Chapter 15

EL AND I SCREWED every chance we got—which wasn’t often. I learned quickly to carry duct tape so I could remove the white cat hair from my clothes. My suit coat that first night had been used as a bed by one of the cats and I didn’t discover it until I was in the garage. Fortunately, I had tape out there and managed a quick clean-up before I went into the house. Daphne was asleep and wouldn’t have seen it but I didn’t want to take any risks.

Three weeks after school was out, El’s friend returned from Europe and she left for Indiana. She had a summer gig at the Wagon Wheel Playhouse in Warsaw. We kept in touch but our emails were innocuous.

For my part, I was headed to California in a week for the Cal Shakes Festival. I was cast as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. I’d already announced to Jon that was the show I planned to do next at PCAD. I had a lot of ideas about how I could use Traci. On stage. I was looking forward to being on stage and devoting as much time to it over the summer as I could.

Shakespeare often uses a “play within the play” as an artifice. That’s where Hamlet’s famous line “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” comes from. But nearly all of The Taming of the Shrew is a play within the play. A troupe of players come to town and convince a drunken tinker that he is a Lord and they are performing for him. It is a very minor part but he’s ‘on stage’ watching the play for the entire performance. And in the script, Shakespeare seems to forget about him because the play within the play ends and there is never a resolution to how Sly is informed that he is not the real Lord.

I had the notion that I would make Sly a large doll and have Traci operate him, wandering into the action, drinking, and being a bit in the way as the players act around him. I was certain Traci could handle it if we could get a doll that would obey her. Perhaps even another actor. Hmm.

Regardless, it would be a comic interpretation of a very funny, even if misogynistic, play.

I arrived in Berkeley in mid-June and drove out to Orinda where I went immediately into rehearsals. It was a good cast and I got along well with my fellow performers. We had three weeks before we went into dress rehearsals and opened. It was as intense as any production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival but the plays did not run as long. As soon as ours went on stage, another would start rehearsal. But our job did not reduce to performance only when we went on stage. Many of the actors would begin rehearsing the next play and some of us, including me, would become instructors in a summer camp for young actors.

“Terry Reichert, as I live and breathe.” I turned toward the speaker and smiled.

“Claire! Don’t tell me you are part of this ragtag players’ troupe. I have to assume you are working here this summer.” Claire had been one of the actresses I’d worked with at Ashland a few years ago. She hadn’t been with the company the last two years I was there.

“I’ve been working in Stratford, Ontario the past few years but any gig gets old after a while. I had the opportunity to come here for the summer while I decide what to do next.”

“Any prospects?”

“I’ve been invited next season to the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut. Just moving from Stratford to Stratford. I’ve an interesting alternative, though. I’ve been solicited to direct a Shakespeare group in Minneapolis that’s been struggling along for a while and wants to go to a year-round schedule. Can I convince you to join me?”

I sighed. Even if I wasn’t married and wasn’t with PCAD, returning to Minneapolis would just be too painful. Every place I turned would remind me of CeeCee.

“I’m afraid I’m not available. I have accepted a teaching gig at the Pacific College of the Arts and Design. I’ve put one year in and they signed me to a second year contract as soon as the show I directed this spring was over. What are you playing here? Or are you directing?”

“We open The Merry Wives of Winsor this weekend. I’m playing Mistress Quickly. Small but satisfying role while I prep for Kate in The Taming of the Shrew. And since you are here, I suppose I’ll be seeing you in that show.”

“More than you hoped. I’m playing Petruchio.”

“Oh, God! Are you planning to get physical with the role?”

“It’s up to the director, but I don’t see any other way to play it.”

“Hmm. We might need to have extra private rehearsals so you can figure out exactly how hard to spank me.” She raised her eyebrows and after all this time, I still blushed. I’d get her back for that.

“The play is a powerful metaphor,” Rae Stevens, our director, said. “Katharina is Everywoman, reduced to diminutives and servitude, and Petruchio is the essence of masculine toxicity, vowing to marry a woman old as a crone or vile as a shrew as long as the money is right. We’ve cut all the initial byplay with Sly and the Lord of the Manor. It doesn’t advance the story and even Shakespeare forgot about him as soon as the players enter. As the play progresses, we’ll see that Katharina is never truly tamed, but learns how to control Petruchio through feigned subservience—just like modern women do to overbearing men.”

I disliked the director already and glanced over at Claire in time to see her turn her head and roll her eyes. Well, we weren’t paid to argue with the director, but I put it out of my mind that I’d learn anything helpful for my spring production. She was completely cutting the character I was subtly turning into a lead.

The first read-through went pretty well. Most of us had the parts fully memorized—at least those of us with leading roles. As she started to coach us on our parts, I could see her interpretation come to life. While it didn’t compare to mine—nor to Shakespeare’s, for that matter—the play could certainly be bent to her interpretation. Especially since she was playing it in modern dress in which Petruchio would be dressed in blue jeans and a wife beater. Much of the physical humor was replaced by more restrained action with an emphasis on the psychological battle of wills that Kate ‘lets Petruchio believe he has won.’

Our anticipated private sessions to see how hard I should spank Claire became sessions moaning over a beer about our lost careers once this production was mounted. Well, I hadn’t come here to screw my costar. We’d never really had that kind of relationship despite the teasing we sometimes did to each other. I secretly suspected Claire was a lesbian but was not out.

“Are you heading back to Seattle as soon as the show is over? I’ll be prepping to reprise my role as Mistress Quickly, only this time in Henry V.”

“When the show is over, yes. But I’ll be spending our production weeks coaching in the young actors camp.”

“Ah. I’m going to be so worn out at the end of this show, I don’t know if I could tolerate coaching teens. And you do it for a living now. How do you stand it?”

“It has its benefits,” I said. I looked down at my beer trying to decide if I should say anything more to Claire. I was too late.

“You sly dog. You’re screwing a bunch of college age actress wannabes. Do you promise them stardom? Better grades?”

“Claire, you know me better than that. I’d never coerce a woman in any way. But some of them...”

“Don’t tell me you are going to use the tired old excuse that ‘she made you do it.’ Perhaps Rae is correct in her interpretation of this play after all.”

“No! Don’t be silly. No one made me do anything. She just made it easy to do. And she was every bit as much a participant in initiating things as I was.”

“Mutual.” Oh, God! The most suggestive one-word line in all of Shakespeare. I’d watched Claire deliver the line in such a coy and seductive way in Measure for Measure that the entire audience lost it. In that one word, she showed why the play was considered a comedy. I’d played Angelo, the duplicitous deputy of the duke who was eventually sentenced to marry Mariana.

“Yeah. Very much so. And short-lived. I didn’t do anything until she was no longer a student.”

“Where is the shy reserved guy who was too brokenhearted to date after the loss of his one true love?”

“Married with two kids, both in their terrible twos.”

“You have twins?”

“Irish. Billy will have his second birthday while I’m still down here. Michelle will turn three in August.”

“Pull yourself together, Terry. You aren’t that kind of guy.”

I looked myself in the eye as I stood in front of the mirror that night. Sadly, I discovered that I actually was that kind of guy.

Shrew opened with the typical fanfare for the Cal Shakes. It just didn’t seem to have the snap that this play usually has. Only one reviewer wrote it up. He seemed to have missed the subtle message Rae was trying to get across and called the show ‘a respectable mounting’ of Shrew. At least he hadn’t called it ‘adequate.’

I’d attended a show back in college years ago that was an absolute horror. One of my friends was in it and I have to admit it’s not as easy to see the overall effect of a show from on stage. You can think you are doing a stellar job and still really stink at it. So, of course, you seek validation from your friends.

“Terry! What did you think? How did I do?” How can I be supportive and still let him know it stank?

“John! Your stage presence! My God! You were right there on stage!”

Monday after we opened, the campers arrived. They were checked in and gathered at lunch so the camp director could introduce the staff and get things started. We each got to say a few words about what we’d be teaching them.

“Our first week together will be focused on stage movement. The blurb in the camp brochure focused on blocking. Yes, you’ll learn how to take direction and move from one place to another. But that isn’t all. Theatre is physical. You can have a talking head with a good voice read the evening news on television. On stage, if the head is not attached to a body that moves smoothly and naturally, people will go to sleep. Class is usually mid-morning. Since we’re getting to each of the classes this afternoon, I’ll have you about an hour after lunch. Please show up in clothes that will be comfortable for a workout. And don’t overeat.”