Under The Table

I’ve reached an interesting phase in my writing of the novel currently occupying much of my psyche, a phase in which my acting chops come more and more into play. By acting chops I mean my facility as an actor, specifically an actor who enjoys becoming many characters simultaneously.

When I was a little boy I was fascinated by what made people funny or not funny, and by funny I mean humorous not weird. My Jewish grandparents were funny, my WASP grandparents were not, my mother could be funny if she was in the mood, my father told us bedtime stories with funny parts, and a few kids at school were funny and I studied their every word and gesture.

When I was six my humorous stories were popular with my peers, so much so that my First Grade teacher Mrs. Bushnell had me up in front of the class to tell stories while she rested i.e. took naps. I’d spin silly tales, play all the parts with great gusto, and most importantly make my classmates laugh.

One of the first things I learned from performing for an audience was that things I thought would be funny might not be, and things I never suspected were funny might be hilarious. The collective mind is very different than the individual mind, and once I’d gotten the collective laughing, almost anything I said would be perceived as funny by most of the individuals composing the collective. I also learned that relentless humor was unsustainable. Occasional excursions into more serious realms enhanced the eventual return to the funny stuff, as did well-timed pauses and silences.

And though learning to be a good stand-up comic storyteller was immensely satisfying, it was not until Sixth Grade that I experienced what it was to be an actor. That was the year a new girl appeared in our midst – Helen Reid. A comely young adult, light years more sophisticated than the rest of us, Helen was immediately beloved by many boys and a few girls. I had a crush on Helen, but the field was so crowded I dared not pursue her, not that I would have known how to pursue her.

Helen aspired to be an actress and was eager to put on plays. Had she continued to live in our school district and gone on with us to junior high, she could have tried out for after-school plays and certainly would have gotten leading roles, but Helen moved away after one momentous year with us, and for that year putting on plays at our school consisted entirely of what Helen could scare up on her own.

She enticed a few girls to dramatize with her, but boys were either disinterested or so inept Helen wouldn’t use them. And I was disinterested because I couldn’t conceive of having anything to do with Helen except to gawk at her from afar and hold my breath whenever she spoke aloud in class.

Then one day at recess Helen approached me and said, “Todd. I’ve found a marvelous little play I’d like to put on with you. It’s very funny and shrewd, and given your inherent charm, I think you’d be perfect opposite me.”

I remember wondering what inherent meant and smiling at the word shrewd, which I kind of knew the meaning of. And I remember how her sophistication washed over me and the delicious nuances of her speech and the exquisite grace of her gestures were so alluring I couldn’t help but stick my finger up my nose and say, “Me?”

She laughed her gorgeous sophisticated laugh and said, “Yeah you. We can rehearse at my house after school. Say yes.”

I must have agreed because soon thereafter I went to Helen’s house three afternoons in a row and we had cookies and hot cocoa and a marvelous sophisticated time rehearsing a short shrewd comedy in which we were a young married couple shopping together, and no matter what my young bride wanted I couldn’t deny her.

The slapstick component of the play was that Helen’s character kept buying things and my character had to schlep the ever-growing stack of packages until the stack reached such ridiculous proportions I was staggering under the weight and barely able to keep the edifice of packages from falling over.

Helen had most of the lines in the play, I was her adoring Yes man, and in the end I did drop all the packages, she was hilariously outraged, then eloquently forgiving, and the play ended with her… wait for it… kissing me on the lips!

Of course the play was a hit with our class and we were asked to perform it for the other Sixth Grade class and two Fifth Grade classes, after which for a few days I was a minor celebrity on campus and imagined Helen and I would run off to New York together and conquer Broadway, except I was eleven.

I was not in another play until my sophomore year in high school, after which I was in lots of plays and thought I might become a professional actor. After high school I spent some years exploring that option and chose to go another way, though I continued to act through my fiction. And the interesting phase I’m in with the current opus involves refining the scenes by acting them out with gusto.

Several drafts from now I will record the book for the audio edition, and during the recording process I will have an audience – Peter Temple, our wonderful recording engineer, and me – as we review the recording to hear if any lines want to be retaken or rewritten.

Until then I will hone the lines until they sing.

fin

Todd’s many audio books featuring his acting chops can be found at Audible.