If We Were Villains

by M. L. Rio

  “Excellent,” Camilo said. “Let’s talk about when or why you might want to use this move. Anyone?”

  Filippa was the first to answer. (In Camilo’s class, she often was.) “Since you’re not crossing the body, you can stand closer together.” She tilted her head, looking from Camilo to James as if she were rewinding and replaying the blow in her mind. “Which makes it almost intimate, and especially jarring precisely because it’s so intimate.”

  Camilo nodded. “It’s remarkable how the theatre—and Shakespeare in particular—can numb us to the spectacle of violence. But it’s not just a stage trick. When Macbeth has his head chopped off, or Lavinia has her tongue cut out, or the conspirators bathe their hands in Caesar’s blood, it should affect you, whether you’re the victim, the aggressor, or only a bystander. Have you ever seen a real fight? It’s ugly. It’s visceral. Most importantly, it’s emotional. Onstage we have to be in control so we don’t hurt other actors, but violence has to come from a place of violent feeling, or the audience won’t believe it.” He glanced from one of us to the next until his eyes landed on me. A grin flickered under his moustache. “Oliver, would you join us?”

  “Sure.” I pushed myself to my feet and took Camilo’s place across from James.

  “Now,” Camilo said, putting one hand on each of our shoulders, “you two are famously good friends, aren’t you?”

  We smirked at each other.

  “James, you’re going to try the backhand on Oliver. Don’t say it out loud, but I want you to think of what he would have to do to make you hit him. And don’t move a muscle until you feel that impulse.”

  James’s smile faded, and he watched me with a close, confused sort of look, eyebrows pinched tightly over the bridge of his nose.

  “Oliver, I want you to do the opposite,” Camilo said. “Imagine you’ve provoked this attack, and when it happens, let the feeling hit you even though the fist doesn’t.”

  I blinked, already at a loss.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” he said, and stepped back. “Take your time.”

  We stood there, motionless, staring at each other. James’s eyes were keen bright gray, but standing so close I could see a little ring of gold around each pupil. Something was moving, working, in his mind—accompanied by a tightening at the corners of his jaw, a nervous twitch of his lower lip. James had never really been angry with me, to my knowledge. Transfixed by the strangeness of it, I completely forgot my own part of the exercise and simply watched the pressure build, his shoulders rising, fists clenched tight at his sides. He gave me a small, curt nod. I knew what was coming, but some incongruous reflex made me lean forward, tilt toward him. His hand slashed up toward my head, but I didn’t react, didn’t do the nap or the turn, just flinched as something sharp flicked across my cheek.

  It was weirdly still and quiet in the room. James frowned at me, the spell of animosity broken. “Oliver? You didn’t— Oh!” He took my chin in one hand and turned my head, brushed the side of my face. Blood. “God, I’m sorry.”

  I grabbed his elbow to steady myself. “No, it’s all right. Is it bad?”

  Camilo edged James out of the way. “Let’s see,” he said. “No, just a scratch, caught the corner of his watch. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know what happened, I just spaced out and leaned into it.” I gave him an awkward shrug, suddenly aware that he and the four classmates I’d forgotten about were all staring at me. “It’s my fault. I wasn’t ready.” James, not forgotten—how could he be?—stood watching me with such profound concern that I almost laughed. “Really,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  But when I went back to my seat I nearly staggered, as dizzy as if he really had hit me.

  SCENE 10

  Our first off-book rehearsal did not go well.

  It was also our first rehearsal in the space. The Archibald Dellecher Theatre sat five hundred people and was decorated with all the modesty of a baroque opera house. The seats were upholstered in the same blue velvet as the grand drape, and the chandelier was so impressive that some people seated in the balcony spent more time staring at it than watching whatever play they’d come to see. With six weeks of rehearsal left, none of the actual platforms or set pieces had been built, but they were all taped out on the stage. It felt like standing on a giant jigsaw puzzle.

  I knew my Casca lines, but I hadn’t spent as much time on Octavius, since he didn’t enter until Act IV. I crouched in a third-row seat, furiously rereading my upcoming speeches as Alexander and James faltered through what we had started calling the Tent Scene, which by that point was one part martial strategy dispute, one part lovers’ tiff.

  James: “Should I have answered Caius Cassius so?

  When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous

  To lock such rascal counters from his friends,

  Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;

  Dash him to pieces!”

  Alexander: “I denied you not!”

  James: “You did!”

  Alexander: “I did not: he was but a fool that brought

  My answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart.

  A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,

  But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.”

  They glared at each other for so long that I glanced toward the prompt table before James blinked and said, “Line.”

  I felt a sympathetic twinge of embarrassment. Richard, waiting in the wings to enter as Caesar’s ghost, shifted his weight, arms folded tightly.

  “I do not, ’til you practice them on me,” Gwendolyn called from the back of the house. I could tell from her exaggerated emphasis on the meter that she was getting tired of delays.

  James: “I do not, ’til you practice them on me.”

  Alexander: “You love me not.”

  James: “I do not like your faults.”

  Alexander: “A friendly eye could never see such faults.”

  James: “A flatterer’s would not, though they do appear

  As huge as high Olympus!”

  Alexander: “Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,

  Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,

  For Cassius is aweary of the world … Line?”

  Gwendolyn: “Hated by one he loves—”

  Alexander: “Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;

  Cheque’d like a bondman; all his faults observed,

  Set in a note-book … Damn. Line?”

  Gwendolyn: “—learn’d and conn’d by rote—”

  Alexander: “Right, sorry, learn’d and conn’d by rote,

  To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep

  My spirit from mine eyes!”

  Alexander proffered an imaginary blade (we didn’t have props yet) and tore the neck of his shirt open. “There is my dagger,” he exclaimed, “And here my naked breast; within, a heart / Dearer than Pluto’s—No, sorry—Plutus’ mine. Is that right? Fuck me. Line?” He looked toward the prompt table, but before Gwendolyn could feed him the text, Richard emerged into the work lights from the stage left wing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, deep voice ringing in the mostly empty auditorium. “Are we going to spend the whole night on this scene? Clearly they don’t know the lines.”

  In the answering silence I stared at James, openmouthed, afraid to turn around. He and Alexander both glowered at Richard like he’d said something obscene, while Meredith had frozen where she sat on the floor in the aisle, one leg extended to stretch out a kink in her hamstring. Wren and Filippa craned their necks to peer into the darkness over my shoulder. I risked glancing behind me. Gwendolyn was on her feet; Frederick sat beside her with his hands folded, frowning down at the floor.

  “Richard, that’s enough,” Gwendolyn said, sharply. “Take five and don’t come back until you’ve cooled off.”

  Richard didn’t react at first, as if he hadn’t understood, then abruptly turned on his heel and left through the wings without a word.

 
Gwendolyn looked down on James and Alexander. “You two take five as well, look over your lines, and come back ready to work. In fact, everyone take five. Go.” When nobody moved, she flapped her hands to shoo us out of the auditorium, like we were so many unwelcome chickens. I loitered until James brushed past me, then followed him out to the loading dock. Alexander was already there, already lighting a spliff.

  “That son of a bitch,” he said. “He’s got half as many lines as we do and he’s got the nerve to interrupt our first off-book run? Fuck him.” He sat down, sucked hard on the spliff, then passed it up to James, who took one short drag and handed it back.

  “You’re not wrong,” he said as he exhaled, a cloud of white smoke issuing from his lips. “But neither is he.”

  Alexander looked mutinous. “Well, fuck you, too.”

  “Don’t pout. We should know our lines better. Richard’s called us out on it, is all.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but he was a major dick about it.”

  One corner of James’s mouth twitched toward a smile. “True.”

  The door opened and Filippa appeared, arms folded against the nighttime chill. “Hey. You guys okay?”

  Alexander took another long pull and let his mouth hang open, the smoke pouring out in a long, lazy stream.

  “It’s been a long night,” James said, flatly.

  “If it makes you feel any better, Meredith’s just bitten Richard’s head off.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “For being a jackass,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “Just because she’s sleeping with him doesn’t mean she can’t see when he’s being a shithead.”

  James: “I’m confused. Is he a jackass or is he a shithead?”

  Filippa: “Honestly, I think Richard could be both.”

  Me: “At least he won’t be getting laid for a while.”

  Alexander: “Yeah. Great. That’ll make him much more cooperative.”

  “Actually, he apologized,” Filippa said. “To Meredith, anyway. Said it was childish and he regretted it already.”

  “Really?” Alexander said, smoke curling around his head like he was about to combust. “So not only is he a jackass shithead major dick son of a bitch, but he’s already apologized?” He threw his spliff on the concrete and ground it out with his heel. “That’s just perfect, now we can’t even stay mad. Seriously, fuck him.” He finished pulverizing the spliff and looked up at the rest of us. We stood in a loose ring around him, lips pressed tight together, struggling to keep straight faces. “What?”

  Filippa caught my eye and we both burst out laughing.

  SCENE 11

  Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. With us it ambled, trotted, and galloped all through October. (It never stood still until the morning of November the twenty-second, and it seems, to me at least, that it hasn’t really moved since then.)

  We had long ago finished cataloging our strengths and weaknesses. Alexander followed Meredith and declared his ability to frighten people rather proudly, but confessed the concern that he was the villain in his own life’s story. Wren presented a double-edged sword: she was intimately in touch with her emotions but, as a result, too sensitive for such a competitive artistic environment. Richard told us what we all knew already—that he was unfailingly confident, but his ego made him difficult to work with. Filippa made her statement without any trace of embarrassment. She was versatile, but because she didn’t have a “type,” she would be stuck playing secondary characters forever. James—speaking slowly, deep in thought, seeming not to even see the rest of us—explained that he immersed himself completely in every character he played, but sometimes he couldn’t quite leave them behind and learn to be himself again. By the time my turn came we had grown so numb to one another’s insecurities that my saying I was the least talented person in our year didn’t seem to surprise anyone. I couldn’t think of any great strength I had and admitted as much, but James interrupted me to say, “Oliver, you make every scene you’re in about the other people in it. You’re the nicest person and the most generous actor here, which is probably more important than talent anyway.” I immediately shut my mouth, certain he was the only one who thought so. Oddly, nobody else argued.

  On October 16, we took our usual places in the gallery. Outside, a perfect autumn day had lit the trees around the lake aflame. The blaze of color—tawny orange, sulfurous yellow, arterial red—shimmered upside down on the surface of the water. James peered out the window over my shoulder and said, “Apparently Gwendolyn has the art classes stewing up stage blood to splatter all over the beach.”

  “Won’t that be fun.”

  He shook his head, mouth quirked up at one corner, and slid into the chair opposite mine. I pushed a cup and saucer toward him and watched as he lifted the cup to his lips, still smiling. The others rattled in from the hall, and the spell of lazy tranquility faded into the air like steam.

  Officially, we had left off our lessons on Caesar and moved on to Macbeth, but Caesar’s familiar words leapt readily to our lips, and with them came a kind of bristling tension. Weeks of difficult rehearsals and Gwendolyn’s psychological puppeteering had made neutrality impossible. That day, what began as a simple discussion of tragic structure quickly devolved into an argument.

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Alexander said, halfway through our lesson, impatiently pushing his hair out of his face. “What I’m saying is that the tragic structure is staring you in the face in Macbeth; it makes Caesar look like a telenovela.”

  Meredith: “What the hell does that mean?”

  Frederick: “Language, please, Meredith.”

  Wren sat up straighter on the floor, returning her teacup to the saucer between her knees. “No,” she said, “I understand.”

  Richard: “Then explain it to the rest of us, won’t you?”

  Wren: “Macbeth’s a textbook tragic hero.”

  Filippa: “Tragic flaw: ambition.”

  Me: [sneeze]

  “And Lady M is a textbook tragic villain,” James added, glancing from Wren to Filippa, soliciting their agreement. “Unlike Macbeth, she doesn’t have a single moral qualm about murdering Duncan, which paves the way for every other murderous thing they do.”

  “So what’s the difference?” Meredith said. “It’s the same in Caesar. Brutus and Cassius assassinate Caesar and set themselves up for disaster.”

  “But they’re not villains, are they?” Wren asked. “Cassius maybe, but Brutus does what he does for the greater good of Rome.”

  “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more,” James recited.

  Richard made an impatient sort of noise and said, “What’s your point, Wren?”

  “Her point is my point,” Alexander said, shifting forward to perch on the very edge of the couch, long legs bent so his knees were almost as high as his chest. “Caesar’s not in the same category of tragedy as Macbeth.”

  Meredith: “So, what category is it in?”

  Alexander: “Fuck if I know.”

  Frederick: “Alexander!”

  Alexander: “Sorry.”

  “I think you’re making it too complicated,” Richard said. “Caesar and Macbeth have the same setup. Tragic hero: Caesar. Tragic villain: Cassius. Wishy-washy middleman: Brutus. I guess you could equate him with Banquo.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What makes Banquo—”

  But James interrupted: “You think Caesar is the tragic hero?”

  Richard shrugged. “Who else?”

  Filippa pointed at James. “Um, duh.”

  “It has to be Brutus,” Alexander said. “Antony makes it plain as day in Five-Five. It’s your cue, Oliver, what does he say?”

  Me: “This was the noblest Roman of them all:

  All the conspirators, [sneeze] save only he,

  Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;

  He only, in a general honest thought

  And common good to all, made one of them.”
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  “No,” Richard insisted. “Brutus can’t be the tragic hero.”

  James was affronted. “Why on earth not?”

  Richard almost laughed at the look on his face. “Because he’s got like fourteen tragic flaws!” he said. “A hero’s only supposed to have one.”

  “Caesar’s is ambition, just like Macbeth,” Meredith said. “Simple. Brutus’s only tragic flaw is that he’s dumb enough to listen to Cassius.”

  “How can Caesar be the hero?” Wren asked, glancing from one of them to the other. “He dies in Act III.”

  “Yes, but the play’s named after him, isn’t it?” Richard said, the words and his breath coming out together in a rush of exasperation. “That’s how it goes in all the other tragedies.”

  “Really,” Filippa said, voice flat. “You’re going to base your argument on the title of the play?”

  “I’m still waiting to hear what these fourteen flaws are,” Alexander said.

  “I didn’t mean there are exactly fourteen,” Richard said, thinly. “I meant it would be impossible to isolate one that leads to him skewering himself.”

  “Couldn’t you argue that Brutus’s tragic flaw is his insurmountable love of Rome?” I asked, looking across the table at James, who was watching Richard with narrowed eyes. Frederick stood in front of the blackboard, lips pursed, listening.

  “No,” Richard said, “because besides that you’ve got his pride, his self-righteousness, his vanity—”

  “Those are all essentially the same, as you of all people ought to know.” James’s voice cut across Richard’s and the rest of us were startled into silence.

  “What was that?” Richard asked. James clenched his jaw and I knew he hadn’t meant to say so much out loud.

  “You heard me.”

  “Yes, I fucking did,” Richard said, and the cold snap of his voice made every hair on the back of my neck stand up. “I’m giving you a chance to change what you said.”