“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” This was the shit. The good shit. We were the elites. All I had ever performed before was sophomoric fare like my first role in Arsenic and Old Lace. Not that those things are bad, but this was Julius Fucking Caesar, and I landed Mark Motherfucking Antony.
The Inland Northwest Theater Arts Festival was an annual event that drew hundreds of Theater Kids from dozens of High Schools all over the area for workshops, performances, and indulging their weirdness among their tribe. One year, the Guest of Honor had been a mime who had a career playing gorillas on screen. He had been in Trading Places and thrown suitcases around in a commercial. That year, we had the Dad from Poltergeist.
The host school’s auditorium was fancier than the one I was accustomed to; a revolving stage and a trapdoor entrance stage rear. We had sort of a trapdoor, but it was just a hole you had to look for. Our proscenium had an incredibly old pink neon light winding around it that was kind of buzzy and probably leaked something hazardous. There was an old prop room behind the large clock visible from the freeway. Our deal was hungrier and more authentic. Besides, the Dad from Poltergeist was an alum, so we had that.
Part of the festival was awkward because Kiersten and I had broken up a few months before. We got through a performance right when it happened, so we could do this. Not that it wasn’t painful, but I handled it from my end by just leaving her alone and not talking to her. As far as a seventeen-year-old male goes, freezing out a girl isn’t so bad for toxic behavior.
The festival has a showcase performance on Saturday night, with each participating school nominating two students each to audition for it. I was not only chosen to represent our school, I lurched my way through the sides well enough to be cast. Some guy from Ephrata was Brutus, and Cassius was from a private school I hadn’t heard of. The director was a woman in a black coat with an accent none of us quite figured out. A little German, a little French, maybe she was from Switzerland? We were a little terrified of her but couldn’t name why.
We were cast at ten in the morning and the performance was at eight that night. The director had stitched together excerpts from Act 3, scenes 2 and 3. The performance showed Brutus and Cassius “convincing” Antony of the justice of Caesar’s murder, then his rhetorical jiu-jitsu when he agrees to address Rome.
The rehearsals were good. We got on well. It makes it better to hate each other on stage when the actors are friends. “For Brutus is an honorable man; they are all honorable men—” while giving them the most vicious side eye. But the memorization was a struggle. Cassius had trouble with “You know not what you do. Do not consent that Antony speak in his funeral. Know you how much people may be moved by that which he will utter?” He’d ask Brutus “Do you consent that—” and add “Do you know how much people will—” He wasn’t alone in that. It was funny at first, but we didn’t have time to screw around. The Director had this tiny sigh that grew to chill our souls. She was the kind of person you wanted to please, and we weren’t. During the final rehearsal, things got even worse. Self-consciousness is death, and doing this in costume and under the bright lights made us even more self-conscious. At 7:58, the stage manager handed us our scripts in the wings at the director’s direction. We were doing this as “Reader’s Theater.” Cassius and Brutus were relieved. I was ashamed. This wasn’t very elite of us.
The first group did a selection from Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche was awesome. They certainly didn’t have scripts in their hands.
I dropped my script when the stage manager pointed at us, and we took our places before the curtains parted and the bright lights haloed us. Brutus’ eyes clearly conveyed oh shit.
We were fire. Until I addressed Caesar’s invisible dead body with the two of them behind me, arms clasped in conspiracy. “O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of Earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers—” Fuck yeah. I got this. “Thou art the ruins of the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times.” The pause before I take them to task went on. And on. “Cry havoc and let slips the dogs of war” was coming up pretty soon. After “Woe to the hands that shed this costly blood” and—no. Not plural hands, just, “hand.” The pause went on. Failure is like a black hole that doesn’t trap all light, just all sound. That auditorium was silent as an empty cathedral. Hundreds of eyes on me, unseen beyond the burning spotlight, including Kiersten’s gorgeous blue eyes no doubt swelling with empathy for me. Maybe pity.
There’s an old cartoon about a man who finds a singing and dancing frog that only performs when no one else is present. The man fractures into panic and desperation when the frog refuses. I felt like him, frantic in my stillness. Finally, words come.
“Hello! Ma baby, Hello! Ma ragtime gal. Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart’s on fire!” Lean in, give some jazz hands.
“If you refuse me, honey, you’ll lose me, then you’ll be left alone;” Start to exit the stage, giving high kicks, abandoning a horrified and frozen Cassius and Brutus. “Oh, baby, telephone and tell me I’m your own!”
I fled that auditorium like it was on fire, running down the street in a red toga.
Calven Eldred once had an African dwarf frog in an aquarium. It was always exciting to watch the frog dart to the surface for a sip of air, then beat his legs back down to his nest under the plants. It was exciting in a different way when the frog murdered a neon tetra for no discernible reason. It’s a good thing he was so small; that guy would have killed humans for sport if he could. Calven also holds an MFA in Fiction from Eastern Washington University and is still mad that Netflix pulled the plug on Sense8.