Month: October 2014

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Stage Left

There’s a doorknob on my desk from a troupe that ceased to be.

The Doorknob Award usually garners a few questions when people notice it. The simple answer is that it’s a prize given for overcoming technical difficulties, where the set broke down but the actor didn’t. I got it for navigating a grease-covered stage as the moustache-twirling villain in a melodrama, after the audience got a bit too enthusiastic about throwing popcorn.

It’s one of my favorite things that I ever brought home from the Community Theatre of Emporia. And now it has to be a lasting memory.

This week, I found out the CTE is no more.

I’ve never lost a theatre company before. I never really believed one could. Like most disasters, it’s a possibility you can be intellectually aware of without realizing it can happen to you. It seems even less likely when the company has a long run, 34 years in the case of the CTE.

But sometimes, in spite of everything, the show really doesn’t go on.

There were a lot of reasons. There always are. The company had to move out of its base in the Emporia Arts Council about the time I moved out of Kansas, and never really found another permanent home. Toward the end, there was never quite enough money and never quite enough hands on deck, a familiar refrain to many actors and producers. It’s always been easier to get people to see a show than to perform in one, and in this over-busy day and age, even getting them to be an audience takes a lot of work.

Funny. So many times it never felt like work. Not really.

I think many of us have a space like that. The home away from home, the place you come because you want to, not because you have to. And whether it’s a church, or a pub, or a reading group, or a stage – or even an online community – it comes to feel like an extension of your own family, a place where, as the song goes, everybody knows your name.

Losing a place like that can feel like a death. When the bookstore closes or the website goes away or the mall gets bulldozed, it leaves behind questions, confusion and uncertainty about the future. It’s easy to rehash the deed and wonder if anything could have changed it, to get angry or depressed or numb.

For an actor, the poignancy has a jagged edge. After all, we create dreams. We turn sweat and imagination into worlds that never were. To be reminded that the magic has limits, that all our powers of sub-creation still have to bow to the world outside the stage door – it’s humbling. And more than a little frightening.

Like many a mourner, it would be too easy for me to get lost in grief. So instead, I’ll raise my virtual glass to stir the echoes, strengthen the memories, and wake up the ghosts.

Here’s to the CTE.

Here’s to the crew that performed outdoor Shakespeare in 95 degree heat and 95 percent humidity, bringing the same passion whether the audience held 100 people or three.

Here’s to the company that made sets fall apart on command and who improvised fast when they fell apart without one.

Here’s to my role as an actor literally playing God in “J.B.,” complete with a beard that belonged on a Pearl Street busker.

Here’s to blunted swords and guns with blanks, to robber bridegrooms and roaring Roosevelts, to Christmases on the road with “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.”

And yes, here’s to popcorn-covered stages so slick you could skate on them.

Here’s to you, my friends and family. May our creation rest in peace and live in memory.

And someday, like a stage-door ghost, may it rise and walk again.

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Reaching for Magic

It didn’t come with a letter to Hogwarts. But that was about the only thing missing from the Halloween costume on the kitchen table.

“I have a wand, too,” Missy told Heather. Indeed she did, along with the glasses, robe and tie needed to transform our small, slight, rumple-haired ward into the small, slight rumple-haired Harry Potter. Add in a lightning scar from Heather’s makeup kit – assuming Missy didn’t squirm and Disapparate out of reach – and the look of her favorite bedtime character would be complete.

No doubt about it. This was going to be cool.

In matters of trick-or-treat season, I usually have more enthusiasm than ability. This is despite the excellent foundation laid by my Mom, who in my grade-school years, came up with costume after costume that fit both my eager imagination and the Halloween Commandments.

1) Thou shalt be able to fit a coat over it.

2) Thou shalt be able to fit a doorway around it.

Violating these rules could lead to tragedy, as my wife Heather discovered one year, when her camera costume was too wide for her to enter the Twin Peaks Mall easily. I understand the lack of candy access has scarred her memories to this day – or at least heightened her sense of melodrama.

But within those rules, almost anything was possible. And so, I cheerfully ventured forth as a bowler-hatted ghost, or a crackling scarecrow, or Robin Hood with a homemade bow (thanks, Dad) ready for chocolate-covered glory in the cold October air.

And then I grew up and mostly yielded the stage to others. Time was short and my sewing ability even shorter. (All right, nonexistent.) A third commandment magically appeared on the list:

3) Thou shalt be able to readily assemble thy costume on Oct. 30, after speaking the ritual incantation “How did Halloween come so early this year?”

Sometimes I still had a fun and easy idea, like the year I showed up to work as an IRS agent with a briefcase reading “I’M NOT DEATH – I’M THE OTHER ONE.” But the rest of the time, costumes became something for plays. Or, more often, for other people.

It happens to most of us, I think. Not enough time. Not enough energy. A little too much self-consciousness.

So we tell ourselves, anyway, and not just on Halloween. And so costumes don’t get assembled, books don’t get written, chances don’t get taken. It’s easy. Even convincing.

And often, about as transparent as a Halloween ghost.

There are always limits. Time, money, ability. But within those, amazing things can still be possible. Or at least fun ones.

But first, the dream has to be more important than the limits.

That’s where I think parents have an advantage. Building a costume for yourself might seem silly or self-indulgent. But when it’s your child getting ready for a party or for the chocolate patrol? No contest. You do what you need to do.

Maybe it’s easier to set aside those doubts when it involves someone else. Maybe self-consciousness grows weaker when the moment is no longer just about the self.

Maybe, just maybe, dreams grow more potent when shared.

It’s a magic worth trying. And it doesn’t even require a holly wand or a Hogwarts education. Just a little bit of caring about the things and people that matter.

That’s why Missy Potter has a wand today.

And it’s why we’re all conjuring up more fun than we could have imagined.

 

 

 

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To Say the Least

“Ma shoe.”

Missy had just finished her bath and gotten into pajamas. She pointed a small finger at her blue sneakers as she had done on many nights, sometimes just to point out they were there, sometimes to ask to put them on or get them out of the way.

“Ma shoe.”

Pause.

“Ma tennis shoe.”

I blinked.

OK. That was new.

In fact, for Missy, that was practically grand oratory.

If you’ve read this column regularly, you’ve probably started to get a feel for Missy, my wife Heather’s developmentally disabled aunt. She is, to say the least, a lady of personality, capable of being roused to high excitement at the prospect of bowling or dancing or even having a bite of peanut butter pie.

But she’s not a woman of many words. Not normally, anyway. People who meet Missy for the first time are sometimes surprised that she speaks at all; those that hang around her longer get used to hearing some of her more common phrases such as “I wanna eat the food” or “I wan’ my book” – the latter of which can mean “book” or “purse.” Many times, her exact meaning has to be decoded from her face, her gestures and a carefully chosen vocabulary.

But lately, that vocabulary seems to be growing.

After a weekly trip to the therapy pool, Missy proudly told Heather that she had been “swimming.”

My own title, which has mostly been “He” or “Frank” (her father’s name) for three years is now sometimes “Scott.” Or even “Dad,” to my startled surprise.

And when our biggest dog started pestering her for food, Missy doubled us all over with laughter with a hearty “Gonamit, Blake!”

A well-chosen word can do that. And Missy has more choices than she used to.

That’s heartening for a lot of reasons.

We’ve never been quite sure what goes on inside Missy’s mind. The incident that caused her brain damage happened in infancy, and even now, I often describe her as “sometimes 4, sometimes 14 and sometimes 40,” based on the various ways she interacts with the world. Her occasional words are a part of that, sometimes reflexive, sometimes hinting at much more going on behind those mischievous green eyes.

In electronics terms, it’s a question of whether the computer itself is damaged – or just the printer and monitor. How much does she understand? How often does she know exactly what’s going on, without being able to express it?

I’ve often suspected the latter, especially since in moments of high excitement, she seems to bypass whatever’s blocking her communication and express herself. (Her question of “Where’s Gandalf?” during a tense moment in “The Hobbit” is now one of our most retold examples.) Every time she adds another word or phrase, another building block, she reinforces that.

More than that. She reinforces my own hope. Missy and I are the same age – so if she can keep learning and growing, so can I.

So can any of us.

Did I say Missy’s words could be reflexive sometimes? Thinking back, that’s true of most of us. We get locked into patterns of speech, of behavior, of life. After a while, it’s easy to stop noticing our surroundings and just fly on autopilot.

Shaking that up can be the healthiest thing in the world. It might be a big trip across the country or just walking instead of driving through the neighborhood. Anything that makes you put on new eyes.

Heather’s joked that in Missy’s case, she suddenly found herself with two guardians who wouldn’t shut up. There may be some truth to that. Certainly, we’ve often talked to her, with her and around her. Maybe her own words started to come in self-defense.

Whatever the reason, it’s happening. And it’s exciting, as new lessons often are. I can’t wait to see what the next bend in the road will reveal.

Wherever it leads, Missy has her shoes ready.

Her tennis shoes.

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Into the Cone

Our dog Duchess has gone bonkers.

BONK! She ricochets off the kitchen’s doorframe.

BONK! She bounces off the bookshelf while charging in to get her food.

BONK! She rebounds off the nearest family member as she tries to hurry past.

“Careful!”

Yes, our little border collie-lab mix has been fitted with what the books call an “Elizabethan collar” and what everyone else calls a Cone of Shame. You know the thing. Everyone knows the thing: a big plastic cone fitted around a dog’s neck so that its head looks like it’s growing out of a cheap, old-fashioned record player.

It’s not about humiliation, of course, but about safe healing. A veterinarian uses the collar to keep a dog from getting at wounds while they’re healing – in this case, to keep Duchess from getting at a bandaged-up ear, acquired after an argument with our other dog Blake over whose bone was whose. Blake weighs 80 pounds, Duchess 45, but when her stubbornness is brought to the surface, it can be a pretty even match.

Naturally, he’s curious about her new headdress. Enough so that we’ve wondered if he needs his own, to keep Blake from sticking his big head into her constricted space. But I’m not sure our giggle reflex could survive two dogs in the cone, especially one as clumsy as Big Blake.

BONK!

It’s her first time in the big cone – quite an achievement for an 11-year-old dog. It does mean she has no previous experience to call on, though, so she’s had to figure out exactly what she can and can’t do. Her usual habit of slipping through the edge of a doorway is out, for instance. Meal times took a little practice, though now she’s able to fit her cone directly over the dish as she eats, which not only gives her a private dining space, but makes her look like a vacuum cleaner with fur and legs.

In short, Duchess has had to learn her limitations. And provided some harmless amusement while doing so.

As it happens, the laughs have been welcome. After all, this is fall in a “swing state,” meaning a barrage of political ads from every direction. On the television. On the phone. On the Internet. I’m waiting for one to show up in a Happy Meal. (“Do you want those fries? Shady McCandidate does. And he wants to give them to his special-interest buddies….”)

It’s tedious, repetitive and mind-numbingly counter-productive. If anything, the zeal ad vitriol of the ads make me less likely to vote for their sponsors. What’s needed is a way to lighten the proceedings and maybe inject a little humility into what can be a very proud profession.

Which is why I suggest that all politicians running for election be required to wear the Cone of Shame through Election Day. Both live and in all advertising.

Think about it. Even the most apocalyptic of speeches and commercials lose some of their punch when delivered by someone who looks like a failed auditioner for the Tin Man. Fundraising dinners become a challenge and broadcast interviews nearly impossible. (“Dang it … can someone help me get this microphone on? Please?”)

As with a much-loved pet, it might inspire some harmless laughter while teaching the new “conehead” their limitations and keeping them from doing excessive harm. None of these are bad things in a political process. In fact, judging by many of the candidates, a little less self-assurance might be very welcome. (There’s a reason I’ve pushed Charlie Brown for president before.)

Until that wonderful time, we’ll have to do the best we can with imagination and the mute button. And of course, a lot of patience. We’ll get through this season. Even if it’s uncomfortable and awkward and we can’t quite figure out how …

BONK!

Hmmm.

Maybe Duchess and I have more in common than I thought.