Passion Play

by W. Edward Blain

  “He sounds mad,” said Greg, “but Desdemona doesn’t seem to think he is.”

  Thomas read through the scene. As angry as he was, he couldn’t help getting interested in it.

  “You’re mad at her,” he said. “But you’re also mad at yourself for being mad at her. The only thing you can do is to tell her to get the hell out of there. Politely, so that you can maybe get yourself under control.”

  “But I’m not alone. I’m left on the stage with Iago.”

  “Exactly. You tell the wrong person to leave. It’s the turning point of the play.”

  He was surprised by his own insight.

  “Damn,” said Greg. “You should take over from Farnham.”

  “Shut up and read the lines,” said Thomas, though the compliment pleased him. He forgot his earlier threat to skip rehearsal. “If you do this right, you can get the audience scared to death.”

  “Why scared?” said Greg.

  “Scared because they know what you don’t know,” said Thomas. “They know there’s a maniac loose, and they’re dreading that you’re not going to recognize him.”

  “Everybody knows what happens in this play,” said Greg.

  “Not everybody,” said Thomas.

  SCENE 2

  There were all kinds of residue backstage from the mixer the night before, and Mr. Farnham was furious about it.

  “I told people that the stage was Red Flag,” he said. “I put up signs on the doors. Red Flag. Off Limits. It did no good. Look at this mess.”

  Somebody had spilled a Coke on the black boards of the stage and had tried to blot it up with those little napkins from the refreshment bar. A fourth of a cinnamon doughnut was stuck to the goo.

  Nobody wanted to remind him that a band had been playing on the stage last night.

  “I’ll get it,” said Nathan Somerville. Like the other boys, he had changed from his chapel clothes into jeans. You didn’t want to wear your good clothes backstage.

  Thomas would have been crazy to skip rehearsal. He was learning to love it back here in this big empty space where you abandoned reality and became somebody else. He knew enough about theater to appreciate how big a stage it was for a high school theater, thirty feet from one end of the proscenium to the other, additional fifteen-foot wings on each side, and twenty-five feet deep. The place had two stories of fly space overhead, with ropes at the wings controlling flats for backdrops. There was an electric winch for raising and lowering the light bar, and there were more lights out front, in the ceiling over the heads of the audience. A light booth at the back of the auditorium held a big spotlight plus controls for all the other lights in the room. For rehearsals they used the full stage lights, not the smaller work lights lining the walls backstage. It was not economical, but Mr. Farnham said it helped you get used to the glare.

  They were there to block the end of Act II, Scene I, when Othello and Desdemona arrive in Cyprus. Greg and Thomas had been there for fifteen minutes. Mrs. Warden was also there, sitting in a chair and looking as worn out as the bits of trash from the mixer scattered backstage. Nathan Somerville was the only other student there except for Landon Hopkins, who was up in the light booth. Everyone was waiting for Bud Gristina, the senior playing Cassio, to appear. The boys clowned around a little. Greg wound an old scarf around his head to look like a miniature turban, and Thomas found a wooden stick about a half-inch in diameter and three feet long he could use as a sword.

  “Don’t play with that dowel,” said Farnham. “We’re using those for the banners.” Thomas put down the dowel and helped Nathan Somerville clean up the trash on the stage.

  The telephone backstage rang. It was on the wall of the right wing. You couldn’t dial outside on it, but you could call the light booth or the prop room downstairs or even a dorm if you wanted.

  “Maybe that’s Gristina now,” said Mr. Farnham. He walked over to pick up the receiver on the wall, and then he replaced it immediately. “They hung up,” he said.

  Across the auditorium, high up in the light booth, Landon Hopkins shouted down.

  “Did you just call me, Mr. Farnham? The telephone rang but nobody was there.”

  The backstage telephone rang again. Again Farnham picked it up, again no answer. He shouted back up to Landon.

  “Did you just call me?”

  Landon shouted no.

  “What the hell is going on with the telephones?” said Farnham. “Let’s set up the scene.”

  Mr. Farnham had taped off places on the stage where the set would be. They would have two large columns flanking a set of three stairs across the back of the stage and a series of shorter columns projecting to the edge of the proscenium on either side. Desdemona’s bedroom was going to be trucked in from stage left, but the dolly had not yet been built. The columns were now just little squares of tape on the stage; the stairs were parallel strips of tape a foot apart.

  Cassio still wasn’t here, so they decided to start at the end of the scene, where Othello first lands at Cyprus.

  “Othello enters from up here,” said Farnham, indicating a place at upstage left. “Desdemona is already here with Michael Cassio”—he pointed to a spot downstage right—“and Iago and Roderigo are opposite them, there, downstage left.” The actors took their positions.

  The telephone rang again. This time Greg, who was off stage and already in position, answered.

  “Heavy breathing,” he said. “Then they hung up.”

  “Just take it off the hook,” said Farnham. Greg obliged.

  Farnham said to get started. He read Cassio’s line himself: “Lo, where he comes!”

  “O, my fair warrior!” said Greg, striding into center stage.

  “Not so breathless,” said Farnham immediately. “Try it stressing ‘fair’ rather than ‘warrior.’”

  Greg did it again.

  “My dear Othello,” said Mrs. Warden.

  “Perfect,” said Mr. Farnham.

  Othello and Desdemona had another exchange of pleasantries, and then Mr. Farnham interrupted again.

  “Kiss her,” he said.

  “I can’t,” said Greg.

  “You have to kiss her,” said Mr. Farnham. “It’s in the text. You’ll kiss her again when you kill her.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” said Mr. Farnham. He was getting mad. After four months of learning to read the signs in his English class, Thomas could see that Farnham was on the verge of a tantrum.

  “I am ill, Greg, but what I have is not catching,” said Mrs. Warden.

  “It’s not that,” said Greg.

  “Then stop· acting childish and start acting,” said Mr. Farnham.

  Before Greg could answer, Landon Hopkins called down from the light booth.

  “Mr. Farnham,” said Landon, “the switchboard just called and said we had a phone off the hook down here. It’s screwing up the other lines somehow.”

  “Tell the switchboard to go to hell,” shouted Mr. Farnham. “I’m trying to run a rehearsal down here.” He looked cornered. “Put the phone back on the hook, Nathan.” Nathan replaced the telephone.

  “Greg,” said Mr. Farnham, “what’s the problem here?”

  “I’ve never kissed a white woman before,” said Greg.

  Thomas was about to die from frustration. That was so damn typical of Greg. There were only about 350 boys in the school who dreamed all night about the chance to kiss Mrs. Warden, and the one who finally got the chance to do it was unwilling.

  “Kiss her now,” said Farnham.

  “I can’t, Mr. Farnham.”

  Mr. Farnham’s voice got tighter.

  “I have been told to continue with business as usual,” he said. “It was as rough a night for me as it was for you guys, and I wish you would try to cooperate just for a second on a matter that’s absolutely vital to this production.”

  “Maybe we should just skip the kiss for now and go on,” said Mrs. Warden.

  “We can’t skip anything,”
said Farnham. “We’re just postponing the problem if we do. Othello, if you want to do this part, you will kiss your wife right now.”

  The telephone rang, and that was it. Farnham popped.

  “Which one of you is doing this?” he said. He looked at each one of them in turn, and Thomas could feel his own face heating with embarrassment when Farnham’s eyes drilled him.

  “This is some practical joke, isn’t it, Boatwright?” said Mr. Farnham.

  “No sir.”

  “Why are the phones ringing so frequently?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Farnham.”

  “Who would want to disrupt our rehearsal?”

  “I don’t know,” Thomas said again. “Maybe it’s Landon calling from the light booth.” All this time the telephone was still ringing. Nathan Somerville crossed to answer it.

  “Landon!” Mr. Farnham shouted up to the light booth. “Is that you?”

  Landon shouted no. Nathan picked up the ringing telephone. “They hung up,” he said.

  “Start the scene again,” said Mr. Farnham. But then he froze and looked down at the stage as if he were trying to see through the boards. He ran upstage and out into the hallway. The door shut softly behind him.

  “Where’s he going?” Thomas asked Mrs. Warden.

  Mrs. Warden said she couldn’t imagine.

  The telephone started to ring again but stopped abruptly. And a second later they heard a shriek from under the stage.

  Thomas recognized the voice.

  It was Richard.

  SCENE 3

  Mr. Farnham brought Richard upstairs holding him by the upper arm, like a prison guard, and roughly pushed him onto center stage. He told the rest of the group to gather around. Nathan Somerville, Greg Lipscomb, and Thomas Boatwright stood next to Mrs. Warden, who sat in a folding chair between Richard and the lip of the stage. Landon Hopkins, who was still resentful over Richard’s damage to his Shakespeare anthology, came down from the light booth and watched from the auditorium. Richard stared at the floor and waited for his cue under the glare of the stage lights.

  “I don’t know why it took me so long to catch on,” said Mr. Farnham. “All of you know, I assume, that the floor of the stage is also the ceiling of the prop room? Anybody down there can hear every word spoken up here.”

  Richard’s face was shiny with tear tracks, his eyes bright with anger. He wore a black tee shirt covered with brown dust, his favorite old jeans, and black Converse basketball shoes with holes in them. He breathed unsteadily, but his voice was strong when he spoke.

  “I’d like to apologize to the group for disturbing your rehearsal,” he said.

  “Go on,” said Mr. Farnham. He stood a little behind Richard.

  “I have behaved immaturely and inexcusably,” said Richard. He would not look directly at anyone.

  “That’s enough,” said Mr. Farnham.

  Richard started to walk upstage toward the door at the stage wall.

  “Where are you going?” said Mr. Farnham. Richard did not answer; he continued to walk.

  “I asked you a question,” said Mr. Farnham.

  “Let him go, Dan,” said Mrs. Warden. He ignored her.

  “Blackburn, answer me.”

  “I’m going back to my dorm,” said Richard as he reached the door and exited.

  “Go get him, Boatwright,” said Mr. Farnham.

  “Let him go, Dan,” said Mrs. Warden.

  “I have some cleanup chores for that boy,” said Mr. Farnham. “Go get him, Boatwright.”

  Thomas ran after Richard and caught up with him in the hallway.

  “He says you have to stay,” said Thomas.

  “Bull.”

  “It’s a school rule,” said Thomas. “You don’t disobey a teacher.” He felt sorry for Richard and also disappointed that he would carry on such a childish vendetta. Thomas didn’t want him to get into more trouble.

  Richard turned and faced him.

  “He’s berserk,” said Richard. “He scared me. He pushed me up against the wall so hard I hit my head. Do you have any idea of how strong he is? He’s strong and he’s crazy.”

  “You were driving him crazy with those phone calls.”

  “You didn’t see him downstairs,” said Richard. “I’m telling you, the guy was berserk. He is not normal.”

  But he came back to the rehearsal with Thomas, where Mr. Farnham told him to mop the stage. Then Bud Gristina showed up and apologized for napping during rehearsal time. Instead of raving, Mr. Farnham decided to start the whole scene from the beginning. They never got back to Othello’s entrance.

  Greg thanked Richard afterward for allowing the kissing issue to go unresolved.

  SCENE 4

  It was no good. Warden tried to be rational, tried to be objective about it all, but he could not dodge the issue. The question of Daniel Farnham’s behavior was a mosquito buzzing around his head, and he knew that sooner or later it would land and bite.

  He sat in his study on this Sunday afternoon ostensibly reading a letter from the editor of a magazine. He had received it yesterday. Today he distracted himself by reading it again. It was the nicest sort of rejection letter to get: a personal, detailed response to the poem and explanation of what wasn’t working in it and why. He liked this editor and respected his opinion, but Warden thought the man was wrong in this case. He would instruct his agent to keep submitting the poem in its current form.

  In front of him on the desk was a pile of essays, folded longitudinally and signed with various scrawls identifying each student author. He should be writing them their own forms of personal rejection slips, comments on what was wrong with their thinking and their writing, encouragement to develop whatever might be worth salvaging in their work, harsh condemnation for anyone who continued to make the same error each week.

  Was he making the same error each week?

  Cynthia had just returned from play rehearsal to report another incident involving Daniel Farnham. Warden had lost track of how many that made over the year, but it was too many. What made this one extraordinarily bad was that Farnham had apparently struck one of the boys or had threatened him so strongly that he might as well have struck him.

  What was it with the air over in that gymnasium anyway? Were they being poisoned by some toxic wastes buried under the building a century ago? Angus Farrier first going mad and killing two boys, McPhee’s wife moving out, Farnham flying into rages at the slightest provocation. Warden shook his head at himself; his thoughts were outrageous. Still, it was an odd coincidence that so many bad events could be associated with one building. It was as though the place were cursed.

  Cynthia entered the study in a blue dress.

  “Hurry,” she said. “We have dinner in fifteen minutes.”

  He looked at his watch; it was 6:15. Where had the afternoon gone? He could remember saying goodbye to Cynthia when she went off to her play practice, and then he could remember hearing her report when she got home. What happened in the interim?

  He stood up and reached into the pockets of his trousers to empty them and found that he still had Kevin Delaney’s key to the gym.

  “Is it normal for people to forget as much as I do?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said. “But you don’t forget. You just don’t notice.”

  “All right,” he said. “Is that normal?”

  “No,” she said. “Nor is it normal to write such beautiful poetry.”

  “These days my poetry is as bad as my administrating.”

  Cynthia said that was true, but that it made no difference to her.

  Warden embraced her. He loved the feel of her delicate body next to his big, clumsy rough bulk, loved the way she squeezed him so hard in return.

  “You make it tough to forget how much I love you,” he said.

  “Don’t ever forget it,” she said.

  “Dan Farnham loves you too.”

  He felt her go limp in his arms, but he held on tight for another moment be
fore releasing her.

  “Dan is a boy,” said Cynthia.

  “I’m going to have to fire him,” said Warden, “if he’s going to continue to lose his temper.”

  “He’s a good director and a good teacher.”

  “You know we can’t have the faculty manhandling the students,” said Warden.

  “Come to a rehearsal and watch him work,” said Cynthia. Either he would see something good and worth salvaging, or he would catch Farnham in the middle of an explosion and have a valid reason for terminating his contract.

  “He won’t lose his temper with me there,” said Warden.

  “Sit in the back of the auditorium. He won’t notice you.”

  “With this beacon lamp of a face?”

  “Stop it,” she said. “You could hide in the prop room under the stage like Richard Blackburn. Apparently the acoustics are marvelous.”

  “No,” said Warden. “I can’t spy on my colleagues. This confrontation will be tomorrow. Face-to-face.”

  He had put it off for months, but now that he had committed himself, he looked forward to it.

  SCENE 5

  On Sunday evening Thomas Boatwright had to appear before the honor council. It was easy. They heard his story, lectured him about his tardiness in speaking the truth, praised him for coming forward, and sent him back without punishment to study in his dorm room.

  By 9:00 he was concentrating intensely on the art of shooting a free throw.

  “I don’t see why I’m not improving,” he said. He lay on his bed and watched Greg finish the geometry homework.

  “Show me how you’ve been doing it,” Greg said.

  “In here?” Sports on the dormitories were strictly prohibited.

  “Just go through the motions,” Greg said. “Here’s the line.” He stood and marked with his toe an imaginary free throw line between the ends of their beds. “The basket’s up there above the window. Do everything but dribble and shoot.”

  Thomas fetched his basketball from the closet. He stood at the line, pretended to dribble twice, and then mimed a shot.

  “You’re holding the ball wrong,” Greg said immediately. “You got to have the lines of the ball perpendicular to your fingers.” He took the ball from Thomas and showed him how to hold it. “I’m surprised McPhee never told you that.”