“The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it’s so accidental. It’s so much like life” (Arthur Miller)
I thoroughly enjoy amateur theatricals. The performers are always enthusiastic, sometimes wonderfully proficient, and the shows often give us something accidentally amusing.
One memorable production I saw was a school play where the students were acting in a solemn scene for an audience of adoring parents, family and friends. The young thespians were standing in front of a large hand-painted hinged canvas screen. We never quite worked out how it all went wrong. Did someone’s foot accidentally bump up the screen? Did the vibration of teenage feet on the stage cause instability, or did some jealous, overlooked understudy give it an incy wincy, teeny weeny shove with both hands?
Whatever the cause, the result was that the screen fell gracefully forward onto the heads of the junior actors. Because of wind resistance, it all unfolded in slow motion, like a huge pelican descending from behind and above the assembled company. Moreover, the actors were totally unaware of its silent fall from behind them, but the audience had a few seconds to anticipate what was about to happen. We all reacted with gasps, finger pointing, warning yelps and horrified expressions, while the cast remained blissfully unaware. Then came the crash, the muffled screams, the rush forward by the crew and parents. Fortunately, canvas screens, even large painted ones, seldom cause injury. Hurt pride, perhaps, but death, never. The collapsed screen was pulled off the junior actors. The director, a teacher who was a hardened school play veteran, made a quick check that there was no blood, broken bones or severely bruised egos. The players dusted themselves off, rearranged their costumes, the screen was set up again, and they resumed the play. The show must go on. Five minutes later, equally gracefully, the same scenery collapsed again.
By now the audience was beginning to think that this was a planned malfunction, to keep our interest from flagging. I overheard two fathers discussing how long it would be before the screen collapsed a third time. Certainly the second collapse lightened the audience mood by adding some unexpected slapstick humour. We reassured ourselves that any injury was highly unlikely although the scenery now had some unusual head-shaped bulges in it. This time around two reluctant students were volunteered to hold the screen steady. And the play, which must go on, did indeed go on without further incident.
I once took part in an amateur production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” in suburban Sydney, as one of the policemen in the chorus. Our big moment was to tramp heavily around the stage bellowing “With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal …. no sound at all, we never speak a word … Tarantara! Tarantara!”
The hero, young Frederic, having turned 21, had completed his apprenticeship to a band of gentlemanly Cornwall pirates. Though he was from a respectable military family, he had been mistakenly apprenticed to pirates. The family retainer had misheard the father’s instructions that Fred be apprenticed as a ship’s pilot and instead, signed him up to train as a pirate. Now finally back on dry land, Frederic spied a group of pretty girls, all sisters. One of the sisters, Mabel, fell for Frederic, and he fell for her. There was quite a bit of falling in this production, as we shall see. My most vivid memory was the scene where, overcome with love, Mabel collapsed into Frederic’s arms. Unfortunately Mabel and Frederic, though well matched in love, were ill matched in size, Mabel being more of the curvy persuasion and Fred being more like the stick figure father in the stickers you see on the back of SUVs.
In the first performance, Mabel’s swoon into Fred’s ever-loving arms became Mabel crashing unromantically onto the floor with a noise like a tree being felled. She picked herself up, dusted herself off and the show went on, as it must. For many of the cast this moment became the most anticipated high point of the show. We could hardly wait to see whether Fred would catch her or not.
In another amateur production I had a small part which required me, in a fit of stage anger, to seize a ceramic flower vase and throw it onto the floor, smashing it to pieces and hopefully waking up the audience. One of the cast was a potter who kindly provided a supply of faulty unfired pots, which she assured us would safely shatter into large pieces of blunt pottery when dropped. On opening night I shouted my angry line, grabbed the vase, hurled it onto the floor …. and it bounced several times before settling down as intact as a basketball. Remembering the instructions in the script, I threw it onto the floor again and again without any smashing success. I was determined that the show must go on as scripted. Perhaps I added a few unscripted comments about the unbreakable pot, which amused the audience, however the moody tension the director had been striving for descended into farce, all by accident of course.
© Geoff Milton 2020
