To Kill a Mockingbird

THEATER 42
-spring 1998
I returned to Florida to take care of my grandmother, and called up Bob Cacioppo, the director of the Pirate Playhouse, a professional theater on nearby Sanibel Island. He asked whether i would like to join the cast of their upcoming show. I joined rehearsals already in progress, as a townsperson. Bob offered me $100 a week, twice the regular townsperson rate. Neils Miller, a venerable actor playing the judge, became a quick friend. And an unexpected reunion came, with Greg Longenhagen, my college theater buddy, who was playing the prosecuting attorney! Carrie Lund, Bob's wife, played the grown-up Scout, and we got along real well. I also hit it off with Cal Ward, who played the minister, and with the fun lady playing Calpurnia, and the actor playing Tom (who became my chief mancala competitor). And the kids: Daniel Benzing and Alex Doud, and the girls sharing the role of Scout, Joanna and Whitney. We goofed around backstage. The cast was so huge that an eighteen-wheeler had been procured, as an extra dressing room. That's where i dressed, and it was a lively place. My mancala board was in near-constant use. The theater was beautiful, a black box that had been built seven years earlier. The island was a tropical paradise. My favorite scene was the aborted lynch mob. I wore just dungarees and a hat, and carried an ax handle. Greg also played an anonymous mobber. The show was beautifully acted. Greg and i decided that it needed more sex, drugs, and violence, so i would swing my ax handle about in every scene, Greg would lay his cock on the evidence table, and Neils would be toking up in court (Carrie said she'd change her line to "the judge sat there all day, looking like a baked old shark"). Cal took some ribbing when he lost his train of thought one night, and ad-libbed a couple lines. In response, he expanded the ad-lib into a pontificating short speech the following night. We all laughed, but the management didn't find it so funny, making Cal write a formal letter of apology. When we staged the curtain calls, our two black males ended up at the back, above everybody else. They raised fists, lowered their heads, and joked "back of the bus again". I had a lovely time, with only minor feelings of being underused. The ending, as everybody left the courtroom, was beautifully staged, almost in slow motion.