The Birthday Party

THEATER 16
-spring 1987
There were usually three mainstage shows per year at WCU. The second show of my freshman year was written by Harold Pinter, and directed by Sandi Hall. Again, one of the more heavy writers of modern theater. But a smaller cast, only six. A much smaller chance of being cast. I got cast. I was feeling a little predatory again...not that i thought i was the greatest thing since serrated knives (and i knew that casting was circumstantial), but two shows in a row, for a freshman? The script was amazing, and Sandi and i hit it off in a big way. She was head of the department, and had been teaching for decades. Her grace and enthusiasm were beautiful. The play is about a quiet lodger at a boarding house on the English coast. Two gangster types show up, and begin a slow terrorization of the lodger. Senior Vince, hair coming in, played the lodger, Stanley. Cat Hasson played a chatty local girl. I played Petey, the sweet sixty-eight year-old proprietor. My wife Meg was played with wifty wonderfulness by Tracy Seschion. I learned to put on old-man makeup. We did working class British accents. I doddered around, eating fried bread and reading the paper (the bread was toast and syrup). The gangsters were played by Troy Wenger and some guy. Oh yes, Lou Markert. Yup, that Lou. With yet still undiminished antipathy toward me. I'd seen him on campus the first semester, and thought that maybe he wasn't going to get involved in the department, but no such luck. He played the loquacious leader, Goldberg, and Troy played the heavy. Lou had no problem playing older roles, he'd been balding since i had known him. He was good. They both were. The play was surreal. Stanley is interrogated and assaulted, and we never learn why. Tiring in the second act, Lou has Troy blow in his mouth. Lou's, that is. The stagehands, particularly Melanie and Rose, took a little more of a liking to me than the other actors. They played a joke on me one night. I opened my paper onstage, and there was a false headline taped on, "Meg's Porn Report". Melanie insisted that that was the one time i broke character, in four years. I insisted that if i did have a ghost of a smile, it was because of something i was reading, something in character. So there. And something else happened that spring. After auditions for the final show, HAY FEVER, directed by Jay Berkowitz (who was all business and no warmth), i beheld the first cast list of my life that didn't have my name on it. I guess i knew it had to come sooner or later, but i was still a little surprised. I entertained myself by making comparisons to Rob Lowe. I fancied a contest in which we both had to play all the characters in BIRTHDAY PARTY. In my thinking, i'd have gotten the best of him. It's a funny thing, where confidence ends and conceit begins. The sweet boy was still there, but my theater desire burned. BIRTHDAY PARTY was still running when they cast HAY FEVER, which softened the blow.