Old dogs, maybe a new trick...

“Whatever you can do, or dream you

can do, begin it…begin it now.”

– Wolfgang von Goethe

She turned to her husband, “Bill, don’t you think Ted would make a good Stage Manager in “Our Town.”

‘Our Town’ is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American play written by Thorton Wilder, has been presented hundreds of times and is a wonderful metaphor for life and beyond.

“Stage Manager? Hmmm,” I thought. I had read the play when I was young but truthfully did not remember anything about it. 

The Stage Manager must be some character that comes in and out moving scenery around. I thought.

“Here,” my friend said a week later, “Take my copy of the script and see what you think.”

What I thought when I read the script was, "NO WAY was I going to consider this.” The character doesn’t move scenery but as narrator holds the story together. What about the lines? Holy Cow, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve pages of solid monologue. Great story…love to see the show, but Nope, this was not for me.

It is funny how your mind works when you believe you’re not capable of doing something. The fear of being exposed as a fraud is powerful. Protect your ego at all costs. Don't do anything that gives the impression you have weaknesses. Defend, deflect, excuse, but for God’s sake DO NOT expose the fear.

My defense narrative consisted of… “Well I could do this, but I’m seventy. I mean if I were younger, maybe,” or “I am not an actor. Only done it once in college forty-four years ago." There were other justifications I generated, but show the truth? N-E-V-E-R!! After all, I have an image to protect.

Ignoring these comments and unaware of my internal turmoil, my friend asked, “Well, will you at least try out?”

Hesitantly, using a protective caveat, I said, “Okay, if I can learn the part BEFORE auditions, I’ll at least try out.” I knew I would NOT be able to do this – it was pure subterfuge. When the auditions arrived in February, I would say, “Well, I gave it the old college try, but I just couldn’t get it in my head. Sorry.” Whew, I would be off the hook, and no one the wiser.

I couldn’t lie to the woman, of course.  So, I would try a little, so could say I had.

In late December I opened the play’s first act and began playing around with the text:

“The name of the town is Grovers Corners, New Hampshire – just across the Massachusetts line. Latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes – Longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes. The first act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn.”

Hmmm. That didn't take too terribly long to memorize. Maybe I would try a couple more lines, just to be able to say, you know, I'd given a real effort – being seventy and all.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it (a couple of weeks), I had gotten the first act tucked somewhere in the folds of the three-pound chunk of protoplasm between my ears.

Things have a way…

The resistance voice, I can’t do this, grew a little fainter.

Another voice began to emerge – a woman's voice. It was my mother's, reading to her son, Watty Piper’s The Little Engine that Could. My mother has been gone for many years, and yet there she was reading away as though she were holding me in her arms.

The story goes like this. A little train carrying toys for children is stuck on one side of a mountain – its engine broken down. It has a deadline to get its cargo over the mountain. The train tries unsuccessfully to get help from passenger and freight trains as well as a kindly old engine. Each has an excuse as to why it cannot or will not help. There is, however, a little blue train used only to switch engines and cars in the train yard. Acknowledging her lack of experience and size, she agrees to try the mountain.

My mother's voice picks up the narrative here (I can hear her as I write these words).

“She tugged and pulled and tugged and slowly, slowly, slowly they started off…Puff, puff, chug, chug went the little blue engine. ‘I think I can – I think I can – I think I can – I think I can. Up, up, up. Faster and faster…until at last, they reached the top of the mountain. And the little blue engine smiled and seemed to say…I thought I could. I thought I could. I thought I could. I thought I could..."

No. Mum, you don't understand, I can't do this. It is too much. I could never learn all of the lines. And yet, there she was saying… "I think you can…I think you can…I think you can…" Her voice began to drown out all of the negative thoughts and I actually began to believe that maybe I could.

Mothers – gotta love ‘em…

The auditions took place last week.

The first night, I read from the script as did all of the others vying for different roles. The second night I was asked to read the opening lines of the second Act. I put the book down, took a breath and gave the first two and a half pages of the second act. 

In the end, I did not get the part, but on the way home that night, I was ‘flying down the mountain,' as Fanny Dreisinger sang to her son – I knew you could, I knew you could, I knew you could…

Epilogue

All was not lost, I won a fairly substantial part (Doc Gibbs). A character I had not paid much attention to.

Rehearsals begin Monday night – “I think I can…"

ted