Rejected Writers Take the Stage

by Suzanne Kelman

  A HEAD ON THE STAGE & A CRAZY CANINE

  I entered the theater, and bustling all around the foyer were the members of James’s work crew who were fixing it up. I pushed past several carpenters, plasterers, and laborers as I made my way into the auditorium. Walking down the aisle, a strange sight greeted me.

  “There’s a head on the stage. Did you know that?” I asked Doris as I arrived and threw down the huge box of props I’d been working on at home.

  “Of course I know there’s a head on the stage,” Doris snapped. “It’s attached to Lavinia.”

  As I got closer, I recognized Lavinia’s impish grin.

  “Hi there,” she said.

  “Lavinia,” I asked, “what are you doing?”

  “We were testing this, and I got stuck,” she said. “I’ve been here for twenty minutes. John, a member of the backstage crew, was hoisting me up through the trapdoor when something snapped, and it’s not working, so here I am, just a little head on the stage.”

  “We can’t just leave her here,” I said to Doris. “How are we going to do the rehearsal? What are we going to do with a head in the middle of the floor?”

  “Oh, just put a bucket over me or something,” said Lavinia. “You won’t even know I’m here after a bit.”

  I looked at my watch and back at her with concern. “We need to start the rehearsal. Are you sure you’ll be okay, Lavinia?”

  John shouted past her from the pit, “We had technical difficulties. We should have her down and reloaded in about ten minutes. Then we’ll be ready to fire her up again.”

  He made Lavinia sound like a canon.

  “I’ve been through worse,” she said confidently. “Besides, I have a ringside seat of the action right here.”

  I looked at my watch again nervously and called the cast together. “Places, everyone, please. And don’t forget to be mindful of Lavinia.”

  The cast shuffled around the hole to get a good look at the oddity.

  “Hi,” Lavinia said, nodding from person to person as the rest of the cast looked down at her.

  “I think we need to put something over it,” said Flora. “I mean, her,” she corrected herself. “I don’t want to trip over her.”

  “Okay,” I said, flustered. I made my way to side stage and found a prop table, which I cleared off and then dragged into place over the top of Lavinia.

  “Places again, everyone. We need you to go from the top of scene three, the scene where Tito moves everyone toward the blue sparkly road.”

  Suddenly, hearing the name, Tito slipped her lead and raced into the middle of the stage and started licking Lavinia’s ear enthusiastically.

  “Oh my God,” hollered Lavinia. “Get this dog offa me.”

  “Sorry,” Annie said, running from side stage and slipping the leash over the head of the small dog. “She’s just never seen a head on the floor before.” She yanked at the dog’s collar and pulled her back to the side of the stage.

  Lottie suddenly appeared, clanking in her harness. She pulled out a wet wipe from a packet and started cleaning off her sister’s face.

  “Get off me, Lottie,” Lavinia yelled with irritation. “Stop making such a fuss.”

  “You’ve got to stay clean, honey. You don’t know where that dog’s been. I saw her out there licking her whatnots just a minute ago.”

  “Okay,” Lavinia said decisively. “Keep on wiping.”

  We started the rehearsal.

  Dan pulled the curtains, and we opened on Nebraska. Flora came onstage dragging the dog, who was pulling hard at her leash. Flora was wearing a flowing affair Ruby had created and some ridiculous wig June had put on her. She started her lines.

  “Oh,” she said. “Where do I go? I don’t know. Tito, Tito . . .” She stopped trying to remember her line.

  The head looked up. “I think you say, ‘Show me the way to Ooze,’ remember?”

  “Oh yes,” said Flora. “Thanks very much.” She patted Lavinia on the head and carried on once more. “Tito, Tito, show me the way to Ooze.”

  Suddenly, there was a scream, and Lavinia disappeared. We all stopped dead for a second, and I raced to the front of the stage.

  “Lavinia?” I shouted. I couldn’t hear anything. I raced up the steps and onto the stage itself and ran to the hole. “Lavinia! Lavinia! Are you okay?” I shouted down to her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, waving up as I shined my flashlight down toward her. “But I think your next line should be, ‘Where did the head go?’”

  As we stopped to reload Lavinia, Marcy stomped onstage in her costume of blue-and-red silk. She clicked up behind me in her red pumps. “I have to talk to you,” she said. “I hate this costume. It looks ridiculous, like a huge, fluffy, old-fashioned ball gown.”

  “I think it looks fine,” I said as Ruby moved onstage.

  She looked over at Marcy and exclaimed to me, “I’m having a lot of trouble with Marcy’s costume, and she’s very unhappy.”

  “It looks okay,” I said. “Marcy, you need to get off the stage, and we need to start this rehearsal. We’re on a tight deadline. Please get to your place.”

  Marcy folded her arms and stomped off the stage, huffing.

  Ruby shook her head as she walked off too. “She’s not the only one I’m having problems with,” Ruby said as she went.

  As if on cue, June also appeared on the stage with a bunch of costumes in her arms. “I’m looking for the sewing machine,” she said as she sniffed loudly. “And I’m not a well woman. I think this cold is starting to turn into something else.”

  Ruby lifted up her arms. “You see what I mean?” she commented from the wings. “It’s not easy.”

  I shook my head and took myself back to my place in the auditorium. Grabbing hold of my script, I took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s get going. Is Lavinia loaded below stage?” I asked.

  “Yep,” shouted John from below.

  “Jimmy!” I shouted.

  From the side stage, he poked out his head. “Yeah?”

  “Are the flash guns loaded?”

  “Ready,” he said and disappeared again.

  “Okay, let’s practice the witches’ entrance then, shall we? Lottie, are you set?”

  “I am,” came a distant voice from offstage.

  Olivia nodded her head at me, and I cued the music. Olivia started to play the entrance of the witches.

  Suddenly, I heard a whooshing sound. Lottie came across the stage at such a speed that she nearly took the head off the Green Witch, who had just popped up through the trapdoor.

  “Whoa!” shouted Lavinia.

  “Whoa!” shouted Lottie.

  “I think someone needs to get hold of those horses,” said Ruby, who’d appeared by my side to take costume notes. We watched in amazement as Lavinia ricocheted off the side curtain and swung back across the stage, attempting to land gently on the floor. Instead of that, she bounced up and down like a big pink fluffy blancmange, finally finding ground just to the side of her sister. As they both hit their marks, Jimmy set off the flash powder, and there was an almighty bang.

  “Good grief!” shouted Lavinia. “I hope it’s not going to be like that!”

  As she coughed her way through the smoke, Jimmy came running onstage. “Sorry, Lavinia. There was a malfunction. Are you okay?”

  “I’ll let you know when I’ve stopped choking,” she said, using her wand to waft away the smoke. On the other side of the stage, Lottie limped over to join her, and they continued with their lines.

  Doris, who’d been watching from the back of the auditorium, came forward and nudged me, saying, “I think it looks great!”

  To who? I thought. It was like a comedy of errors.

  We continued the scene and got to the part when the crazy twirler was due to enter as the Scaredy Lemur. But no matter how she tried, Tanya could not seem to stop smiling.

  “You’re supposed to be scared,” I kept saying to her.

  “I know, but it’s so much fun,�
� she said as she skipped on the spot.

  Ernie did a masterful job as the Man in the Can, and that was about the highlight of the piece. However, whenever he forgot a line, he would suddenly break out into a soft-shoe shuffle around the stage.

  I had Ethel stand in as the dog, as the real Tito was having issues, Annie informed me. Ethel wasn’t happy being a dog, but she knew how to stand on the spot. We managed to get through about half of the show before we called it quits. Even though it had been a mess, I just put my thumbs up and said, “That was great! Let’s see if we can improve a little bit tomorrow, eh?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  THE DRESS REHEARSAL FROM HELL

  Arriving early for dress rehearsal, I was pretty nervous. During the last few weeks, we had made some progress, but I never knew what to expect. When I got to the theater, Jimmy was already setting up his flash boxes.

  “I think I’ve got it right,” he said. “This time I promise not to blow up Ms. Lavinia.”

  “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that,” I acknowledged with a nod.

  I just hoped she would be coming back after all of her pyrotechnic adventures.

  An hour later, the whole cast was assembled on the stage in their first costumes. June Horton sighed as she sewed Lavinia into hers. She took a moment to blow her nose hard on one of her many tissues that she kept stuffed in crevices and corners of every outfit she wore.

  “How are you doing?” I asked. “We go up in ten minutes. Will you be ready?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “if I don’t die first. I diagnosed myself on Google, and I’m sure I’ve got walking pneumonia. So I might not be around for the second half of the show if I pop my clogs.”

  I bit my lip and tried not to be cynical. Since we had started rehearsals, she had Google diagnosed herself with shingles, scabies, scurvy, gout, and a brain aneurysm, only to come back the following day with a new Google disease and set of symptoms that perfectly aligned with it. Now it was walking pneumonia. More like walking old moaner, I thought to myself.

  I checked in with Doris on side stage.

  Ruby was also in the wings, her sewing machine whirring ten to the dozen as she attempted to finish her creations. She called her latest design “Heliotrope Heaven,” for the citizens of Amethyst City. She was swathed in yard upon yard of shimmering purple fabric that rose from the side stage like a voluminous mulberry mushroom cloud.

  “Will you be ready in time?” I asked desperately.

  “Maybe, but the planet Mercury is in retrograde, so who knows what could happen?” she said with the tone of impending doom.

  I shook my head and went back out onstage. June was still sewing Lavinia into her costume.

  “Are you nearly done?” I asked, noting that we were already ten minutes late.

  “Well, maybe you should have starved this one,” June said sarcastically.

  Lavinia tutted her response; she was having none of it.

  “Maybe you need to check your sizes in those costumes again, I have always been a size six.”

  June looked up at her incredulously. “Well you might be on this side,” she said, patting one of Lavinia’s hips, “but what about the other side? What about your twin? What size does she pretend to wear?”

  Lottie puckered her lips. “Well, I think I’m about a twelve.”

  “I rest my case,” said June through a forest of dressmaking pins that were sticking out of her mouth.

  “She’s older,” said Lavinia. “She must have spread.”

  “Spread?” balked Lottie. “I have done no such thing. Besides, I’m only your elder by two minutes. How much spreading could I have done in just two minutes?”

  “Look,” I said, impatiently interrupting their banter. “We need to get going. We’re going to go from the top, and we’re not going to stop for anything today. We are trying to keep the show to two hours. Do you understand? This is dress rehearsal. Right, Stacy?”

  Stacy nodded her head. “It is really important,” she said.

  “Ethel’s going to be timing the show.”

  Ethel nodded. She sat in front of the stage with a clipboard and a stopwatch hanging around her neck.

  Doris added, “Yes, I’m stage manager. I will be in charge of the props on the sides of the stage. I will tell you when to come and go and what to do.”

  Typecast, I thought to myself.

  Olivia started playing the music for the overture, and everybody left the stage. The curtains were pulled shut, and we were off. The stage opened on Nebraska, and in shuffled the cast.

  Suddenly, the dog leapt out of Flora’s basket and ran across the stage and off into the wings. Barking could be heard from the side of the stage, then Doris’s abrupt voice. We heard snippets of, “Get off that” and, “No, put that down.”

  Suddenly the dog appeared with a long string of scarves that she had pulled off the prop table and run with across to the other side of the stage.

  Flora was completely thrown off balance and stood in the center of the stage like a deer in the headlights. Finally, she started her lines, faltering at first and then picking up as she went along. The rest of the chorus stood bemused as they watched the dog run back and forth across the stage with Doris chasing it. It finally ran circles around everyone, knotting the scarves around the cast and almost tripping them. I shook my head as I watched.

  The Goddess of the Corn entered from a cloud of dry ice that Jimmy was pumping out from the side stage. As she walked forward, I had my head down over the script reading when I heard Ethel gasp beside me. I looked up to see what had caught her attention and couldn’t believe what I saw. Marcy’s costume had been completely altered. Instead of the long blue satin robe that Ruby had designed for her, all I could see were legs, red pumps, and underwear. She had apparently taken a pair of scissors to her costume and made a maxi into a mini. The skirt was so short, I wasn’t sure if she was wearing it or was just using it as a long scarf.

  Oh no, I thought, the Goddess of the Porn has just made her entrance.

  She started her lines upstage, stepping in front of Flora every chance she got. It was very discomfiting to watch, and I could see it was throwing Flora for a loop as she scrambled to fight for her place in the spotlight.

  Lavinia suddenly made her entrance. She popped up from under the stage and came in beautifully as Lottie floated in, too, maybe a little abruptly, but much better than the last rehearsal. There was a flash. Lavinia prepared herself for the worst, but it actually worked wonderfully. Then, suddenly, a second flash nearly took her off her feet.

  “Oops,” said Jimmy from the wings. “Sorry, Lavinia. I must have double loaded it.”

  “I’ll double load you when I get hold of you,” said Lavinia, shaking her green fists into the wings and stomping out sparks that were still alight on the stage. “Thank goodness my underwear isn’t flammable.”

  Things continued to fall apart as we went on. Ernie forgot his lines and started a soft-shoe shuffle in the middle of a serious moment in Ooze. Tanya tripped on her costume, falling into the wings and nearly taking Doris out on side stage. Marcy played her character like a prima donna reality star and just posed, mostly in front of Flora. This made Flora so nervous that when she was supposed to kill Lavinia with a bucket of water, she missed her completely and drowned the rest of the cast instead. The dog, who had been deemed three parts crazy, had been fired. So her understudy, Ethel, had to stand in again. She stood in the center of the stage barking on cue, begrudgingly, whenever Flora spoke to her as she continued to watch her timer.

  The cast gathered on the stage for the finale. They all stood there, a shocked, bedraggled, wet mess as they sang the ode to the blue sparkly road, accompanied beautifully offstage by Olivia on the piano.

  I called the cast together as we finished, and I asked Ethel for a running time.

  She checked her watch.

  “Four hours and twenty minutes,” she said decisively.

  I dropped my head into my hands. At
least the audience would be getting their money’s worth.

  I looked around at the cast. Lavinia’s face was blackened from the flash powder. Lottie looked rattled from being lifted up and down and hobbled to the front of the stage, mumbling to me, “I think those ropes are chafing me.” The cast, still wet and dripping makeup, looked like a haunting Van Gogh portrait during his ugly period. And still the dog skipped around the stage.

  This was going to be a disaster.

  “On the positive side,” noted Stacy as she sat by my side, “they do say bad dress rehearsal, good show.” I looked at her and lifted my eyebrows. I couldn’t see how we were going to pull this off.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE

  Opening night, I arrived early at the theater, and it was already a hive of activity. In the foyer, James was busy organizing the snack counter and last-minute cleaning jobs. Displayed in a prominent place was a large announcement board, and pinned to it were black-and-white headshots of all the cast that James had taken during one of the rehearsals. Above their smiling faces were the words, “Your Cast of The Merlin of Ooze.”

  As I moved to the main auditorium, I was greeted by Doris. “We’re having trouble with that dog again,” she snapped. “I think we should put Ethel on instead. She’s learning her lines as we speak.”

  I nodded as I strode up the aisle. On the stage, a volunteer with a script stood next to Ethel, feeding her the lines while Ethel barked begrudgingly on cue. She was standing between Ruby and June, who were both busy sewing her into a dog costume with white-and-brown liver spots. As June sewed on a floppy velvet ear, she coughed and sniffed.

  “Google told me this might have developed into double pneumonia,” she said as she blew her nose, and Ruby mumbled something about “using yellow to bring out Ethel’s clarity of memory and fend off Mercury’s reversal” as she sewed reams of the color into Ethel’s dog collar.

  As I noted the face of the peeved puppy, I wondered what color we needed for the appearance of joy.

  I walked backstage to see how everyone else was faring. John met me in the wings. His hands were black with grease, and he was holding an old rag and oilcan.