If It Is Not Now…
Episode 2
As Maggie Saltz left the room leaving a
hub-bub of excited voices behind her she could feel the familiar atmosphere
permeating the hallway. A variety of
sounds were bleeding from the acting classrooms—dramatically projected conversations,
laughter, a tenor singing “There Are Giants in the Sky”, but that was equally
true of the other 140 days of the school year.
As she virtuously took the stairs up to her office rather than taking
the elevator, she considered the difference. Ah, yes. The first day feeling.
For almost as long as she could remember the first day of school had been
in some way the best of the year. It was true in kindergarten and, almost fifty
years later, it was still true. Though she had not actually been in school for
six of those years, the feeling had been the same. A regional theatre season
and a school year were almost identical in the arc of their development. Yes,
she had worked during the summer during those years at Springfield Rep but
those off-season months had the same trajectory of preparation as summers
did back when she was in school. She was
a good deal older now but she liked to think she wasn’t in bad shape. The good
fortune of the kind of blonde hair that, cut well, needed no more than a quick
blow-out, good bones, a trim waist, the same size ten figure she had been in
high school. Fortunately she had never
been a beauty. It must be so hard on the prom queens of yesteryear to look in
the mirror and daily regret the end of youth. Yes, she was no longer young but
wearing well. And on the first day of
school she still had the impulse to skip down the hall.
Front row as a student or front of the
class—the feeling remained perpetually the same. Days before the day adrenaline
started pumping before the alarm went off making setting it unnecessary until
Christmas break. Even her morning coffee was more—piquante—flavored with
anticipation as well as Hazelnut Creamer. Her daily shower was often longer as
she lost track of the number of times she had lathered and rinsed hair and body
as her mind was filled with consideration of what knowledge, what teaching
strategies were going to be needed, what novelties would present themselves in
this new year. Just like her Dad. It was only now, two years after his death,
that she had realized the degree to which she was her father’s daughter
He had been an excellent gardener as long as
she could remember. And tomatoes were
his particular joy and expertise. Widely regarded as the best in the city. Once
July had brought the first fruits to blossom it had been such a pleasure to
pick one fresh, barely rinse it off (no pesticides even in the 60’s when
hardcore insecticides were still available and legal) cut it thick, still warm
from the sun, sprinkle with salt, add a little slather of mayonnaise and, atop an
equally warm slice of Mama’s homemade bread—there was no sophisticated
gustatory delight in all the years following that had ever topped it. Except perhaps the first meal of tiny new
potatoes, boiled and eaten with salt and butter.
Every year there were new species, a new
compost heap, new challenges of sun and rain, drought and weeks of overcast.
Each of these challenges had made the days for him a never-ending challenge and
each victory something wrung from the difficult soil of Missouri. Actually
as a child she had not at all been able to understand his pleasure in
gardening. Could not understand how, having stood all day at a pressing machine
in a pants factory he could hurriedly change his clothes and work for another
two or three backbreaking hours in the garden.
It was true he was a bull of a man whom no physical challenge seemed to
phase but, as she watched him from her perch in the tree just outside the
perimeter of the garden, she turned a page in her second book of the day and
thought how hard life must be for him. He had often spoken with a little
sadness of having had to leave school after the fifth grade to take care of the
family farm. Three of his older brothers had not wanted to be farmers and left
for the “Big City” (St. Louis) to make their fortunes. At thirteen the care for the farm, two aging
parents and three younger siblings had fallen to him. He had never expressed
the least bitterness for what Maggie had assumed was a profound sacrifice. It certainly would have been for her.
Dad had retired from formal work at
seventy-two to take care of her mother. But he didn’t stop gardening until
infirmity had forced him to do so when he was nearly ninety and his great
physical strength had at last abandoned him. During his last years he read many
books, more than he would have ever read in his little country school. But
looking out the window in those last years at the now fallow garden she could
see a certain sadness she finally could understand.
Now Maggie knew that she felt about her
classroom the way he felt about his garden. There was a job there she felt she
knew how to do and, though it was very challenging, the doing gave her constant
pleasure. Even the summers were filled with reading, writing and learning more
that might be shared the next year to advance her own understanding. When the
day came when she could no longer till her “garden,” she hoped she would find
something that would make her last days interesting, but at the moment she
couldn’t imagine what it would be. Shaking off these unusually mordant
reflections she “turned her frown upside down” and swung into Mia’s office to
greet the in-every-way colorful department secretary.
“Oh, wow, look at you! You’ve outdone yourself for first day
glamour! Love the blouse-of-many colors
but the violet scarf in the new shortie cut is the piece de resistance.”
“Thank you, thank you. You know I try. So,
are you ready for me to send out the cast list to the newbies?”
“Sure. Press the button. Hopefully they are
far enough away that their shrieks and cries of happiness or disappointment
won’t reach my ears. By the way, is the
boss in? And if he is, is he available
to me for just a minute? He wanted a
report on the class with the new platoon.”
“Well, he’s in and since no buttons are lit
he isn’t on the phone. Let me
check. He said he was going to try to
keep his calendar free for whatever unexpected but inevitable emergencies would
arise. Oh, hi Dr. Fred. Professor Saltz is wondering if she could
have a moment of your time. . . Okey doke,
I’ll send her right in.”
“Thanks, Mia. Once the dust settles in the
next week or so, let’s do lunch. On me, of course.”
“Sounds good.
Go on in. He’s had enough time by
now to put on his pants.”
“Oh, you are so bad!”
“I’m not kidding. When the air conditioning was off for a week
in August I walked in on him without knocking and he was down to his
skivvies. Black boxer-briefs. Very classy.”
“If you’re not careful I’m going to tell him
you said that.” She went in, opening the
door slowly, even though the air conditioning had been restored.
“Hi, Maggie.
And how was your summer?”
“Terrific, Fred, lots of reading and
writing. Two weeks on Martha’s Vineyard
with an old friend whose lucrative career in publishing in the city made
possible a three-bedroom on the ocean with great beach. Just the usual great conversation, great
seafood, great wines, great meals. How
about you?”
“Well, I only get a month and two weeks of
that I spend with my parents but my partner and I got two weeks in the city.
Saw several new plays at the Fringe Festival and a couple on Broadway. Went to
Stratford and The Shaw Festival on the weekends. Great weekends. Great month off. Long rest of the summer. You
heard . . . “
“That the air conditioning was off for a
week. Yeah.”
“No doubt Mia’s told you the rest. By the
time the week is over, half the
department will be imagining me in my . . .
what she likes to call my skivvies.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Sure. O.K. How did class go? Have you given
them the cast list?”
“Mia just sent it out. And they are all on
board to participate in reading for auditions tonight. That should introduce
them to the undergraduates in a way that makes clear that their talents have a
more mature development.”
“I hope so. Happy as I am to be adding an MFA
program, it’s going to be a great shock to many of our upperclassmen that they
will not in fact be playing Hamlet.”
“Or Gertrude. Or Ophelia. Or even Laertes.”
“It’s going to take awhile before they
appreciate that exposing them to the talents of people older and more
experienced will eventually work enormously to their benefit.”
“You know that and I know that but . . .
Well, anyway, that’s why I was arrogant enough to start this little experiment
with Hamlet. The challenge of
embracing the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays . . .”
“Debatable. You know how I feel about Lear.”
“Yeah, well. Let me cast you as Lear and then
we’ll see.”
“Not this year, thank you.I’m not sure I’m
ready to pass for eighty.”
“If we do it late in the semester, trust me,
you’ll be looking the part. And so will
I.”
“You know I couldn’t think of doing Hamlet
with undergraduates. Some of the
best actors in the world have foundered on the rock of that challenge. But with
the actors we’ve been able to bring in . . .”
“Thanks to a VERY generous grant from the
Chancellor . . .”
“I know, I know. The prospect of doing the
play itself will be enough to stifle the grumblings of many of the littl’uns.
And I’ve decided to cast understudies for all of the major roles.”
“O.K. Now I know you’ve gone round the bend.”
“No, it’s fine. You’ve given me an extra
week. I’ll use that time to do an undergrad rehearsal every sixth day. In the
meantime they’ll shadow the leads and they’ll be there for all the discussions,
the exercises, the staging, the arguments about the staging. They’ll also see
that no matter how experienced and talented, good actors know they start every
new production at ground zero. It will be very advantageous for our most
talented seniors to see them build the performances up over time. And, if the theatrical gods betray, and we
lose someone for a day or so, we will have someone more acquainted with the script
than the stage manager to take his or her place.”
“Well, I trust you. You usually know what
you’re doing.”
“Thanks for
that resounding vote of confidence. What
do you think of the platoon system we’re using to bring in a class.”
“Maggie,
you know this only works if we have sufficient faculty to teach a real
professional graduate program for actors, designers, and playwrights. We can
only afford that if we take in a class that, first of all, has a sufficient
number of students to create a meaningful cohort. But we don’t have the faculty to teach a new
class every year. At the end of three years we’ll have proof of the success of
the experiment, I hope. That’s when we can either hope to get the university to
refund it as is or to hire sufficient faculty to allow us to bring in a new
class every year. I’m not sure we could
even support that with our physical plant.
Five actors, a directors, a playwright and two designers we can fold
into our existing production schedule plus two experimental productions a year
in the Black Box Theatre with the playwright’s scripts.”
“I guess I just need the reassurance that the
plan we’ve made is the right one, at least for now. You coming to the auditions
tonight?”
“No, I’ll come on Thursday night for
call-backs. Till then you’ll just have to hold down the fort alone.”
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