Chapter 5

The ACT workshop met from 10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon for the first two of six weeks, hours expanding in the later weeks to accomplish our final goal of performance. The length modeled itself after a typical rehearsal period readying actors for a production for the public. Although the actual planning for a "real" production, the set and costume designs for instance, often happened prior to rehearsal extending the readying often for several weeks, and auditions would add time as well, funding for the workshop could only afford the six weeks. Within that time frame we bundled everything together.

What that meant was we essentially covered pre-rehearsal concerns during the first two weeks. Being under the aegis of one of the top regional repertory theater companies in the nation enabled us to experience the highest level of expertise in any given discipline involved with staging a play. For instance we met with the resident dramaturg early on who helped us overlay our plays with a scholarly exegesis as if each play deserved the deep examination of a thesis paper. Not having the time to examine every beat in our plays, we studied the arc of the plots and the archetypal resonance of the characters and the intention of the themes through an historical context. And the dramaturg did get specific with at least one scene in each play. It became a sort of master class in dramaturgy.

And in fact the workshop was a class. "Producing a Play from Page to Stage," could be its title. As budding playwrights participating in all aspects of the production at such a high level of expertise and not just concentrating on the words on the page as most playwriting workshops did gave us extraordinary insight into our chosen craft. One couldn't help improving a hundred fold from the experience.

I had met Nick and his band of angel daughters at the end of the second week of the workshop, the so called planning stage for our plays. During those two weeks actors from ACT had participated in reading the plays both to bring us their expertise and as a way for us playwrights to meet the potential cast. Choosing these professionals or near professionals to perform our words would seem to be wisest. Maybe unwise for both Lindy and I, we wanted amateurs performing a central character in our plays. For Lindy it was me. I chose Helena. In fact in the production I envisioned for my play, I would cast myself as the man cuckolded by Helena's addiction and the character representing addiction would be a Nick type except much younger, newly sloughed I suppose. Needing perspective the playwrights weren't allowed to cast themselves in their work. So on the Monday after encountering Snake I became very attentive to the audition process.

"I'll be there," Helena promised as she lay over me after we made love that morning. It had been a busy morning which culminated in us making love for an hour. Her smooth skin and soft curves had been memorized by the touch of my fingers and lips. She luxuriated in my attention just as I had hers, each of us building the other to body shaking climaxes that only time and patience and almost cruel teasing could create. The intense pleasure we gave each other enhanced my love for her as did the coming down and the warm and loving cuddle afterwards.

The day began still night, the dawn not yet burning away the cold fog that held streetlights like projector beams forming triangles. We gathered at six in the mirrored dance space with giving wood floors that Miwa had brought us to the evening before.

"I amused or bemused or immused to coin a word the progenitor of the company that owns this space," Miwa told us with abundant cuteness. "There really should be a word for it. Musing somebody." She shrugged.

"This is the Bay Area Dance Company," Lindy pronounced in amazement. "Barnaby Cole. He's like an institution. What is he, sixty years old?"

"Almost," Cat replied with a fond grin. "He was a handsome and charismatic dancer of twenty-five in the Martha Graham Company when I met him. Everybody except him saw a star. He had too many scars growing up in Pittsburgh with a macho father and a spiteful mother to establish any real ego. You should have seen the father's face when Barny introduced me to him. It even lessened his prejudice against me being Japanese. I made sure the father realize it wasn't some ruse to convince him of his son's doubted heterosexual inclinations by being quite loud in his boy's bedroom." She giggled.

"But ... You met with him recently?" asked Lindy. "He must see that..."

"He sees what he expects to see," Miwa shrugged. "A very well put together woman in her fifties. He didn't even mind my less resilient skin or my looser cunt or my sagging breasts."

"What do we see when we see you?" I asked.

"Me," she replied. "You have no expectations."

"What about the others?" asked Lindy. "His dancers for instance who haven't met you?"

"We meet in private," Miwa explained with another cute giggle.

Having studied rudimentary movement in dancing for actors class and leaning Beijing Opera for a semester, I managed to surprise Lindy with my grace and ability to remember dance steps. Not impress, but surprise. I wasn't that graceful. And getting winded by the end even though the choreography wasn't all that physically intense lessened any impressiveness.

"Jogging and calisthenics should get you in shape," Lindy suggested smugly.

Jobs as busboy and waiter during summer breaks had been my only real exercise. I wasn't really soft or flabby, just not all that muscular on my tall frame that stretched me to thinness. I actually embraced the possibility of a regimen of exercise. I wanted to be buff.

Monday morning after the dance rehearsal (which by the way I loved, loving the unique choreography of Lindy based on exaggerated gestures) the regimen began. All of us including Miwa and Helena participated in the exercises. Helena hadn't danced earlier but acted as audience and boombox operator, the avant garde music emerging from the tinny speakers consisting of Dadaist vocalizing, consonants popping and vowels elongating, and terse percussive notes. The four of us even jogged home, quite an ordeal in excessively hilly San Francisco, Cat and Lindy leaving us at Helena's door breathless and exhausted while the two women seemingly barely affected by the strenuous run continued to Lindy's apartment.

The shower revived our bodies and began our lovemaking. We cleaned each other's good (or bad or dirty) parts excessively but not to the point of explosion. We wanted to build that to a big crescendo. When we entered her bed though, my utter rigidity couldn't be ignored. A couple strokes inside her throat brought relief within seconds and enabled a much longer second cumming.

That wouldn't happen for nearly forty minutes since I spent more than half of it teasing a roaring orgasm out of Helena with my lips and tongue ravaging her clit and she followed up with an excruciatingly brilliant tease licking and caressing me from stem to stern with light sparse strokes at my central pole until she straddled me and engulfed the pole in the remarkable heat inside her cunt and rode me slow. Only when she came within the slow ride and I felt her innards buzzing and milking me did I take control, flipping her over still conjoined and pummeling her into the mattress. I convulsed seconds later, roaring from the power of release, utterly succumbing to it, becoming it, my rapturous body undulating with each mighty ejaculating throb.

In the post orgasmic warmth she agreed to come to the audition. We had discussed my play before and she had read it aloud with me. She had told me she loved performing her poetry at open readings and showed her remarkable ability to express the meanings of her succulent verse.

And yes it was succulent like the woman. Rich in images of a dark gothic world, not the horrific world of her sister Naomi's hell drawings, but containing their own horror and hellishness if hell resided in pastoral settings untouched by the sun, moonless or the moon casting menacing shadows of denuded trees like webs or under a canopy of thick, threatening clouds, her recitations caused my mind to fully experience her visceral words.

She had never acted but she wanted to. When I first told her I acted I could see her excitement. She really enjoyed reading the play with me and she read really well. I told her the backstory of the character and it added to her reading. She feared her inexperience would ruin my play.

"Just make it real for you," I said. "If you can memorize until you own it and then understand who you are as your character and what you're saying and then live it in the moment, you can act. There's physical technique like speaking from your diaphragm which projects your voice as well as brings out emotions like speaking from your soul. And you bring all that technique and memorization and you react to what your acting partner says, respond to him with your memorized words and you can't go wrong."