I Loved To Teach

My experiences with community theaters falls into two categories—as an actor, and as a director.  As an actor, I was once called to take on a role in the show Here Lies Jeremy Troy—I think the show is little-known, but well worth knowing.  I had not auditioned for the play because, upon reading it, I realized that there was no role that fit my profile.  When the director called me three weeks before opening to say that if I didn’t step in to help, the show would not go on.  I gave my excuses—“No one would ever believe that I had been a college quarterback—I was never athletic, and not built like an athlete.”  “I am ten years too old, and it is a romantic role.”  The director was a novice—his first show.  He had cast his wife, also a novice and a bit large, in the female lead.  That theater group was completely divided into those who did my shows and those who did not.  This cast was entirely made up of the group who held me in disdain.  I liked these people, but I knew well that they disliked me.  Why should I do this? 

The young lady who played opposite me was new to the stage, not getting much direction, and eager to hear any suggestions I gave her.  I decided to take it on.  My brother was a fine athlete, as were many of my friends.  I would imitate them.  We rehearsed at the boys’ club until Sunday of the last week.  There was one bit between me and the leading man that had, when introduced in rehearsal, produced hysteria among the crew and workers.  I’m sure he assumed the laughter was for me (but it was great teamwork—he was a fine actor).  That bit never came up again because he simply refused to deliver the line that set it off.  I didn’t need it, but I thought that was a shame.  The night we moved into the small former high school theater, I told the younger actress, “Watch carefully tonight.  For two weeks, I have been playing catch-up.  They have set their deliveries.  I never do that, trying to say lines a new, fresh way at each rehearsal.  Tonight I will pass them up with a performance-ready delivery.  That will send them back to their scripts to find fresh laughs, and they will get sharper and fresher.” 

And surely enough, it was a prophetic utterance.  We were in costumes and the set was coming to life.  In one performance, an older actor struck me in the back as I stood near the built-in footlights and nearly knocked me off the stage.  Backstage I heard him bragging thus, “I’ll teach him to walk in front of me!”  No one had ever told him that when an actor crosses onstage, he crosses in front if he is delivering a line.  I guess the director didn’t know that either.

I had instructed the prop lady to prepare a plate of half Pringles sprayed with whipped cream foam to dissolve rapidly as I seemed to be eating a whole plate of hors d’oeuvres.  What she gave me was Cheez-its with spray-on cheese that wouldn’t swallow.  I crammed them in, stepped offstage to spit them out and stepped back to cram some more in—awful!  I had figured out the Pringles for Hello, Dolly in the scene where she eats a whole turkey (?) “and dumplings, lighter than air they are.”

Very few people saw that show—about 25 people a night, and many of them were repeaters (family).  We took cuttings to a contest in Evansville, and I took off work to participate, although the cuts were carefully chosen to make sure none of my scenes were important so that I had no chance for an award.  In fact, the only award we got went to the young actress who played opposite me.  I had tried to insist that the cuts be prefaced by an explanation that the title,  Here LIES Jeremy Troy meant that everything about the young lawyer was a falsehood.  They were insulted, insisting that the play was so well-known that this would make us look stupid.  However, the judges said, “We couldn’t really understand any of the humor in the scenes because we didn’t realize the basic premise until the final cutting.

The girl in the blog was married and had two small girls.  I had to kiss her like an athlete might kiss a model there to pose for an artist.  She wore falsies and a blonde, sexy wig and her girls didn’t recognize her once she was made up.  I once heard her say she had slept with every member of her high school football team.  I thought she was really hysterical.  One of the gags was that she had removed her dress and the artist’s wife came out wearing it.  We had to have two dresses alike–one a size 7, the other a size 16.  Not too convincing, but funny in its own right.  You remember she was the wife of the director who had offered to direct the play free so he could give her the part.  I think the purity of my life was a constant joke among the rest of the cast.  At the "blow-off" brush up rehearsal for the second weekend, they set up surprises for me (actors are allowed to do this at the brush-up.)  When I lifted the photo that showed the lying lawyer had not really been graduated from college, saying, “These college graduation photos are all alike…” , it was a Playboy nude photo.  It got a whoop out of me that the cast enjoyed.  My gag was to put on the padded bra under my overlarge costume and sag my shoulders until the appropriate line when I threw back my shoulders and thrust out my chest–actors fell to the floor all over the stage.

Months later, the Lions Club of a nearby town asked us to learn and perform a new show for a dinner theater night.  We explained that royalties and playbooks, set, costumes, etc., would be cost prohibitive; however, we did have a show ready that no one had scene, and they agreed to a revival.  The place was sold out, and there was a wine bar, so the audience was remarkably warmed up, and we played to raves, so the experience was, overall, a good one.  My mother remarked after she saw it that she never had realized how much I looked like my brother Chuck, whose strut fitted a man who had boxed in Golden Gloves, so, with athletic shoes, heavy athletic sweats and a fitting swagger, I didn’t make them think, “That sissy was no quarterback.  The only student to have seen it said, “Mr. Rhoades, you should walk like that all the time.  It makes you look ten years younger.”  Nice, huh?  If you are looking for a pleasant show for community theater, you might choose to look this one over