Chapel of Ease

by Alex Bledsoe

  Many classic shows had started here before moving to Broadway, and I’m sure every one that opened here had that same dream: certainly I did about Chapel of Ease. But it took a special mix of talent, luck, and hitting the public right in the gestalt for that to happen, and truthfully, a Southern Gothic ghost story set to what could only be called folk music didn’t sound anything like a sure thing. Then again, neither did a raunchy show with puppets, and look at Avenue Q.

  As I started to open the door, a young woman touched my arm. She had dreadlocks and a dusky complexion, and dressed very Bohemian. “Excuse me, are you working on Neil Callow’s new show?”

  I was instantly on my guard. “And you are…?”

  “I just wondered. I saw him walk in earlier. He hasn’t done anything since Festival Days and Nights. Is this his new show?”

  I didn’t know if she was a stalker or a reporter, and either way, I didn’t want to get involved. “I really can’t say. Excuse me.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Terry Crewson.” Terry was an old asshole roommate who still owed me seven hundred dollars in back rent. I used his name whenever I found myself in situations where I needed a quick alias. Terry had had some interesting adventures over the years, thanks to me.

  “Are you a dancer?”

  “I’m a janitor. Excuse me.”

  When I entered the lobby, its concrete floor bare in between bouts of carpeting, the first face I saw was a friendly one: Ellie Bayrens, who had been the stage manager of Satin Highway, the first show I’d done after moving to New York. She was bubbly and incredibly outgoing, but when it was showtime, a switch got thrown deep in her psyche and she became a martinet. Which, I now knew, is exactly what every show needs in a stage manager.

  “Hey, so you’re working on this show, too?” I said after we hugged.

  “Yeah, Neil invited me, and it’s so hard to tell him no. And I hear you got the big lead role of Crawford.”

  “I thought it was Colton.”

  “I think Neil convinced Ray that it sounded too much like a soap opera character.”

  “He’s got a point. Are they inside?”

  “Yeah, they’re getting ready for the read-through. You’re the first one here. Knock ’em dead, cowboy.”

  I went through the wooden double doors edged with elaborate carvings of Comedy and Tragedy masks. The aisle led past the two hundred or so seats down to the stage, where a long table with a dozen folding chairs around it sat under the harsh work lights. Neil paced and looked at his phone, while Ray sat, his feet on the table.

  “Matt!” Ray called out, and jumped to his feet. “Congratulations. Great to be working with you.”

  We hugged, but before we could speak, two young women entered. They both had black hair, one long and one short, with the sheen of fresh dye jobs still on them. Neil introduced them as Cassandra and Julie.

  “I think I’m playing a ghost,” Julie said.

  “And I’m playing Jennifer,” Cassandra said. She tossed her hair, a gesture that would go from endearing to annoying to infuriating before this show was done. “When I was a kid, I always wanted a nice, normal name like Jennifer.”

  “You think it’s normal?” Ray asked seriously. “Is it too normal? Will people forget it?”

  His intensity startled her. “I was just making a joke.”

  Ray looked at me sheepishly. “Names are hard.”

  Cassandra gave me a wide-eyed, uncertain look as Ray wandered off. I shrugged.

  “There’s coffee and doughnuts over there,” Neil said. “No smoking in the auditorium, I’m afraid, but there’s a spot out back if you just can’t stand it. Although I try not to hire dancers who smoke. It proves right off the bat that they make bad decisions.”

  “What about actors who smoke?” Julie asked.

  “I just want them sober,” Neil deadpanned.

  I shook hands with the girls. “Where’d you get your hair done? I have to do that, too.”

  “Arrojo Studio,” Julie said. “I thought they did a great job.”

  “Are you a natural brunette?” I asked.

  “I’m as blond as Gwen Stefani.”

  “Then they did do a nice job.”

  Soon the other cast members arrived. One of the men, Jason, I’d known from a couple of other shows, and we cordially embraced. He was black, but as I’d learn later, he’d been cast color-blind because he so suited the character. He was followed in by two strangers: tall, slender Ryan and older, squatter Mark.

  This would be the first time we’d all get a sense of the whole show and where we fit into it. We’d also start to understand the interpersonal dynamics that would either weld us into a temporary family or confirm us as inmates of the same asylum.

  When we’d settled down, Neil said, “We’ll just read through, no acting. And for those of you who know the songs, no singing. I just want us all to get a sense of the show as a whole. Then we’ll do some songs, and after that, I want to talk with you one-on-one to see what you think about your part.”

  That last comment was a bid to short-circuit any ego battles before they started. No doubt everyone would offer suggestions to make their own parts larger; I would, if I saw any places where it might help. Even if none of our suggestions were taken, we’d at least feel like we were heard.

  “Oh, and the whole bit about everyone having the same black hair?” Neil continued. “We’re not going with it. Ray agrees with me that it would just make people too hard to identify in the crowd scenes.”

  “Except me,” Jason said with a big smile. We all laughed.

  Cassandra and Julie looked at each other, then said in deadpan unison, “Thanks.”

  “Oh, and Matt? Your character’s name is changed from Colton to Crawford.”

  “Because Colton sounds like a soap opera character?” I asked, hoping that it would make Neil think he and I were on the same wavelength.

  “That’s one reason,” Neil said, and looked at Ray.

  “Crawford was the guy’s real name,” he said. “I made up ‘Colton,’ and it just never seemed to fit. So we went back to reality.” He shook his head and said again, “Names are hard.”

  “Any questions?” Neil asked. “Good. Let’s get started.”

  We opened our scripts and started to read Chapel of Ease. I had the first line: “Sometimes the best mysteries are never solved, because the mystery is too important to lose. This is the story about one of those mysteries. Most of it’s true, and the parts that ain’t, well, they still sound true.”

  Then I read the lyrics of the first song, an overture that told the whole story, and set up the central mystery: Who or what is buried in the dirt floor of the ruined chapel of ease?

  Well, I tried to read the lyrics. Despite my best efforts, I caught myself drifting into the melody, a minor-key procession that had evidently stuck in my head since the audition. When I finished and looked up, everyone was staring at me.

  When Cassandra failed to pick up her cue, Neil reminded us gently, “No singing, okay? We’ll get to that.”

  “My fault,” I said. “Sorry.”

  I caught Ray grinning at me before he covered his smile with his hands and turned away.

  So we went on, reading and absorbing this story. Jennifer, a would-be country music star, is wandering through the woods when she stumbles onto the ruined chapel of ease. She sings a song about her dreams, and then sees another young woman crying over a spot in the center of the dirt floor. When Jennifer calls out to the girl, she disappears. Frightened, Jennifer runs away.

  I’d never been in a show that involved a disappearance onstage, although when I’d seen The Phantom of the Opera as a child, the Phantom had vanished from a chair. I wondered what mechanism they had in mind to achieve that.

  In the next scene, she returns with her boyfriend, the simple and steadfast Lucas, and his best friend, Colton, now Crawford. Lucas sings a love ballad, in which Jennifer counterpoints that she loves Lucas, but staying behind with h
im would be the worst thing ever. She’s got stars in her eyes.

  How would the dynamic of Jason being black play out in the show? I wondered. Especially since we were all supposed to be white good ol’ boys and, I assume, Jason’s character was originally conceived that way. Would it jar? Would it draw so much attention that the rest of us became, “… and the white people?” Or would it add poignancy to his tragedy?

  Yet even as he merely read the song lyrics, having no idea what the melody might sound like, Jason’s voice grew unexpectedly ragged with the character’s emotion. When he finished, I swear it looked like he might be about to cry.

  Once again, Neil spoke up. “Great job not singing, Jason,” he said dryly. “Now, can we stick with not acting, too? We’ve got a long way to go, I don’t want to burn you guys out at the first rehearsal.”

  “Sorry,” Jason said. “It just crept up on me.”

  Again Ray tried to hide his delighted grin.

  Then Crawford sang about Lucas and Jennifer, who’d been sweethearts since they were little kids. He also admitted that he loved Jennifer, and that unlike Lucas, he’d follow her anywhere she wanted to go, but that she’d never seen him as more than a friend.

  We had a dialogue scene where we looked unsuccessfully for any sign of the ghost Jennifer had seen.

  JENNIFER: I swear, she was right here. I mean, ghosts have to haunt the same place over and over, right? So she’s got to still be here.

  CRAWFORD: Maybe she’s as scared of us as we are of her?

  LUCAS: Hey, y’all know how a ghost keeps from getting fat? He exorcises!

  JENNIFER: You’re not taking this seriously.

  LUCAS: Oh, come on, honey. You was either seeing things, or you saw some girl who lives around here. Might be that little Scarberry girl, she’s always been kinda weird.

  JENNIFER: Can she go poof right while you’re looking at her?

  CRAWFORD: I believe you, Jennifer.

  JENNIFER: Thank you, Crawford. I reckon my fiancé thinks he’s marrying some dumb ol’ box of rocks with nice boobs.

  Our characters exited, and the ghost girl from the first scene returned. She sings about the world beyond the valley, which she knows she’ll never see, and her beloved who is fighting somewhere in the Civil War. At the end of the song, she describes a secret that she must keep hidden, so she’s put it in the safest place she knows. She ends the song crying over a spot on the dirt floor. Jennifer, who has returned alone, sees her. Crawford has also returned, following Jennifer, and sees the ghost as well. When the ghost leaves, Jennifer places a rock over the spot where she was crying.

  And that was the end of act 1.

  We took a break then, all of us wound up from the unexpected intensity of emotion in this simple story. Instead of the usual chatting and gossip as we got coffee or snuck out for cigarettes, we were quiet and introspective. I sat on a stool by the electrical switch box, sipping my drink, when Ray came over and said softly, “What do you think so far?”

  “Fucking brilliant,” I said honestly.

  He looked down as he actually blushed. “Thanks. This is the first time anyone but me and my friends have read the whole thing out loud. I was as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

  I almost spit coffee as I tried not to laugh at his folksy humor. Luckily he laughed, too.

  “I hope the rest of it goes as well,” he continued. “The first act is always easy: it’s the setup. It’s making it pay off that’s the trick.”

  “I can’t imagine it won’t.”

  “Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” Then he winked. “See you back at the table.”

  I watched him go, reminding myself that Crawford had the unrequited crush, not me.

  We all returned to the table and began reading act 2. Jennifer returns to the chapel that evening with a shovel, determined to dig up whatever the ghost was mourning, and finds an elderly woman arranging flowers at one of the graves outside the chapel. She was played by Estella, an older actress who would, I assume, be aged even more for the actual show.

  This newcomer sings a song about Shad and Byrda, two lovers separated by the Civil War. He went off to fight for the Union and never returned; she wasted away from nursing an awful secret. The old woman says her name is Byrda, too, after her great-great-grandmother.

  I wondered then how Neil planned to stage all this. I couldn’t imagine dance numbers working with this haunting, melancholy music, but I’d seen stranger things. I couldn’t wait for us to get on our feet and start blocking, just to see what he had in mind.

  First, though, we had to finish this read-through. After Old Byrda’s song, Jennifer tells her what she saw. Old Byrda says that she, too, has seen the ghost of her namesake crying over something inside the ruined chapel. She says it’s a common sight, and yet no one knows who or what’s buried there.

  JENNIFER: You mean no one’s ever dug it up?

  OLD BYRDA: Not to my knowing. You need to be careful, little girl. If you ain’t, you might find that the troubles of someone else’s past just might become your own.

  Jennifer goes into the chapel and starts to dig. Her phone rings; it’s Lucas, wondering where she is. She makes an excuse about driving around listening to music, and says she’ll call him later. While she talks, ghost-Byrda appears, along with ghost-Shad. They sing a love song about how their families don’t want them to get together. Then he takes his leave, saying he has to join the fight against slavery. Byrda sings about the secret she hasn’t told him, one that would destroy their love, and possibly their lives.

  Before Jennifer has dug very far, Crawford arrives. He admits he was following her, and when she demands to know why, he finally confesses his feelings for her—in song, of course. She is totally startled, and doesn’t know what to say. As they talk, another ghost, of a different young man, appears and watches silently. Then he kneels beside the hole and reverently fills it back in. Jennifer tells Crawford she can’t respond to this right now, but gasps when she sees that the hole she’s just dug has been filled. They exit in different directions, and the ghost remains kneeling, head bowed, over the hole. He then sings a reprise of the same song Crawford just sang, but with different lyrics explaining that he and Byrda were once happy until Shad came along.

  I had another song then, a monologue of sorts explaining all the twists that had just happened. It ended with a line that gave me chills:

  And sometimes, when the story ends

  Only the teller’s left to make amends.

  Wow. Was my character, Crawford, going to be the only one left alive at the end? And would I be Puck, seeking the audience’s approval, or Horatio, left amid a stage full of corpses?

  And that ended act 2.

  “Anyone need a break?” Neil asked, and we all shook our heads, enraptured by this story of two generations of love triangles. We wanted to see what happened.

  Act 3 began sometime later, at the wedding of Jennifer and Lucas, held at the chapel of ease. The entire act consisted of one long scene, and it was here that most of the other actors first appeared, creating the community that Jennifer so desperately wanted to escape. There were gossipy asides, snide comments, and, of course, the insinuation that Jennifer and Lucas had to get married. Crawford moped about, followed unseen by the unnamed ghost of the other young man from the chapel.

  Most interesting in this act was the character of Sawyer, the only explicitly non-Tufa in the show, played by Mark. He was the drunken husband of a Tufa woman, and he spewed forth an unexpected and vicious stream of racist comments, equating the Tufa with African Americans and referring to them as “high yellows,” a term I’d never heard before.

  SAWYER: Hey, y’all know why it’s so hard to solve a Tufa murder? All their DNA matches!

  His long-suffering wife, played by a big, busty actress named Diana, loses it, screaming at him to either leave or shut up. He goes to a corner and continues to drink and mutter asides, a Greek chorus figure for the rest of the act.

>   When Jennifer and Lucas appear, they are followed by the ghosts of Byrda and Shad. Lucas is delighted to be marrying Jennifer, and sings as much, but in counterpoint, Shad sings about the doubts and uncertainties of loving a woman he couldn’t protect from the horrors he’d seen in the war. Jennifer’s song was about lost dreams and disappointment, while Byrda recited the list of things she planned for her new home, including lots of children. (She already had names picked out.) Then we reveal that Crawford brought a gun, although it was unclear whom he planned to shoot. The act ended with the first words of the marriage ceremony.

  That made me think. Did the ghosts influence the living? Were our characters merely repeating the acts, and therefore the mistakes, of Byrda, Shad, and the nameless ghost? It wasn’t explicit in the text, but a good playwright wouldn’t need it to be.

  Act 4 was set later the same day. Jennifer and Lucas return to the chapel on their way out of town for their honeymoon. Jennifer is insistent that she has to know what’s buried there, and begins to dig again. The ghosts of Byrda and Shad reappear, unseen to the other characters, singing a duet about how secrets destroy happiness. Crawford comes onstage followed by his own nameless ghost. Crawford is drunk and still carries his gun, and threatens to kill all three of them. He proclaims his love for Jennifer, while the ghost sings and proclaims his love … for Shad.

  This unexpected homoerotic twist got our attention; we’d assumed the earlier song, when he sang about how happy he and Byrda were until Shad came along, referred to Shad stealing Byrda’s affections. This cast it in a whole new light. Neil watched us carefully, cataloging our reactions, interested to see if they gave him anything with which to work. He was a master at pulling emotions from actors, often ones they didn’t know they felt. Ray’s expression remained neutral, but he watched as closely as Neil.