Part Two
My cousin Phyllis Jean Cline (that’s her birth name, I can’t bring myself to use her married one), was murdered by her husband in a fit of anger on Halloween Eve, 1971 in the kitchen of their tiny frame house in the mountains of Virginia. Several of their kids, costumed and waiting to be taken “trick-or-treating,” witnessed the murder. That amateur killer’s weapon of choice was a “Savage .300” deer hunting rifle. Phyllis Jean was my favorite cousin, and on the day of her death I realized that we weren’t just close friends, but that I loved her. We were born two weeks apart, and as we got older I came to think of her as a female version of myself, my soul twin. During the summers of our childhood, when I visited Virginia from Baltimore, we spent days and weeks together. After many years of abuse by my father, my mother decided that she had to leave him before he killed her. I was shipped south to live with my grandmother, who took in many of her stray grandchildren and had raised Phyllis Jean from birth. Phyllis’ mother, my mother’s sister, was a pretty party girl, too busy jumping from bed to bed to take care of her own bastard fruit.
Phyllis Jean had country-girl good looks and reddish hair and freckles. She had a wonderful smile and was a tomboy who loved to climb trees and play touch football with me. When school began, our grandmother paid me ten cents a day to keep an eye on Phyllis back and forth on the big yellow bus, my job being to make sure she didn’t mess with boys on the long rear seat. I took the money and spent it on candy and let Phyllis Jean and the boys do as they pleased. There are many stories from my long relationship with Phyllis Jean, enough to fill a novel I suppose, especially when I consider that the last chapter would describe a crazy husband killing her when she was still a vivacious young woman. I wanted to write about how unfair that was, and how the sudden knowledge that she was gone shook me up like a character in an Elvis song.
When I finally did attempt a novel about Phyllis’ murder I got nowhere. Then, because I had minor success writing short dialogue-heavy articles for a local newspaper and a few magazines, as well as the captions for my published cartoons, I reasoned that I could use any skill I had for dialogue to try to write a play. Despite my initial ignorance of all things theatrical I somehow managed to become an amateur playwright with five full-length plays to my credit between 1985 and 1999, three of which were produced in the Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival. Whenever the subject of my writing comes up (mostly when I bring it up), I say (with false modesty) that I’ve written five bad plays, each with a scene or two—or a line here and there—that are pretty good. Given the chance to rewrite and stage them, I claim, they’d come out much better.
In my first play writing attempt I avoided the subject of Phyllis Jean’s murder and decided instead to make the play about community theater, pure and simple. To be honest, at that time, I felt disdain for amateur theatrics—I had the idea it was mostly bad most of the time, but I now mark that attitude up to the arrogance of youth. At the time, though, I selfishly realized that writing about the subculture of community theater—good or bad—was an ideal way to learn about how plays are created and produced and, at the same time, teach myself how to write one. As serendipity would have it, a good friend and coworker had connections that opened doors for me into that world.
Local Talent, the first play I wrote, in July, 1986, was the second one produced. It was a comedy-drama in three acts and I still think it’s pretty good for a first effort, despite what I now know to be its overreaching concept and execution. Some critics thought it was, at best, “uneven,” and, like many first time efforts, much too long. The play was about a group of amateur players staging an amateur production of a play written by an amateur playwright (write what you know, they say). Local Talent took place in a bar (a cliché setting) where the cast met each night after rehearsals. It was about love and lust and trying to make “art,” and how we can never really understand the primal emotions that drive us in any endeavor, including the creative process. So it was a mystery of sorts, too, about the mystery of how creative work gets done and the conflicts that occur when strong-willed people gather to collaborate. All the ensuing hubbub would drive my story.
That first effort was anything but simple. I tried to make the play as “arty” and “postmodern” as possible, so that it “referred” to itself at every opportunity. It was full of symbols, literary and theatrical allusions, and in-jokes. When the characters talk about the play they have in production, they’re talking about the play we (the audience) are watching. The whole second act takes place “in the character’s minds,” and employed every theatrical cliché I could think of. Even the concept (play-within-a-play, etc.) was a theatrical cliché. Local Talent, I now realize, was too ambitious for a novice to attempt—but, bad or good—creating it had a lot to teach me about play writing and theatrical production. While writing and staging Local Talent I even developed my own “dramatic arc.” I came to realize how ignorant I was about the talent, effort, and love community theater people were willing to devote to the craft, and to each other. I began the project an amateur theater snob and finished an admirer (and respecter) of the dedication and skill involved in what I’ve come to call “present-tense” art—live theater, amateur and professional.
Flashback
Our father isn’t home. He had come in earlier, a bit drunk, but with enough of his Friday pay left to take our mother shopping for groceries. So this is a good week. While they’re gone, and with my two older brothers in charge, we tear up the living room rough-housing. I’m nine and and my younger brother is seven. My older brothers—ringleaders who should know better—are eleven and thirteen. In the ruckus the radio on-off knob gets busted. That’s the only thing we can’t fix. Everything else—the tipped over chairs, the torn-down curtains, the sofa and chair cushions on the floor—we clean all that up before our parents return. Our father is drunker now and wants to listen to music on the radio. We had hoped he would just doze off, as usual, but instead he tries to turn on the radio and discovers the broken knob. He goes into an instant rage. In order to punish us all at the same time, our father makes us strip off our clothes and herds us naked and shivering into the tin shower stall where he has us cornered like cattle. He swings his belt as we rotate around the small space under the barely warm water, trying to get away from the slashing leather. Me and my younger brother are crying. My older brothers are laughing because they muscle we two smaller ones up front to absorb more of the punishment. For some reason our father becomes angrier and adjusts the water to cold only. Then, finally, after several more minutes of terror, his arm is tired and he’s done. Later that same evening at supper our father becomes angry at our mother and—for no reason that I can remember—slaps her, then throws his plate of spaghetti across the kitchen. The red splatter and sliding noodles create a complex and rather pretty design on the wall.
Part three of Bad Actors will be posted next Monday. Copyright © 2008 Jim Sizemore.
