We listened to Becker’s regulation boots clomp back down the wooden staircase to the main floor. None of us said a word for a few moments, and I think we all felt a bit silly. After all, what had we based our assumptions on? A leather vest in the shop pool, that was all. Becker had been pretty convincing, and now that we knew about the Shane and Amber thing, whether or not it was still going on, it seemed entirely plausible that Jason had skipped out because he couldn’t face the competition. Why not? Jason was a peculiar little man, and several of us had wondered what Amber saw in him. Shane, on the other hand, was a walking, talking version of Michelangelo’s David, and Amber was Venus on the half-shell. They were perfect for each other, and what aesthetics has brought together, let no man (or woman) put asunder.
“I guess he thinks that Jason’s okay,” Amber said in a shaky, relieved little voice.
“Seems he does,” Ruth said. “Whether he’s right or not is another question, though.”
“So Jason didn’t come back to the motel last night?” Bradley asked.
“I don’t know,” Amber said. “He didn’t come back with us, and he said he was planning to come in at six this morning, so we didn’t expect to see him until rehearsal.”
“Us?” said Meredith. “We?”
“Yes, us—we,” Shane said. “We’re all staying in the same place. So big deal. I was too drunk to drive last night and Amber drove my car, okay?” He looked round defiantly. “I know what everybody’s thinking, and I can understand that after what that cop said, but listen. There’s nothing going on between Amber and me. Okay? Okay? We’re just old friends, that’s all. Jason knew that.”
“If he knew that, then why did he disappear?” Meredith said.
“Maybe he got a call to say his mom’s sick or something,” Brad said.
“His Mom lives in Laingford,” Amber said. “I was supposed to meet the McMasters this weekend. We were supposed to have dinner there.”
“You haven’t met his parents yet?” Meredith said. “How long have you been going out with him?”
“Three years. He didn’t get along with them, eh? It was a big thing, us going there.”
“Is that why he was staying at the motel and not with them?” I asked.
“I guess. And Laingford’s a half-hour drive from here.”
“So why don’t we just call them and ask if he’s there? Maybe his Mom is sick,” Brad said.
“He would have left a note, you’d think,” Amber said.
That’s when Juliet came back, bustling in full of business and energy.
“Right, kiddies, that’s sorted out.” She was rubbing her hands, Pilate-like.
“You found him?” Amber said, leaping up.
“Found him? Of course not, child, but the police agree with me that the boy’s probably just gone off in a snit somewhere and he’ll turn up eventually. Not,” she added heavily, “as if I’d ever think of hiring him again after this fiasco, but I really don’t think we need to worry about it any more. We’ve got work to do.”
“We thought we might call his parents,” I said. “See if he’s there.”
“Good idea,” Juliet said. “We probably should have done that in the first place, instead of bothering that disturbingly handsome policeman. Why don’t you call them in the break, dear, and put our minds at rest?”
“We’re taking a wait-and-see attitude with this, then?” I asked, innocently. I had other ideas, but I wasn’t about to discuss them with our fearless leader.
“Exactly, Polly. Now. Have you done the Equity business yet? We should have done that at the beginning, but things were just crazy this morning, so we have an excuse.” She smiled widely and rubbed her hands together again.
The rehearsal day had finally begun.
The Canadian professional theatre business is governed by an organization called the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, or Equity. Virtually every professional theatre company in the country is an Equity company, which means that all the contracts they enter into with actors, dancers, directors and stage management personnel are drawn up according to Equity rules. Equity puts out a handbook of those rules, called “the Purple Book” or “the Red Book” or whatever colour they’ve chosen for the cover of the most recent edition.
You’re not allowed to work for an Equity company unless you’re a member, but you can’t become a member unless you’ve done a certain number of Equity shows. This, of course, doesn’t make a lot of sense. That’s why there are a lot of really frustrated actors out there, saying “Hi, my name is Buffy and I’ll be your server for tonight.” To become a member, you have to accumulate Equity credits. To do that, you work as an apprentice, making less than full-member salary in an Equity company. After you collect the requisite number of apprentice credits, you get to become a full member, after paying the registration fee.
Kid’s touring theatre is the most common way to collect credits. That’s where the expression “Paying one’s dues” comes in. Amber, being fresh out of theatre school, was an apprentice. Usually, after a couple of years of touring theatre, an actor becomes a full member and moves on to theatre for grown-ups. In grown-up theatre, there are dressing rooms, a callboard, a wardrobe department, a decent rehearsal period and the chance to get your teeth into a meaty role. Also, in theatre for grown-ups, you don’t have to lug the sets around with you in a van and perform in school gyms.
However, there are times when an interesting kids’ show comes along and an experienced actor will take it on, for the fun of it. That’s what they’ll tell you, anyway. The truth is more likely that they’ve auditioned for Stratford, Shaw, Factory, Passe Muraille, and everything in between from coast to coast and they’re still being Buffy, your server. They’re desperate for work, and if they get a contract under the Theatre for Young Audiences Agreement (which means the hours are brutal, and overtime payments are a figment of your imagination), they’ll jump at it.
Bradley was in that category. His résumé listed a number of fairly prestigious roles in good plays in the 80s. In the nineties, the roles thinned out and became walk-ons in CBC dramas and commercials. He’d done a few summer stock seasons in Newfoundland, playing Officer Krupke in West Side Story and Second Husband in Chicago. His most recent gig was a Toronto Fringe Festival production of an original one-act play by someone called Gregory Pecker. Bradley Hoskins had taken The Glass Flute role at Steamboat Theatre in Kuskawa because he needed the job, no question.
Shane’s situation was a little different. He was a full member of Equity, and his résumé showed that his career was ticking along nicely, thank you very much. He had graduated from the Kingsway Polytechnic Theatre School in the spring of 1997 and immediately landed a summer theatre gig in Gananoque, playing Gilbert in Anne of Green Gables. From there he went on to juvenile leads in a couple of high-profile Toronto productions and had performed a supporting role in a LiveShow mega-musical that had gone on to Broadway. This guy was no waiter. Juliet had told me that she got him to do the Flute because he owed her a favour (whatever that meant) and that he wanted a rest from the grind of big-theatre schedules. I knew what kind of money a LiveShow job paid out. That would explain Shane’s car.
Meredith, unlike the others, was a dyed-in-the-wool touring performer. She’d worked for every children’s touring company in Ontario, several times over. Her résumé revealed that she’d done at least three productions a year for the last decade, and she’d never had more than a month off. She was a trouper in the truest sense of the word. While I admire that kind of tenacity, it makes me nervous. It would mean that she knew more about touring than anybody in the whole wide world, including me, her stage manager. This would make her either a very useful ally in inter-cast disputes, or a royal pain. I suspected the latter.
I got all this information in secret, after the rehearsal day was over, and everybody had gone home. While it wasn’t exactly classified information, it was in a file in Juliet’s office, and I had to hunt around for it. I had help—but more on that later.
The Equity business Juliet was talking about was a formality. Every company was supposed to elect an Equity deputy, who would liase with the stage manager and the administration with regard to working conditions, touring reports and the like. Every time the company put in for overtime on the road, for example, the sheet was supposed to be signed by the deputy and the SM before being submitted. If a cast member had a problem, he or she was supposed to be able to go to the deputy for help. It was a teacher’s pet job, the kind that you got elected to if you happened to step out for a moment to go to the bathroom. Nobody ever volunteered for it.
Meredith volunteered for it.
I had shooed Juliet out of the room (artistic directors aren’t allowed in on Equity meetings), pulled the deputy package out of Jason’s paperwork box under the desk, tossed it on the table and called the meeting to order.
“Let’s get this over with, then,” I’d said. “Time to elect the dep. Who’s in?” I said it in the usual, jokey, don’t-all-shout-at-once kind of way.
“I’d be glad to do it,” Meredith said, evenly. “I’ve been looking at the schedule, and I think there may be a couple of overtime difficulties where we’re supposed to travel over our lunch-break. I’m also worried about the size of the set, not to mention the short rehearsal period.” There was a funny little pause.
“Er, anybody else interested?” I said. Nobody was.
“Right, then. All in favour?”
“Yeah, sure,” Bradley said. “You go, girl.”
“I can’t be deputy if I’m an apprentice, right?” Amber said.
“No, you can’t,” said Meredith. “You couldn’t handle it anyway.”
“It’s not rocket science,” Shane said. “Do it if you want to. I don’t care.” Meredith smiled—a Cheshire cat smile that would have stayed even if her face had disappeared.
“Carried,” I said, without enthusiasm, and pushed the package over to her. She opened it immediately, pulled out the Green Book (its current colour), and wrote her name on the cover. Golly, I thought. I guess I’d better find my copy and reread it. I had a feeling there would be a quiz on it later.
Twelve
PRINCESS: It’s hard to be a princess when you’re lost and cold and scared / I’d ask that stranger over there to help me, if I dared.
-The Glass Flute, Scene iv
Working a puppet convincingly requires the same kind of brain-hand coordination that you need to be able to pat your head, rub your belly, tap-dance and sing the alphabet backwards, all at the same time.
The puppet gods who manipulate the Muppets make it look easy. It isn’t. Anyone can stick a sock on their hand and wave it about, of course. Anyone can speak in a funny squeaky voice and wiggle Bozo the fluffy dog while they’re speaking, to let the audience know that Bozo has the floor. In the world of puppet manipulation, we call this “jiggling dolls.” Jiggling dolls is about as far removed from true puppeteering as a Sunday school nativity tableau is from a full-scale production at the Canadian Opera Company. The only thing these two kinds of productions have in common is the temperament of the performers.
True puppeteering talent is immediately recognizable. The techniques can be learned, just as the rudiments of singing or painting can, but when there’s natural talent, the puppeteer simply disappears and the puppet transcends its inanimate state.
In rehearsal, it was my job (as puppetmaster, not as SM) to assess the abilities of each performer, introduce each of them to the puppets they would be manipulating, and let them loose in front of the studio mirrors to work. When the Flute was in performance, they wouldn’t be able to see what they were doing, so mirror practice was useful.
In addition to the handles and black dowels attached to each of the objects that appeared in the Flute, the speaking characters each had a mouth-mechanism that had to be coordinated with the speech of the performer. In Muppet-like puppets, you work the mouth by opening and closing your hand inside the puppet’s head. In the puppets we were using, the mouth-mechanism was a complicated series of wires and pulleys built into the frame of the head. The mouth was opened by a squeezable trigger at the back, like those spring-loaded exercise devices that muscle-men use to increase the strength of their grip. By the end of the tour, the actors would have forearms like Hulk Hogan’s.
The trick of co-ordinating speech and puppet-mouth movement is best practiced at home, when there’s no-one around to worry that you’re losing your mind. First, locate some lipstick. (This aids in the effect.) Make a loose fist and draw a set of lips on your hand, with the thumb as the lower lip and your knuckle and forefinger as the upper. If you want, draw eyes on your knuckles as well. Then start talking to yourself, making the lips outline every syllable. Go slowly at first, or you’ll get a thumb-cramp. Later, find a four-year-old and see if you can keep her attention for more than two minutes. If she talks back to your hand, you’ve got the idea. If she starts crying and reports you to the authorities, you need more practice.
None of the cast was a hopeless case, thank God. The audition process involved a “Here’s a puppet; see what you can do with it” section, and the inveterate doll-jigglers were weeded out.
Meredith, having worked with Steamboat puppets on many occasions, was quite adept at the trick of co-ordinating speech and mouth-movement, but the puppet was wooden in her hands and probably always would be. It was as if her puppet-manipulation were the stage version of low-budget animation. There was no spark, but she was competent.
She was, however, impossible to teach, and I shouldn’t have even tried. She was working with the pale and languid Mother puppet-head, which was attached to a fake body in the bed. Throughout the show, the mother-head is attached to various floating objects in dream-sequences. Later, at the end of the show when Mother revives and actually gets up, the mother-puppet is attached to the mother-body waiting backstage.
“Meredith, why not try a sort of full-body sigh with your arm under the blanket while she’s in the bed?” I suggested, demonstrating by slipping my hand under the covers of the small, prop bed and creating a lump there which moved with breath.
“Lift it up with the in-breath, and down on the sigh. Wiggle your fingers, and that’s her toes stretching. Then you can make her do that smack-smack mouth thing, like she’s about to go to sleep.”
Shane was working next to her with the Kevin puppet. He was a natural, the kind of puppeteer who can make a ketchup bottle come to life just by picking it up, walking it across the table and making it stare at you with Heinz-label eyes. He’d never done puppetry before—a director’s dream. He moved the Kevin-puppet over to watch.
“Hey, cool,” Kevin the puppet said.
“Polly, I don’t need any coaching from you. I have done this show before. I’m going over old material here, and I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me work.” Meredith said. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Kevin puppet staring at Meredith. Instinctively, Shane was living through the puppet, gazing intently at Kevin’s terrycloth, fluorescent-painted face. It’s a symbiotic thing; the focus of the puppet’s eyes is the key to the magic. If the puppet is looking at something, and the puppeteer is looking at the puppet, the puppeteer no longer exists.
“Who’s she?” Kevin the puppet said, giving his woolly head a little twitch to indicate Meredith. I couldn’t help myself. I chuckled and gazed deeply into his ping-pong ball eyes, which I’d painted with my own hands not two weeks before.
“Well, Kevin, she’s an actor who doesn’t want my help,” I said to the puppet. Kevin nodded slowly, sadly. Using the dowel attached to Kevin’s arms, Shane made Kevin’s foam-rubber and terrycloth hand reach out and pat my hand, still under the covers of Mother’s bed.
“Too bad. That breath-thing was a nice bit,” Kevin-the-puppet said. Shaking his head, Kevin moved away to join the others, pulled by Shane, who was smiling a little.
“Show-off,” the Mother puppet said, woodenly.
Amber was wrestling with the snake puppet,
which is large and rather awkward. In order to make it move properly, its thirteen-foot, foam-rubber body is strapped to the puppeteer with a waist-belt. Its mouth is worked with a Brobdignagian version of the spring trigger, which takes both hands. During the show, the body is manipulated with the help of another performer, Brad in this case.
Neither Amber nor Brad had missed the Mother/Kevin/me exchange. Straining to coordinate the snake’s mouth, Amber commented with a somewhat-adapted line from the script.
“You’re brave and true and strong of heart,” the serpent said, “But what you seek . . . will make Mom fart.” Brad twirled the snake’s tail and blew a raspberry. They dissolved into giggles and Juliet lifted her head from her script, where she was making notes.
“Actually, that’s not a bad line, dear. Kids love fart jokes.”
“Oh sure, let’s put it in,” Meredith said loudly. “And while we’re at it, we could add a scene from Beavis and Butthead and make the whole show more accessible to our audience.” She tossed the Mother puppet to the floor and stalked out.
“Good time for an Equity break,” I said.
Equity rules state that performers are entitled to five minutes of break per hour of rehearsal. Generally, the breaks are loosely adhered to—say ten or fifteen minutes every two and a half hours. Finding a good moment to break is part of the stage manager’s art.
For many, the Equity break is synonymous with “smoke break”. If the SM is a non-smoker, she can make herself very popular with the cast if she remembers that the need for a cigarette tends to surface in the addicted mind every half-hour or so, and if it isn’t indulged every two hours, the work suffers. Being a smoker and an SM at the same time, this was not a problem for me. In every show I’ve ever done, the smokers share a special bond, as if they’re in a separate show called “Smoke Break”. On the Flute, the smoke break cast included me, Amber and Shane.
“That was weird,” Amber said, sucking mightily on a DuMaurier Ultra Light in the basement shop. Shane lit a full-strength Du Maurier regular and lit my Extra Light for me with an engraved, gold-plated lighter.
Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 31
