ACTING AND BUILDING AND SEWING AND PAINTING AND LIGHTING

Wesleyan's Theater

I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.  I spent most of my day building sets (I was terrible), setting lights (I was dreadful), making or finding props (fair to middling), making costumes (not bad), learning lines (extremely quick study)and rehearsing The House of Bernarda Alba.  We were performing this play "in the round" which meant that we would be surrounded by the audience who would sit on chairs set on the stage itself. I had never acted this way before and it presented challenges as someone's back was always facing part of the audience.  When dress rehearsal arrived, we girls had to deal with long black mourning dresses (except in one scene Adela rebels and enters wearing a bright green dress.  Shocking!)and long (cheap) black wigs.  If I turned rapidly, my long black hair would slap me in the face.  As if poor lovesick Adela didn't have enough to deal with.

           

Adela in her green dress

Pepe el Romano, Adela's lover and her sister's fiance, was apparently hot stuff (think Antonio Banderas at 25), but he never actually appears so Adela's passion had to be shown another way.

Near the end of the play Adela comes in from the barn where she had a tryst with the virile Pepe.  Our director, who gave new meaning to the word "flamboyant," decided I should wear white petticoats and some sort of white corset contraption that pinched in my waist and pushed up my still feeble breasts.  I would be panting and straw would be hanging from my petticoats and twisted in my long cheap black wig hair.  Fortunately, for everyone concerned there are no extant photos of this vision and when I try to recreate my appearance in my mind, memory fails me.  I do recall that at dress rehearsal when I came running onstage, breathless, dripping straw and tossing my curls back, there was a stunned pause and then hysterical laughter.  Our director was not thrilled.

As all of us walked back to our dorms, we were in high spirits.  Rehearsals had gone well and we knew the play would be a success in its own dark, tragic way.  The night air was cool and crisp and we were companions in our shared enterprise.  I was happy.

When I entered my room, it was filled with the usual suspects lounging on the beds, dropping candy wrappers and laughing about the latest frat party they had all attended.  (I had not.)

Rosalind's best friend (my diary reader) said, "You're not the only one around here that's been in plays.  I was in our senior play last year and I played a real bitch!!"

"Was it type casting?" I innocently asked.

"No, it was Damsels in Distress."