A Comedy & a Tragedy

by Travis Hugh Culley

  With the semester over, Dad wanted to send me and my brother back to church camp. He never said anything about God, mind you, but was insistent that it would be a good thing if Joe and I went. He said he wanted us to have his happy memories.

  But then, on the last day of classes, Mr. Wright pulled me aside to tell me that he had decided to direct Oklahoma! for Norland’s big summer musical. He added, in a whisper, that there might be a lead part in it for me.

  “I don’t have to go to summer school this year, do I?”

  “No. This would only be if you want to, it would be completely voluntary.”

  I loved the sound of that: “completely voluntary.” I checked in with my voices, and there was general agreement. I should definitely go to summer school. That night, I told my mother that I wanted to try out for the school play.

  “In the summertime?” Mom asked.

  “Why not?”

  “What are they doing?”

  When I announced the title, Dad turned and said, “Yeah, I don’t know about this one, Paula.”

  When practice began, Mr. Wright handed me the script and I pulled him aside.

  “Yeah, Trav. What’s going on?”

  “I just wanted to say that I’m nervous.”

  “What are you nervous about?”

  I had to warn him. “I’m not very good at reading.”

  “Reading?”

  I nodded. “I don’t know how long it would take to memorize all this.”

  After a year of performances, and juggling lessons, Mr. Wright could never say he’d seen me reading. He blinked and said, “Okay. We’ll work around it.” Casting the roles that day, Mr. Wright made me a member of the chorus—the only member of the chorus. He had created a special part for me. No lines. I could be in almost every scene, and I would never have to sing as a principal, or memorize a word from the play. Others were happy to get the better parts. In the end, Avi Adler got the part of the lead cowboy, and I did not have to go to church camp.

  Through the month of June some twenty kids, including many friends, met in the library for rehearsal. We opened the windows, moved the tables away from the center of the room, and set down pink tape to match the dimensions of the stage. Mr. Wright waved his arms at us, and made changes in the middle of the action. He pranced through the acting area, commanding our movements like a bandleader, pulling kids this way and that, three steps forward, or one step to the side. Mr. Wright expected us to sing, although none of us had ever had singing lessons. Like me, most of the kids had no idea of whether or not they were even on key. Another big point of confusion was whether Oklahoma, the state of Oklahoma, would require a country accent or a southern accent. This had to be discussed at length, because we were south of Oklahoma and we didn’t have southern accents. Mr. Wright tried to answer, but suddenly Valerie, playing the flower girl, could not stop laughing.

  As for me, I would come on and off the set with different props from a box, doing a series of puppetlike dances with ducks or horse heads on sticks of wood, or I was standing around with a straw cowboy hat over my nose, tapping my foot to the cassette tape orchestra. I was silent Jim, and this was all the choreography I needed to learn. I stood where I was told to stand, and tapped my foot.

  That summer, after some discussion, my brother decided not to continue on with art school. He thought it a little girly to be an artist, and probably a little dumb. I mean, who makes much money drawing pictures? He was becoming someone who wanted the values of this world directly manifest. There was no place for imitation. He wore a real leather jacket and a real gold chain that he’d lifted from the store where he worked at the mall. He hid his weight behind oversized T-shirts and meticulously combed his hair like he was shaking off an insult.

  On the first day of eighth grade, I stepped onto the bus alone. I greeted the driver, Mrs. Ingram, and walked straight to the back. There, I sat down across from Bruce and started catching up. We talked about the summer that had passed and laughed our way to school. Also on our new route were a few new kids in the art department: Chris and James. Chris wore inked Vans, a black denim jacket, and checkerboard tights that he stole from his sister. James yelled profanities out the window and tagged the seats with a permanent marker. Bruce wore his hair long, torn jeans. I wore three pairs of sunglasses, another broken pair of mismatched Chuck Taylors, and a hat with three brims that had been sewn together with shoelaces. Why not? This was art school. The point was to stand out. Art school seemed the only place for us; either that or the loony bin, Mrs. Ingram would say. At the front of the bus sat Valerie, a bow in her hair.

  After academic classes, I went to the acting room, expecting to see Mr. Wright. When I opened the door, ready to make my big entrance, I met our new drama coach, Mrs. Chavers. She sat us down in front of a television and said she was going to show us what “serious theater” was. Things were going to be different, she said, “measurably.” There would still be a juggling troupe, but it would not be performing every week like before.

  I stopped listening. I felt this irk in my stomach. When her introduction was over and the attendance had been taken, Mrs. Chavers pressed a button on the console of the television, and up came a scene from the Samuel Goldwyn production of Oklahoma! Half the class chuckled. Was this our “serious theater”?

  No one sang the lyrics or spoke their lines. No one claimed their parts. No one admitted that it was the same musical we’d done that summer, not even Avi. Before she turned it off, I inspected the scenes for quiet cowboy Jim. He wasn’t there.

  Because of the way I dressed, I think Mrs. Chavers took me for a troublemaker. No one else came to class prepared to break every rule and norm. But then, she had a lot to prove. Wasn’t she already upsetting traditions that we had set in place? Who was the troublemaker? We couldn’t tell each other apart.

  The next day, we weren’t taught mime techniques. Instead, Mrs. Chavers told us that we didn’t know the first thing about being theater artists. She went around the room, asking, “What is theater?”

  Valerie started: “Theater is imitation.”

  Adam added: “Theater is performance.”

  Bruce chimed in: “Theater is play.”

  Mrs. Chavers interrupted. “Theater is conflict.” Then she asked us if we knew what the elements of theater were.

  “Elements?”

  “What does every play have in common?”

  “Actors?”

  “Scenes?”

  “Dialogue?”

  “Action,” she answered. “Every play has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And what happens in the middle?”

  “A climax,” I said.

  “Right, a climax of the conflict. And what happens with the conflict?”

  “The conflict becomes resolved,” Avi offered.

  “Right. Something happens. So, what are your favorite plays?”

  The class went silent.

  “Come on, you’ve got to have favorites. What are they?”

  The class sat still, and said nothing.

  “How many plays have you read?”

  No one responded. Mr. Wright had never asked us to read a play before. A few scattered titles were mentioned. She shook her head. “You’ve got to read plays if you are going to be actors in the theater. Who has worked on scenes from a play?”

  “We were doing improvisations,” Elaini said.

  “Improvisations? All year?”

  She smiled.

  “What did you do last year?”

  My best answer was juggling, so I kept quiet.

  “Have you done any Method training?”

  Silence.

  “Alexander Technique? Linklater? Strasberg? You’ve never heard of these people, have you?”

  “We know Marcel Marceau,” Michelle answered with a dose of irony.

  “Well, in this class we are going to be reading plays, and talking about plays, and working on scenes and monologues from plays.” Mrs. Chavers handed us a big plastic bucket that was full
of little books, each with the same cover, and the name Samuel French. Our first assignment was to pick one play from the bin and to read it. Then we would find a two-person scene, and match up with another student in class.

  I pulled out of the box at random A Radio Play. It took place in a recording studio in the 1920s. Scene One opened with a guy doing commercials that were full of screeches and sound effects. Other students were sitting quietly in their seats holding their plays up, and I suddenly had a realization: reading in Mrs. Chavers’s class was no different than going into Neutral in Mr. Wright’s class. She wasn’t asking us to read but to act like we were reading plays. She wanted us to sit here and do nothing! I turned the page, and went into Neutral.

  Mrs. Chavers was right. I did face a real conflict. If I wanted to be an actor, I would need to read plays.

  Some kids had years of practice. I supposed that everyone knew how to separate their ideas from those they received from reading, but I didn’t. And now there were many characters I was having to entertain. How was I supposed to tell them apart? Or keep them together? My characters had no barriers. They came and went as they liked. They spoke for themselves. Maybe I was meant to be something different than an actor, I thought as Mrs. Chavers paced on the boards. Maybe I should be a stand-up comedian, maybe a host or entertainer. Perhaps I was better on my feet, improvising, rather than plowing through all the parts of a tragedy. My life would be easy. Parts would find me. I had my own virtues and special qualities. I could feel what I wanted to feel, I could make my imagination come alive at any moment. I could believe anything I imagined. Everything was permitted. These voices came and went out of the background, and onward, like a dream, they would go on disregarding Mrs. Chavers, disregarding everything.

  I looked back down at the script in front of me: A Radio Play. Maybe I could be a radio announcer! I inspected the cast list. Then came a scene description. In some ways, I was still pretending, timing out my pantomime, but in other ways, I began scanning the action of the scene. I let my eyes fall on the words. They seemed to hang from the fold. The words worried me, so I tried to see around them. I tried to see the exterior, following the directives, names. On the page, I perched around the edges, playing with the margins in my mind—“scene,” “Voice One,” “lights up,” “On Air”—admitting to what I could not deny.

  There were three characters, each named by number. They were recording a toothpaste commercial, two girls and a guy making some commotion: “Shuga shuga!” “Pop!” “Mmwaaww!” The play descended into onomatopoeia, and I kept daydreaming about unusual percussion instruments. I was amused, but over nothing. It was as if my voices had developed their own radio show for a moment, but then they’d divert the drama, going way off track.

  Mrs. Chavers told us to take our plays home and finish them for homework. Leaving class, I quietly tossed A Radio Play back into the box where it came from.

  That year my grades fell way below average. I didn’t care. I was talking in Mr. Wade’s Social Sciences class. When the teacher interrupted me, I became offended. He was incensed by my reaction. I spent an hour in detention for that. In English, I came to class unprepared. I took incompletes on my assignments. Some teachers took pity on me. Others didn’t.

  When I brought my report card home after winter break, I didn’t even look at it. Mom showed me three Ds, one in Drama, one in Phys Ed, and another in Algebra. Mrs. Chavers didn’t like me, and I didn’t like my Algebra teacher. Mom warned me that I would have to get serious about my grades if I hoped to remain a gifted student.

  “And what if I don’t want to go to school at all?”

  “Do you think you can make it on your talent alone?”

  “I don’t think I have a choice, Mom.”

  “Well, then I give up. I can’t help you,” she said, walking away. “You can go on and be illiterate for the rest of your life, and you’ll suffer the consequences.”

  In Algebra, I saw numerals scrambled on the chalkboard behind Mr. Orsini. I balked. He was a small, older man with thick, dark hair, who looked like an accountant. He wore short-sleeved button-down shirts and a gold watch. He rarely left his seat. He read from the book. He opened no discussions about the application of algebra in the world outside of math. He gave no explanations of how letters were being used in equations, no deliberations on the higher meaning of the powers of division. I remember when he first used the word variable. A variable was a letter, and a letter could be a number. “What is the variable a in this equation?”

  Was he talking about the a in algebra? He could not control how I could misunderstand him. I was the variable. On my next test, I made a classic tree pattern, slaying sheep all the way down the page. I turned my random answers in with the others and left class with resolution. I had solved the equation.

  Throughout the year, Mr. Orsini had given me two Ds, and an F in conduct that could not be changed unless I took the whole course over again. Mrs. Chavers also gave me a set of Ds that were costly. By mail, I was given notice that I was no longer welcome at Norland Middle School and that I would be sent to my regional school, Thomas Jefferson Junior High, for the ninth grade.

  Bruce moved on ahead without a goodbye.

  Gang Theory

  My rejection from Norland hit home. I didn’t get much sympathy, but then my family thought I was only getting by on luck, and as long as I did, I seemed more curious to them. Someday all my luck would have to come crashing down. After all, I still hated reading, and that meant I was the same illiterate loser they’d always thought I’d be.

  I didn’t ask for help. Instead, I stopped watching TV. I spent my evenings on the back porch taking punches at the canvas bag that my dad had given me. Therapy. Each punch cut into my apple-white fists, sending home flashes of pain that went right up my elbows and into my shoulders—making my jaw clench. The bag was too big for me. I walked in a slow circle around it, shaking out my hands. I bent my knees and eyed the canvas. I coached myself—punch through the bag—and sent a fist flying. On contact, a shot of pain; I stood back and tried again. While the rest of the family sat inside and watched television, I would get the bag rocking, swinging, bouncing—if I could hit it with the right combination. That small length of chain rang through the house. My father heard the sound all weekend, all night, and even in his sleep. I kept slugging at the canvas until, exhausted, rocking side to side on the heels of my high-tops, I would reluctantly step away.

  On the first day of school in September, stepping inside the main hall of Thomas Jefferson Junior High, I felt like I was invisible. Even with my painted shoes and red knuckles, other kids crowded the halls and walked into me. The students were much worse than I had expected. T.J. was nothing like Gil had described it. The majority of the students seemed to think that the only way of getting by was by keeping up defenses and intimidating people.

  At T.J. there were few gifted types, and only a handful of kids who identified as artists. In art class, there was no dance, or acting, or musical theater. We worked with paper and glue, just like in the fourth grade.

  The school did have a marching band, but there were no blues ensembles or jazz quartets. At band practice, kids would get dressed up in gray and gold marching uniforms and twirl wooden guns. The rest of the year the school felt like a network of tunnels. The halls echoed between classes. Rooms were so full that I sometimes doubted that I would be able to get out in an emergency. On every piece of furniture, in every door and wall, there were signs of emergencies past, an ongoing sense of barely restrained panic. Even my English teacher, Mrs. Seitlin, seemed to fear the doors of the classrooms. Throughout homeroom and first period she would look back at the doors to be sure they were closed.

  I sat down in my assigned seat in a room of thirty teenagers, ashamed to know nobody. The desks were arranged in rows, and students were assigned to them alphabetically. In Mrs. Seitlin’s class, if you were not in your seat by the time the bell rang, then you were marked absent. If you collected too many ab
sences you would fail her class. If you did not accept the conditions, more conditions would be imposed on you. I kept to myself and reserved my judgments.

  Every morning, Mrs. Seitlin would begin by taking roll.

  “Marcia Arollo?”

  “Here.”

  “Faisal Assad?”

  “Here.”

  “Quintana Baker?”

  “Here.”

  “Maria Cartega?”

  “Here”

  “Travis Culley?”

  I raised a finger.

  “Eugene Gregory?” Her pencil flicked back and forth as she made marks in a leaf-green book. She read announcements from a printed newsletter and went over the rules of the class. The disciplinary procedures came first, academic expectations came second. She had rules about what to do if you had a problem with an assignment, how to be called on in class, even when to go to the bathroom. It was not okay to speak unless you had raised your hand.

  In the middle of the classroom, there was Merle, a kid with big hair and tufts of sideburns that someone his age wasn’t supposed to have yet. On the other side of the room there was a kid named Desi, who desperately wanted to be the class clown. On my side of the room was Ray, who was innately much funnier. The whole year there would be some contention about who was the real class clown.

  Behind me sat a tall quiet kid with brown hair hanging over his face. He wore a straw hat more suited to Jimmy Buffett than to Axl Rose, but he decorated it with buttons from his favorite bands: Nirvana, Guns N’ Roses, Judas Priest, and Ozzy Osbourne. His name was Eugene John Gregory the Third, but he went by Gene-John.

  After homeroom, we moved right on to discussions of literature. Who was the subject of literature? I zoned out. By the end of the hour, Mrs. Seitlin had issued our first homework assignment. She told us to bring in “a paragraph on the subject of”—she paused, holding us in some suspense—“what you each did last summer.” When these predictable words came out of her mouth, a certain intangible disappointment fell over the whole classroom. We felt betrayed. I shook my head, understanding that this class might as well already be over with. I was not going to learn anything here, and neither would anyone else.