Eccentricities of a Nightingale

THEATER 47
-spring 1999
Bob asked me back for a third show that Pirate Playhouse season, a Tennessee Williams piece he'd directed many times before, in Russia among other places. He wanted me to play the traveling salesman who is seduced by the title character. It was a small but sweet part, and i was having such a wonderful time there that i had to say yes. It almost became a no when they told Jason and i that they needed to lower our pay to $150 a week. He was to play one of the literary club eccentrics. We had been companions for two shows, and were doing other projects too (he got us a gig playing Keystone Cops in front of a new housing development, and a gig for Dunkin Donuts as a farmer and Egg Man...i spent two days in an eight-foot inflatable egg). We agreed that we would get $200, or walk. We got our money. Leanne Braman from ANDROCLES was back, playing one of the eccentrics. Billy Green returned to play the doctor. I had been unsure of Billy during ANDROCLES, in part because i'd wondered whether i might have been able to bring more to his part. But his sweetness won me over during this show when he opened up to Jason and i, revealing that he wore a hairpiece at the age of thirty. The other returning player was Robert Schelhammer, also playing an eccentric. He turned in another fun performance, and his oft-caustic companionship was a delight. In the lead role was the wonderfully-talented Trish Matthews. My Youth Club buddy Jim Prosser had worked with her at the Florida Studio Theater in Sarasota. Classy and talented New Yorker Larry Swansen played the father, and he and i hit it off very well. Newcomer Joan played the brittle, neurotic mother delightfully. Bob's passion for the piece was evident from the start, and he was able to devote more attention to me than in ANDROCLES. My character was lonely and virginal. The play is about unfulfilled dreams and desires, and we put together a good production. It was actually fun playing a character who only appears in the final scene. I could socialize more. Leanne had taken care of me when i'd turned my ankle in TREASURE ISLAND, taking me to her home and making poultices. Now, we sat in the audience during rehearsals, swapping neck rubs. I had a fling with Christina, a visiting light tech from Miami. Around the end of the run, i lost the friendship of lighting tech Todd, a really nice guy, because i'd been able to chat up a woman he was too nervous to approach. The best moment of the run was when Jim came. I had told him of Trish's involvement, concealing the fact that i was in the show, too. I made up a false program, deleting my name. We sat together for Act 1. At intermission, i told him that some emergency required my help backstage. His surprise was total when i walked onstage. One night, we learned that the board had ousted Bob as artistic director. We were flabbergasted. They had panicked because he had used most of the year's budget already, but that had been his plan, to start with two big shows to get the community's attention. My devotion to Bob was so great that when the incoming artistic director asked for my headshot, i didn't get around to it for a long time. Bob had set very high production standards, and also created the feeling of family, which is the longing of myself and so many artists.