Eurydice closes tonight, so this will be my final entry as a
guest blogger for The Rake. Thanks to them for inviting me to do
this, and thanks to all of you who took the time to read of these
adventures.
TTT is well into its second decade, but until now its work has never been seen outside the Twin Cities. Eurydice
is a landmark because, for the first time, the show is playing a tour
date: Bemidji! A four-hour drive up on Monday, a public performance
Monday night followed by a very early high school performance the next
morning. But in between… Michelle Hensley tells us that we’re staying
at the Palace Casino Hotel, and the senses of the company swim! Booze! Gambling! Adjoining rooms! One night only! Let the bacchanalia begin, baby—Ten Thousand Things is off the leash!
All through rehearsals and the first week of performances, people start making plans: Is there a hot-tub? How much gambling money are people bringing? Who’s rooming with whom? Now there’s
a thought—some pretty dishy people in the cast, and as we’ve all been
slyly saying to each other so often it’s become our mantra of
immorality: What happens in Bemidji, stays in Bemidji. I
wind up with musical genius Peter Vitale as my roommate. Peter is the
second-oldest man in the company and a father like me and I sniff a
faint whiff of fogey-dom collecting around my ankles.
Michelle
asks if anybody wants to carpool with her, and I jump at the offer.
There’s no way I can get lost if I’m riding with the artistic director,
and since there’s bound to be another person along I can probably
stretch out in back and snooze most of the way. Oh, this trip is
shaping up nicely! No driving up or back, only two performances and a
night of rich and exotic promise. I briefly ponder packing my tuxedo. I
mean, we’re gonna be right next to a casino,
dude—what red-blooded American male hasn’t wanted to sit at a chemin
de fir table in black tie, casually flipping cards and suavely purring
"Banco" and "Suivi" to the dealer while raking in piles of chips as
eye-patched Largo scowls and darkly fingers his SPECTRE octopus ring. The crowd murmurs in French and elegantly gowned/coifed women gaze with
longing. The problem is I don’t actually know how to play chemin de fir and don’t know the French phrase for "I just lost my wife’s 401K." So I decide to keep it casual.
The
first bat-squeak of disillusionment arrives in an email from one of the
company. The Palace Casino Hotel is alcohol-free. It says so on the
website. In fact, it SCREAMS so on the website. I suffer a momentary
neural shutdown and stare at the screen. I see the word casino and then, very close to it, the words alcohol-free. Casino. Alcohol-free. These
words can’t be so close together. They hate each other! How do you
operate a casino without serving liquor? Isn’t that how casinos work? Yeah,
I vaguely understand enough of the math to know that the house will
always beat you in the end, but isn’t it the free vodka martinis,
shaken or stirred, that keep you at
the table in a pleasant buzz, losing track of time, tossing $100 chips
onto the baize like Famous Amos cookies until the odds catch up with
you and you stagger back to your comped hotel room with nothing but
lint and ATM slips in your pocket?
The
second ominous piece of news arrives the Sunday before we leave.
There’s no second passenger in Michelle’s car! We’re riding up
together, she and I, alone.
Now, one might think it odd that the prospect of spending four hours
alone in a car with a woman who has directed me in 5 or 6 TTT
productions would unnerve me, but it really does. Michelle is, well, ultra- — ultra-talented, ultra-kind, ultra-generous, ultra-passionate, and most
important in this context, ultra, ultra-intelligent and ultra, ultra, ultra-intimidating.
She went to Princeton and has won lots of awards and is writing a book
and ran this company alone with her bare hands for five years at least.
She’s far better-read than I am, more articulate and opinionated on
current events and politics, and I have no idea what we’re going to talk
about! Not that I’m a dunce, but I am definitely a Watson to her
Holmes, as I am to many writers and directors. I’m a guy of average
intelligence who happens to be able to do this one weird thing, acting,
fairly well. And for that I get to spend many of my working days with
lots of hyper-intelligent people with whom I have learned to mostly keep my
mouth shut and listen.
Have
you ever spent a night in a bar with a group of writers, dramaturgs, and
directors from the Playwright’s Center? The wit, the banter, the
telling observations zip by like Bob Feller fastballs. It’s
flipping intimidating is what it is, and once settled in the car I
figure the best remedy is to acknowledge my anxiety and confide in
Michelle straight up. "Michelle, I’m frankly very nervous about
spending four hours in this car with you and boring you silly."
Michelle’s eyes widen, "Really? Why?" and the next thing I know we’re
stopping for lunch, and then the next thing I know we’re in
Bemidji. The art of a great conversationalist is being able to
effortlessly make a lesser conversationalist feel like a great
conversationalist. Michelle is a ultra–great
conversationalist. I never felt a thing. It turns out we both travelled
this route as children en route to family lake cabins. We recall being
packed in the car the night before and waking up on the road, watching
the hypnotic linear dance of the overhead telephone wires as the car
speeds northward. It’s surprising to discover such pleasant, kindred
memories with Michelle. That and the fact that she’s addicted to The Wire, same as me.
We’re
the first to arrive at the Palace Hotel, and we have about two hours
before our 5:30 call at the theatre. I’m dying for a nap and don’t even
glance at the hallway leading to the casino as I find my room and
collapse. Peter Vitale comes in at some point — I don’t even hear him. I
do hear my cell phone ringing, though, only minutes, it seems, after I
put my head to the pillow. It’s Nancy Waldoch, our SM, letting us know there’s
been a mix-up and our audience thinks our performance is starting at
6 p.m. instead of 6:30, so we need to get a move on now.
Still
fuzzy with sleep, we grab our costume bags, stumble into cars, and head
to the Wild Rose Theater in Bemidji. The Wild Rose is housed in the
Bemidji Masonic Temple Meeting Hall, which happens to be the perfect
shape for your stadium-style seating arrangement. Our audience is a
melange of local arts patrons, college students, and occupants of
Bemidji Battered Women’s and Homeless Shelters.
For
the most part they are quite attentive, although someone has brought
along a small boy who starts wandering in and out, and Michelle
gallantly takes it upon herself to distract him in the lobby with
cookies, cider and, for ought I know, duct tape.
The
performance goes well, but I think I speak for everybody when I say
that a certain small percentage of our attention was focused on our
post-show activities: where will we eat, and more importantly, where
will we drink? During the post-show load-out of our set, Vera Mariner succinctly summarized our concerns when she said, "God, if they don’t have beer, I will tear my eyes out!"
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