her skirt and kicked it off behind her so she was in her leotard and ballet slippers. Black tights would have been a little less distracting. A little. We all went through a ten-minute stretching routine. I didn’t make a comment about how anyone was dressed. I figured they got the message.

“Now, look around the circle carefully at everyone standing here. I’d like each of you to introduce yourself by putting your name in a sentence that will tell us something about who you are or how you see yourself. I’ll start. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is missing Terry this season.” I figure that would get things started and show them what I wanted. Way too optimistic on my part.

“I’m Tom and this is my first year at PCAD.” Boring.

“Jim has never taken an acting class before.” Boring.

“Deborah loves wild flowers and bright colors.” I looked at El and she grinned.

“The Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role goes to ... El!” Everyone laughed at her very loud announcement, complete with a suspenseful pause before she announced her name. I nodded. That was better. I turned to the guy next to her.

“Rick has marked himself safe from PCAD orientation.”

“For the best tips on baking a casserole, talk to Janie.”

Things started moving much better and the class all got into making up a fact about themselves. I didn’t want to let them get too comfortable yet, so when they’d all introduced themselves I called one to stand facing me.

“Traci, tell me who is wearing a bright pink leotard.”

“Huh? Uh. Were we supposed to remember what everyone was wearing? Um ... I don’t ... No, wait! That girl who likes flowers and bright colors. It starts with a D. I don’t remember!”

“Okay. Go back to your place in the circle. Deborah, you’re up next.” The girl in the hot pink leotard faced me bouncing on her toes. “Does Mike have a beard and mustache, just a mustache, or is he clean shaven?” She looked daggers at me for a moment and then closed her eyes. While they were still closed, she pointed to her left and a little behind directly at Mike.

“A goatee.”

“Good job! Mike, get up here.”

The class went on with the exercise and a couple other short ones before I motioned everyone to sit. We all dropped to the floor.

“Observation. Association. Memorization,” I said. “If El gets her wish and wins an Academy Award, she’ll have learned an entirely different way of memorizing her lines than she uses on stage. Scenes are not shot chronologically. Often script changes come out just before you walk in front of the cameras. Tim, if you are the understudy for four different actors and one falls sick, you’ll need to review the lines for that part, put the lines for all the other parts out of your consciousness, and walk on stage following the exact blocking the other actor used. We will do a lot of exercises that get you into your acting head.”

A soft chime indicated class was over and people started to move.

“Watch the call board for a different classroom assignment. Put the desks back in order for the next class, and read the first fifteen pages of The Actor’s Way by Maureen Rogers for Tuesday. We’ll be putting some of her concepts into play. Good job, everyone.”

I did—subtly, I hope—observe El shimmying back into her tight skirt as several others grabbed discarded bits of clothing. I thought they’d all be better prepared next week.

“Are you allowed to take a class you are TA for?” I asked El as we walked back to my office.

“Oh, I’m not taking your class. I took it from Cora three years ago. I just wanted to see what kind of guy I was working for,” she laughed. “I won’t be there for every class, but it was a fun refresher today.”

“Well, you certainly helped with our introductions. I was about to halt it and explain the difference.”

“Like I said, I already took the class. You started out almost exactly the same way Cora did. I don’t know why they’ve got you stuck in that little classroom, though. I’ll see what I can do about getting us a bigger open space. We have them here. I’ll take care of posting an announcement on the call board as soon as I find out. I’ll text you in case I don’t see you.”

“You’re starting out as a great assistant.”

“Do you want me here for specific hours?”

“Why don’t we wait to see how my schedule works out? I’m sure I’ll need some regular help, but it’s not like I’m going to have you grading papers. Things will get more intense as we move into production of the Shakespeare after break.”

“I’ll probably hang around a lot anyway. One of the perks of being a TA is to have a quiet place to study. That’s why there are two desks in your office.”

“Unless I’m having a private meeting with another student, that will be fine.”

“Have you selected your Shakespeare yet?”

“No. That’s the big task for tonight when I get home. Jon caught me off guard this morning when he asked me what I’d chosen.”

“Well, have fun. I’ve put in to be your Assistant Director for that unless you discover someone else you’d rather have,” she said. I settled into my desk chair and began arranging things I’d brought along. I didn’t have another class until two o’clock and it would be a bit less strenuous than the Intro to Acting class. Audition Art and Practice would focus more on memorizing monologues and how to behave and what to expect in an audition.

“You aren’t going to audition for a part?”

“I’ve played a lot of good parts here. I need to get experience behind the scenes so I understand better what’s going on. I’ll audition for a part in the musical.”

“Okay. Sounds good to me. As soon as I pick the play, you can start by ordering scripts.”

“I heard you got put in a lecture classroom,” Jon said. “We’ve never held that class in a lecture room. Someone new in scheduling must have slotted it. You should be in The Box. No one is using it during your class time. El has already posted the change on the call board.”

“It gave us a chance to be creative yesterday. What I’m interested in is whether any of them wear appropriate clothes today. There were a few stretched seams yesterday,” I laughed. I’d figured it out already. I’d been tested. Someone wanted to know how I’d react. If they’d told me there was no other space, I was prepared to hold class in the hallway. I was glad The Box was available, though. I could work a number of different exercises there.

“So, did you pick a play for March?”

“Yes. I think we’ll do Two Gentlemen of Verona. It has some excellent female roles as well as being a comedy. And since it is generally credited as Shakespeare’s first play, I figured it was appropriate to be our first play as well.”

“And it has a small cast.”

“That figured into the decision. I don’t know what I’ll have to work with yet, so this show will give me an opportunity to audition a lot of people for a limited number of roles and then cast more of them as townspeople and extras. Oh, and El will be my assistant director.”

“Good. She needs that experience to round out her degree. I completely expect that Richardson will cast her in the spring musical. You should hear her voice. Great talent,” Jon said.

“I’m looking forward to it. She’s been johnny-on-the-spot with classes so far. I’ll have her order scripts so I can look them over and make a few cuts.”

“Work with her on that cue book, as well. And don’t forget the stage manager will need a book. Have her order a few extra and we’ll put them in the library.”

“Will do.”

“I didn’t know Shakespeare plays were so hard to get as an acting script. What version do you want?” El asked me on Monday after class.

“Oh, I should have told you all that last week. Order the Mowat version, directly from the Folger Shakespeare Library,” I said. I had no real commitment to that edition, but most of our scripts in Ashland came from there so I figured it was a safe bet for me. The problem was that they were sometimes 200 pages long with all the commentary and scholarly discussion in the front. But maybe a few of the students would learn something besides their lines.

“Okay. I’ll call them and have the office cut a P.O. We’ve got accounts at, like, French’s, Baker’s, and Dramatists’ but the play isn’t available from any of them.”

“Any time you are dealing with classics, it will be like that. There’s no royalty other than the cost of the scripts themselves. Most commercial licensing companies live off the royalties, not the book purchase,” I said. “Oh, and Jon said to remember to order copies for you, the stage manager, the tech director, and the designers, then also to get half a dozen extras for the school library. For you, me, and the stage manager, get two copies each. We’ll need sketchbooks that we can paste the pages down on so we can write cues and notes in the margins. I prefer to use a nine by twelve book unless the script pages are exceptionally large. Spiral bound. Make sure they have at least as many pages as are in the script.”

“Wow! Yessir.” El got busy looking up the phone number for the Folger Shakespeare Library sales department. I was happy to have that administrative garbage off my desk and on hers. I headed out to my next class.

I settled in to my class schedule and once rehearsals started for O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten, I had some serious time coaching actors and was thankful it was a small cast. Getting a college kid to appropriately act out the role of a middle aged man dying of consumption was a challenge. Jon was directing and I was the acting coach. I needed to listen carefully to what he told actors in his notes regarding position and inflection. Then I would meet with the actor the next day and work with him on lines, diction, and stage presence. Like most college productions, it was on a short timetable and was performed at the Seattle Cascades University stage the week after their first show closed.