In my sophomore year in high school, I was selected to be the stage manager for our school's spring production of A Black Comedy. Being stage manager meant that it was my job to handle everything that went on backstage before, during, and after the production. I memorized the entire script. I oversaw the creation and placement of the sets, the recording of the actors' blocking, the lighting cues, the sound cues, and pretty much else that goes on behind the scenes during a production. It was great stuff and I loved every minute of it. Everything that is, except that I reported to the student director, Cindy, a frumpy senior with wad of black curly hair, thick black-rimmed glasses, and a Mrs. Beasley doll.
Part of my job was to oversee the flying of the backdrops between acts. The backdrops hung from long poles that stretched horizontally across the back of the stage. These poles were attached to rigging rising up to the top of the theater, then back down to counterweights, were one or two people could easily lift or lower (fly) the backdrops. We quickly discovered that with the proper weights removed, a person could stand on the counterweights and fly himself to the top of the theater as well. This we did to our endless delight, despite the danger, the vertigo, the pinched fingers and cable-burned hands. I spent a great deal of my time introducing my staff and the actors to the practice. Eventually somebody figured out thay you could lower the backdrops all the way to the ground, sit precariously on the pole, and have another person or two lift you up -- riding atop the backdrop pole -- to the upper reaches of the stage, some forty feet up. Heady stuff.
Cindy the student director would come backstage, Mrs. Beasley in tow, and chide us that what we were doing was very dangerous and Mrs. Beasley just might get very angry and make her tell a teacher what we were up to -- for our own good, of course. I'd respond by trying to get her to take a counterweight ride herself. She'd look at Mrs. Beasley, say a couple of words to the doll, then look at me and say, "Mrs. Beasley thinks you're dumb."
Cindy would never criticize anyone directly, not as long as Mrs. Beasley was around. It was always "Mrs. Beasley thinks you said that line too quickly" or "Mrs. Beasley thinks you sound like a dying moose when you say that" or "Mrs. Beasley thinks your accent is awful" or "Mrs. Beasley thinks you're dumb." Frankly, I was getting more than a little annoyed with Mrs. Beasley. She wasn't the director and she wasn't a student. Sure, she'd had a pretty good gig on TV for a while, but that was years before. That still didn't give her the right to criticize us.
You might be wondering why we accepted criticism from a doll at all. Well, I'll tell you. Drama students have an immense capacity for self-delusion. Usually this manifests itself in the damn, I'm a great actor or everybody loves me kinds of delusions, but self-delusion is essential for one to be an actor at all. If you can't delude yourself into thinking you're an early twentieth-century english aristocrat walking into his luxe manor, how can you expect to delude an audience? Thus, when Cindy spoke to Mrs. Beasley, and when Mrs. Beasley spoke back, we accepted it as perfectly natural and took Mrs. Beasley for a spiteful little bitch wanting to relive her moment in the spotlight through us.
By the week of the play, tempers were frayed. Some of my set crews' work had gotten behind schedule because we were playing with the rigging too much and painting too little. My friend Joey, an excellent artist who went on to Julliard on scholarship, was responsible for turning the canvas and cardboard set pieces into the walls of a posh country manor. Mrs. Beasley criticized him mercilessly and rather unfairly. Joey, who was a very sensitive artist, came to me in tears one afternoon.
"If that Mrs. Beasley says another thing about my color choices," he burbled at me, "I'll kill her."
Joey was one of my best friends and I loved him. I couldn't stand to see him cry.
"No, Joey," I said, "I have something better in mind for that little bitch."
...
On the day of our first dress rehersals, as Cindy was examining the costumes and sets before our first run-through, I came across Mrs. Beasley sitting quietly and alone in the empty theater. Sneaking up behind her, I threw a hand over her mouth and snatched her up under my arm. I ran backstage, hid the doll in a cardbox, and waited for Cindy to end her inspections and take her place in the seats. We lowered the curtains in preparation for the first act.
I quickly began giving orders. Strike the set. I want nothing but a black backdrop. Lower bar number three, the one we always play with. Lights, I need a single spot right here. Someone bring me some rope and duct tape.
From outside the the curtain, we heard Cindy shout, "Curtain!".
And the show went on.
The curtain parted not on a country manor, but a black void. A single white spot shot down from the center of the void onto the back curtain. I motioned with one hand to the boys manning the rigging to slowly lower bar number three.
At first, you could only see the shadow as the bar lowered into the spotlight but still remained out of sight. A shadow like that of a frumpy trapeze artist. Then the dangling booties came into view and then the blue frock, and finally, the know-it-all smile and square-rim glasses. Mrs. Beasley sat, perched upon a makeshift trapeze -- a loop of rope, tied to the bar overhead. She swayed back and forth slightly.
"Arrrrrrrrrr!" boomed the scream from the auditorium, "Let her down! You let Mrs. Beasley down!" Cindy was jumping up and down on her seat now hysterically. "What have you done?" she moaned, "You're torturing her. Arrrrrrrrr!"
We giggled. Frankly, we thought Mrs. Beasley might actually like being a trapeze artist. But alright then, we'd made our point. Cindy by now had mounted the stage and was circling frantically below Mrs. Beasley's swing. I motioned for the boys to let her down. Only, one boy pulled up and the other boy pulled down, jerking the bar suddenly.
Mrs. Beasley hopped up once, then slid off her rope trapeze. She fell about a foot then caught her chin on the bottom of the loop of rope. The rope snapped tight and her body jerked around, wrapping the rope tightly around her neck. Her little legs gave a kick. Then she went completely limp, hanging by her neck eight feet above us, twisting in the wind.
Cindy let out an anguished wail. "You killed Mrs. Beasley! You killed Mrs. Beasley!" She began trying to leap up into the air, clawing at the doll's dead feet. I turned to the boys managing the rigging and motioned violently for them to let the doll down which they hurredly did. Cindy caught up Mrs. Beasley's corpse as she came hurtling down, unwrapped the rope from around her neck, and clutched the body to her breast. She hunched forward and jutted her jaw out. She pounced across the stage at me. Her breath was ragged and her hair, having been wrenched a dozen times by her hands, was a wild, explosive mess. With her free hand, she was pointing at me.
"You! You killed her!" she hissed with poisonous malevolence, "You...you...you murderer. I hate you! I hate you!" Her last expression exploded in a scream from her throat. I stood there, like the rest of the students, slack-jawed and dumb-founded.
Screaming and crying, Cindy ran offstage and out of the auditorium, clutching the dead Mrs. Beasley tightly. We listened to her scream "I hate you! I hate you all!" for several seconds after the metal doors slammed shut behind her, her wails and screams trailing off into the distance of the parking lot. A car door slammed. Wheels screeched. Then all was silent.
Paula, the assistant student director, who hated Mrs. Beasley as much as if not more than anyone, having found her advice to Cindy repeatedly ignored in favor of the whisperings of a bitchy doll, clapped her hands together cheerfully.
"Puh-laces! Puh-laces, everyone!" she chirped. "Blubrik, will you make sure that the next time the curtain rises there's a set behind it?" She settled into the director's seat with the script and waited for the actors and crew to resume their positions. When the curtain came up again, it was on a manor's drawing room.
Word of Mrs. Beasley's untimely death spread through the Drama and Speech department like wildfire. I was an instant celebrity, and my position as a lead actor in following years' plays was assured. Mrs. Beasley had been the bane of the drama students for three years, and they were relieved that somebody finally had the guts to put an end to that little doll's plastic life and her unwelcome criticisms. That I had actually hung Mrs. Beasley, on stage, in a spotlight, as the first act of our first dress rehersal, only solidified my position as the drama alpha-male, wicked, intelligent and dangerously capable of impassively neutering my enemies in the most embarrassing and public ways possible.
Cindy returned to the play on opening night and resumed her position as director. By then, though, her power was broken and without Mrs. Beasley at her side to prompt her, Cindy was demure and polite to everyone, including myself. She had obviously heard through the grapevine of my political catapult through the ranks and, having tasted my power directly, wanted to get on my good side. Besides, once the play goes on, the director is essentially powerless anyway. But as the stage manager, the show was now entirely in my hands.
"Puh-laces. Puh-laces, everyone." I announced as I looked down at my clipboard of cues and tested my flashlight. On my walky-talky, I ordered the house lights down. I cued the music. My eyes gleamed in the darkness, and I smiled.
With the relish of a vampire biting a virgin neck, I whispered, "Curtain."
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