It was time for a radical re-think. I racked my brains for something I’d be good at -- something that suited my talents, but I’d never had time to pursue. Soon a gem of an answer appeared – Shakespearean acting! I loved Shakespeare, had read or seen most of the plays, and could speak Elizabethan English fluently, if not accurately. An actress friend of mine, Nicola Sheara, encouraged me. She’d been around the
Two weeks later, I was in King
Lear!
Visions of glory danced in my head
as I made my way downtown to begin rehearsals for the role of Gloucester ,
the king’s loyal friend, father of the hero Edgar and the arch-villain Edmund. I landed the part at my first audition, which
I attended with at least a hundred other hopefuls, at the American Theater of
Actors on West 54th Street .
Nicola wasn’t at all surprised
when she heard of my success, which she had predicted. Shakespeare plays are constantly being
produced at every level in New York ,
and they need men of a certain age to play the roles of Kings, Dukes, Archbishops,
doting fathers and ancient pistols. Young
actors are as plentiful as pigeons, but the 58-year-olds have mostly given
up. And a professional 58-year-old
wouldn’t be caught dead at the American Theater of Actors.
ATA didn’t pay, but that was
standard for off-off-Broadway theaters.
This company didn’t even supply the actors with a script, telling them
to bring their own, without specifying which edition. This sometimes made for interesting
rehearsals, with actors arguing about who says what. They did have a large supply of old costumes,
issued dirty and in need of repair. Shoes
and tights were supplied by the actors, which again made for some interesting
contrasts.
The stage for this midsummer night's production was a platform behind a theatrical office building, with two long
benches for the public. Rats lived under
the platform, and sometimes made an entrance if they smelled food. The place was owned by the director of ATA,
James Jennings, who made money renting out three theaters in the building, and
amused himself by putting on Shakespeare in the rear.
As director, Jennings
had nothing to say about the play or the characters, leaving it to each actor
to interpret. He did know how to keep a
show moving, and get it in under three hours.
Once we had it down, he just served as lighting director. He would turn on one big light to start the
show, turn it off at intermission, then on again for the second half. After the first few performances, he would
just turn on the light, go upstairs to his office, come back for intermission,
and repeat.
Actors also had to supply the
audience. Jennings
did nothing to publicize his Shakespeare festival, except type up flyers with
the names of the cast. These we spread
among family, friends, and neighbors. On
our best nights we had forty or fifty spectators, but more often the cast
outnumbered the audience. One evening
five people showed up, including a family of four with a ten-year-old boy, who
entertained himself by rolling back and forth the length of the bench on his
skateboard. The family left at
intermission, so for the second half we strutted and fretted before an audience
of one. He was a friend of one of the
actresses, and happened to be a famous economist, William Seidman, whom I
recognized from his appearances on TV. Seidman
had come to several performances, and chatted with the actors after the
show. He was a class act himself, the
hero of the evening. After watching the
second half all alone, he leaped up and gave us a full-length, standing
ovation.
ATA’s Lear could be a humbling
experience for an actor, but I loved my role. All I had to do to feel my way into it was to
imagine the old CBS newsroom under Walter Cronkite. That was “The King and his Court.” Gloucester
is one of the able vassals who owe their success to the King, and repay him
with utter loyalty. As his friend Kent
says to the deluded Lear, who’s threatening to have him killed, “My life I
never held but as a pawn to wage against thine enemies.”
I had problems playing that role at
CBS, but could imagine myself in it on stage.
What is Gloucester but a
little Lear, an old man ruined, trying to bear up under the worst, even when
his eyes are gouged out by the vicious Cornwall ? I
loved screaming in the eye-gouging scene, and diving off the platform when the
blind Gloucester thinks he’s
jumping off the Cliffs of Dover. But my favorite
scene of all was in Act Four, when Lear and I sit hopeless on the moor, as in
“Waiting for Godot.” The King is mad, I
say, why am I still torturing myself with the truth?
…. How stiff is my vile sense
That
I stand up, and have ingenious feeling
Of
my huge sorrows! Better I were
distract;
So
should my thoughts be severed from my griefs,
And
woes by wrong imaginations lose
The
knowledge of themselves.
Acting was a distraction for me, a
way of severing my thoughts from my griefs.
I had sustained the devastating loss of my prominence in the world, and
didn’t even want to think about it. How
much better to put on a costume and become someone else, whose trials could be
played out for a brief hour on the stage.
My final favorite moment was the curtain call, when I’d run out waving the
bloody bandage that had covered my eyes.
See, I’m not blind, not dead, just a player who can make you believe
these things. (I copied this flourish
from an actor in the Greek National Theater, playing Oedipus the King.)
Being an actor itself was another
layer of unreality. I didn’t really
believe I was bound for a brilliant career on the stage, but I could pretend to
believe it, as long as I had a part. Actors
all entertain themselves by imagining this role, or the next, will be their
breakthrough. They’re happy as long as
the illusion lasts.
For me, it lasted about two
years. I performed in half-a-dozen
Shakespeare plays with entry-level troupes.
But gradually it became clear I would never make a penny as an
actor. No examples came to mind of a sixty-year-old
novice vaulting to prominence in the theater. Instead I needed to face my own
sorrows, and find a way to act out my own life...
Copyright 2015 by Tom Phillips
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