BLACK COMEDY
When the curtain closed on the last performance of Black Comedy, my last show with Southwestern High School, I did not know it would be my last. I am sure I felt that I would be stretching that small stage at the end of the gym until I was sixty-five or so. But the last curtain had closed and the houselights were on when a crisp voice began getting louder backstage, saying, “Open the curtains. I said open those curtains.” I didn’t know who the lady was, but again she ordered my bewildered stage manager. People were just beginning to mill about as she said, “I am the president of the school board, (just recently elected) and I want you to open those curtains immediately.” He opened the curtains. I believe her performance had not been planned very far in advance. She had a handful of artificial flowers which she gave to me, saying, “I believe in giving people flowers while they are living, and this man deserves flowers.” Neither of us recognized it as a farewell gesture. Afterwards, Ron Flater, who played the leading role in that very difficult comedy, in which darkness represents light and light, darkness, asked me (with some glee), “How does it feel to be the director of the best drama club in the state of Indiana. (Maybe we weren’t actually the best, Ron, but we were sure darn good.)
Since her election to the school board, she had been in the school during rehearsals on two occasions. The first time was to tour the facility. I had made it my practice during that show to use the two cots from the sick room to make a firm bed for Black Comedy, returning them across the hall after each rehearsal. It would save my borrowing and returning a bed somewhere in the community and prevent concern about its being unsupervised during the day. I also knew that help was easy to get before a play but somewhat hard to come by after it was over. Anyway, the new school board tour included the clinic where they discovered that the beds were missing. Mr. Wade found this “humiliating” and said we were not to use them in performance and were never to take them from the clinic again. However, he soon relented upon listening to my reasoning.
Her second visitation, not long after, was during a dress rehearsal, and, as there were no dressing rooms, the boys were using a closet in which I stored costumes and which was near the band room, where the girls made quick changes and where we applied make-up. Both rooms were in a temporary mess. Again, Mr. Wade found the situation appalling and said so. This lady, not yet elected president, and whose name I was never to know, spoke loudly from the gym floor in front of the stage, “I insist we spend some time in here! I like the way this man runs his rehearsals.” And in the end, she gave me flowers—while I was alive yet.
* * *
One rehearsal night I sent a student into the main hallway on an errand. We had a new night janitor, an older gentleman who had, unbeknownst to us, been assaulted during his duty on the night shift at another school. The boy frightened him so badly that he put chains on the gym doors. I went to Mr. Wade to say that I resented the implication that there was no trusting my cast, made up of outstanding members of that student body and that if the chains were there the next night, I would dismiss rehearsal and go home. I absolutely would not be chained into the gym.
Mr. Wade said, “There’s something you don’t understand, Mr. Rhoades. I can always get someone to teach English and direct the plays, but where will I find someone who will come in here every night and be willing to scrub the urinals and toilets?” I guess that put me in my place, although I wish to go on record as saying that although they got someone to teach English and direct plays when I left, they were not able to replace me, and the program I had started was lost. I could, upon my leaving, he said, take anything from the stage that I thought I could use at another school. No one would be found who could utilize them.
Now, about that janitor—I talked to him myself after I had a talk with my people. I told them they would have to go out of their way to be friendly. I didn’t care what they were doing when he entered the gym, they were to stop and welcome him. If they were not busy, they were to go over and chat with him, make him feel welcome. And if they went into the hall for any reason, they were to call ahead in a cheerful voice to let him know they were coming near. In a very short time things were back to normal, with this change: when that gentle fellow had a break, he came in to see how the play was going and to talk to these friendly kids. They were able to administer to his loneliness, and he became a very pleasant part of our evenings there. How nice it would have been if I had had the wisdom to suggest this approach before an incident could cause him to become afraid in the place where he and I both spent so many hours.
* * *
Planning ahead for behavior that shows consideration brings to mind something that had happened at the United Nations Building on two different senior trips during the Carthage years. The guides there were students, usually of college age, from other countries. When our guide began her speech in one of the rooms, two girls were giggling and whispering, and it must have seemed to her that she was a target for ridicule. She abruptly stopped talking and punished the whole group by announcing, “Since you are not interested in learning about the UN and are more interested in laughing and talking, I will just take your group into the rooms on the tour, let you look, and then move on.” She did this in two areas before she relented and continued her spiel. I was humiliated, the students were embarrassed and contrite.
The next year I instructed the students while they were still on the bus. I explained that they needed to appreciate the fact that these foreign students judged our country by the way its citizens treated them. This guide will ask for questions and be delighted to answer them. I need you to do a few things—smile and nod at her when she (or he) is addressing you as a group, ask questions that show you are thinking about what he/she just said, and engage in friendly talk with the guide about personal things as we go from room to room. Is this the first time she (he) has been away from her homeland? Does she get homesick? Are people in general pretty friendly? Things like that. About halfway through the tour, she questioned them as a group, “Where are you from? Indiana? Are all the people there as friendly as you are?” Then she told them that this was the best group she had ever taken on a tour at the UN. She repeated that at the end of the tour where she addressed a couple of other guides. Now, why had I not thought to prep my students that first year? Kids really love being successful.
