An
out-take from my memoir, War Baby – a scene set in the former Virginia Museum
Theater during the 1950s…
The Museum Theater was looking for high school
kids to work backstage, as well as try out for some roles for young
people. My friend and I landed roles as the two paperboys in Our Town, Thornton
Wilder’s classic take on life in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire.
We got to work backstage too, and Our Town was
the beginning of several plays during the late 50s that I participated in. It
was a terrific experience. One in particular stands out.
During a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Major
Barbara, my role was 
backstage helper. Because of a total
scene-change mid-act, an entire set backdrop was lifted out of the audience’s
sight at the same time a new one dropped into place – all with the curtain
open. A bit edgy, I understood, and only effective if the timing was perfect.
backstage helper. Because of a total
scene-change mid-act, an entire set backdrop was lifted out of the audience’s
sight at the same time a new one dropped into place – all with the curtain
open. A bit edgy, I understood, and only effective if the timing was perfect.
Because the large counterweights involved in
moving full-stage backdrops up and down could collide with the steel catwalk
seventy feet above stage, making loud clanging sounds, I and a colleague were
assigned the job of waiting out the entire act on the catwalk.
When the weights came upwards towards the
catwalk as the new set dropped to the stage, our jobs
were to hold the counterweights’ cables out from the catwalk. That would
prevent the weights from clanging against the steel catwalk. Simple... unless
you’re a teenager.
Night after night through endless rehearsals,
we trudged up the spiral staircase at the back of the stage to the catwalk. We
took up our positions to wait for the weights to zoom up through the gloom
below. The weights would appear suddenly out of the dimmed lighting just off
Stage Right. But after so many rehearsals, to sit on a catwalk through an entire act of a
play we had practically memorized became boring. And boring for teenagers is especially
risky.
One night, we decided to take some snacks up
with us. The night happened to be special. In fact, it was a major event. It
marked the beginning of the show’s run: an exclusive showing, closed to the general
public.
The house was filled with dignitaries. Since
the VMT was part of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, it was a state agency.
“Opening Night” was reserved for the Governor, a variety of senior state officials,
major donors and benefactors of the Museum, and families of the theater company.
Backstage that night, all of us in the company– from stage hands to the lead
performers– were wired, especially the stickler of a stage manager whose punctilious
presence seemed everywhere at once, declaring: “Nothing Must Go Wrong,” and
looking for anything that could be out of place.
He missed our Nabs and bottled Cokes as we
hustled up the plain metal spiral stairway to the catwalk. The show went on, and
finally, up came the counterweights. They caught us off guard. We jumped up,
reached our posts and began to alter the courses of the massive iron weights – but not
the trajectory of one of the Coke bottles which one of us had kicked in our
panic to get in place in time. Off the bottle flew into the void. Its arc had it headed
straight to Center Stage. But it took forever.
Time was reduced to extreme slow-motion. We
were transfixed with fear, awe and apocalyptic anticipation.
Horrified, we watched as every light in the
house glinted off the sculpted, translucent sea-island green Coke bottle as it
descended, gracefully rolling and perfectly timed to crash onto the stage just
as the leading lady emoted her first lines of the new scene.
True troopers they were on that stage that
night, though. The pros know that the worst thing to do in a situation like that
is nothing. The bottle shattered near mid-stage, and instantly the lead actor
ad-libbed around the rather rude interruption of a Coca-Cola bottle from nowhere crashing on
the floor of a Victorian parlor. I do not remember it exactly, but I’m sure it was
something like this:
Ye gads! There it is again. Bloody stupid help
botched the candelabra covers once more... and in such an ugly shade of puce,
too. One would think they’d have learned something working here, wot?...
When the act was over, the curtain down, and
the house lights up, the stage manager materialized at the foot of the
circular stairs leading up to our steel aerie, his perfectionistic glower mimicking Iago leering
at Othello, his face a florid match for his wavy red hair…
