Set the Stage

by Karis Walsh

  “Okay, people. Act two, scene one. Emilie, let’s start with you.”

  Emilie put aside her concerns about being pelted with decaying fruit and concentrated instead on the more immediate worry about playing Cassella. She didn’t seem to have a good grasp of this complex character, even after reading the book and studying the script until her head ached. She had been an understudy before, in high school, but then the job had consisted of watching the others rehearse and being ready with her lines in case she had to step in. Here, she was onstage during rehearsals nearly as often as the lead actor, Gemini. And the director had no qualms about reminding her almost daily that being an understudy didn’t necessarily mean she had the part if Gemini—no last name, she was that big a star—couldn’t do it. She’d go on if Gem was ill, but if she needed to be replaced entirely, it might not be with Emilie. Personally, Emilie would have been happy to have another actor take over, since she couldn’t connect with the character. But professionally, being kept in the understudy role while another actor was hired to play the part would be damaging to her future.

  She walked over to her first mark and took a deep breath, mentally reviewing the scene and the notes she had been given by Jay and the director the last time she had spoken these lines. Her best hope was that Gemini would play the part as scheduled, and Emilie would be a dutifully prepared, but never needed, understudy.

  She launched into her first lines, already sensing the awkwardness of her portrayal of Cassella, and tried to silence her jeering internal critic. She’d be more relaxed if Geoffrey hadn’t shared the rampant rumor that Gem had been offered some other role, in some unspecified South American country, and that her agent and a posse of lawyers were trying to break her out of this contract. It all sounded too dramatic and strange to be true, but too often, those unbelievable stories turned out to be fact.

  Emilie managed to get through her rehearsal without calling too much attention to herself. She knew her lines and understood the emotions the director wanted from her in every scene. But it wasn’t enough to be invisible and okay. She needed to stand out—in a good way—or she wouldn’t be acting after this season.

  She felt deflated by her mediocrity as she walked down the brick staircase and into the park. The large Elizabethan theater loomed above her, and she found its presence somewhat comforting. Inside those brown-beamed and whitewashed walls, she would be playing Titania on a more familiar type of stage, with the audience a decent distance away. She had been doing well in those rehearsals. Good enough, at least. She’d be fine. Really…

  Emilie crossed one of the stone bridges and saw Jacob farther down the path. He gestured toward the Japanese garden, and Emilie waved her thanks. She was already breathing a bit easier here, with the damp and bracing wind blowing through the trees and washing away the day. She passed beneath the torii gate and saw Arden crouched on the ground near the maples.

  “Hello, Mr. Philips,” Emilie said quietly, greeting Arden’s grandfather the way she had overheard Arden do one day when she didn’t realize Emilie was nearby. She walked down the path and knelt by Arden. “Hi.”

  “Hey, Em. I wasn’t sure if I’d see you today.” Arden smiled at her, and Emilie felt the weight of the day lift as suddenly as if Arden had shoved it off her shoulders.

  “I have an hour between rehearsals. Do you need help pulling those weeds?”

  Arden laughed. “I’m putting them in, not pulling them out. But thanks, anyway.”

  “Ah. On-purpose plants. I still don’t know how you can tell the difference. They’re all green with leaves.”

  Arden looked ready to begin a plants-versus-weeds lecture, until she seemed to notice Emilie’s smile. She shook her head. “Funny. We lost some of the ground cover in this section, so I’m replacing it with woolly thyme.”

  She handed Emilie a tiny plant and she ran her fingers over the soft leaves. “Well named,” she said, popping the plant out of its fiber pot and sticking it in one of the holes Arden had already made. She pressed the soft dirt around it, covering its roots and anchoring it in the ground. She had never thought of herself as an outdoorsy person until coming here, but now she understood why people were drawn to gardening as a hobby. The feel of soil under her fingernails and the coolness of the earth were grounding, and she loved the idea of watching the plants grow over the coming months. Her life was ephemeral and hard to grasp right now, with elusive roles and subjective performance standards. But being here with Arden centered her. Everything was physical, from the texture of the shrubs and flowers to the feeling she got deep in her belly when she saw Arden smile or laugh.

  “How have rehearsals been going?” Arden asked.

  Emilie frowned. This was usually where she said something vague and changed the subject, but today she couldn’t do it. “They suck. I suck,” she said instead.

  Arden started to laugh, but then she looked at Emilie’s face and stopped. She sat back on her heels. “I thought everything was fine. What happened today?”

  Emilie shook her head. “Today and every day. I’m not really measuring up.”

  “You’ve only been in rehearsal for two weeks, Em. You’re learning the parts and figuring out what the directors want. You can’t expect to be perfect this early in the process, and no one else should expect it of you.”

  Emilie bit her lip. Part of her knew Arden was right, and that she was new to the company and rusty after years away from acting. And nervous because her future depended on her performance at the festival. But part of her was angry, too. Not at Arden—even though Emilie felt the ridiculous urge to lash out at her for being so practical and right. No, she was angry at herself because she could feel her desire to run away. Give up. Latch on to Arden or anyone who would be kind to her and give her a way out.

  Arden was watching her with one of her inscrutable expressions. “What?” Emilie asked, with a sharpness to her voice. “Sorry. I’m frustrated.”

  “I can tell.” Arden nodded. She looked around the garden and then pointed toward her grandfather’s fountain. “Stand over there, right at the bend of the first trough.”

  Emilie sighed but had to roll her eyes at how melodramatic she sounded. “All right. But why? Are you just trying to distract me so I stop whining?”

  “A little. But I need help with something, and it’ll give you a chance to practice some lines. I’ll be brutally honest and tell you if you really do suck.”

  “How sweet.” Emilie walked over to the place where Arden wanted her. Somehow, her irritation was seeping away. “Okay, I’m here. Now what?”

  Arden tilted her head to one side. “Move to the right about a foot. That’s better. Now, be Lady Anne.”

  Emilie looked around. The peace of the Japanese garden was directly opposed to the turmoil in Anne’s life, but somehow it captured the character’s strength and grace. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before speaking Anne’s opening lines. When she finished with the monologue, it took her a few seconds to return to her own body.

  “Um, that was…” Arden visibly swallowed, and turned away. “That was great, Em,” she said over her shoulder. “Now come over here.”

  Emilie followed her down the path and to one of the duck ponds. She was dazed from the sensation of allowing another personality to inhabit her body, and almost gasping with relief that she was still capable of acting as deeply as she just had. She hadn’t been anywhere near this feeling since she had started rehearsals.

  “Right here. Near those stones.” Arden gestured toward a flat place near the pond. Ducks waddled out of the way and dropped into the pond with small splashes when Emilie invaded their space. “Good. Now be Titania.”

  The setting wasn’t the same as the hidden forest lair she had found before, but Emilie pretended the ducks and the family walking along the path were her fairy entourage, and she moved as easily into this part as she had with Lady Anne. She should have felt more self-conscious since Arden was watching her with such an intense gaze, but instead
she felt as if she was slipping on a bodysuit and becoming someone else.

  When she finished the monologue she had chosen, she barely registered the applause of the family that had apparently stopped to listen to her. All she could see was Arden’s beautiful smile. She nodded her thanks at the couple and their little girl, and turned back to Arden as they walked away.

  “You’re amazing, Em,” Arden said. “Even if you really are having trouble in rehearsals right now, once you’re onstage you are going to be spectacular.”

  Emilie tried to read the emotions she saw on Arden’s face, but they shifted too quickly for her to identify them. Arden meant what she was saying, and she honestly seemed happy for Emilie, but there was something else there, too. Something sad, or lonely. Similar to the way Arden looked on the rare occasions when she talked about her grandfather and her parents.

  Emilie gave up. Arden was in control again, and watching her with an unruffled expression, so Emilie was left with her own conflicting emotions. She was elated because she had enjoyed acting again for a brief time, but uncertain whether she could replicate the experience when it mattered. Something about this park, about Arden, put her at ease. Even though she worried about the temptation Arden represented and the threat to her focus—especially when she was weakened by self-doubt—Arden somehow helped her become more herself. Emilie seemed to need Arden as much as she needed to protect herself against Arden’s allure.

  “I’d like to do more of this, whatever we’re doing, but I need to get to my next rehearsal.”

  Arden gave Emilie’s hand a quick squeeze, then dropped the contact. “I think I got what I needed. I hope you did, too.”

  Emilie smiled with what she hoped looked like breezy confidence. “I guess I’ll find out in a few minutes,” she said before she walked out of the park and back to the theater.

  Arden watched Emilie until she disappeared behind a Sitka spruce whose branches were reaching across the path leading from the pond to the brick staircase. She took her pruning shears and trimmed a few of the evergreen’s offending limbs, releasing a bitter scent with each cut. The young cones were still smooth, but would soon grow dry and rough with seeds. Arden was in the habit of collecting cones and leaves and other items to have on hand when she led tours for schoolchildren through the park, and she plucked a few of them off the branches and put them in her pocket while she reenacted Emilie’s performances in her mind.

  Arden carried her armload of branches back to the maintenance shed and tossed them on the mulch pile. She had asked Emilie to play some scenes because she had wanted to help her regain the air of spontaneity that had shimmered around her when she had played Titania in the grove. Arden had thought the game would make Emilie smile and have fun with her acting, because she didn’t seem to be enjoying her rehearsals so far. Plus, Arden had wanted to see someone acting in the natural environment of the park to determine how engaging the experience would be. The family watching Emilie had certainly seemed fascinated by her performance, and Arden—well, she had been mesmerized.

  And torn. Emilie was beautiful to watch when she let herself get lost in a part. Arden would never allow herself to wish anything less for Emilie than the success she deserved, but she had witnessed talent from the outside for as long as she had been alive, from her mother to the company women she had dated. She knew what happened next.

  Arden pushed the thought out of her mind as she went into the shed and used a heavily citrus-scented cleanser to wash the pitch off her shears. Even though Arden couldn’t fully ignore the likely course of Emilie’s career and the places where it would take her—away from Ashland and Arden—she still felt a thrill when Emilie became her characters. Arden had almost forgotten her original intent for the experiment, but not quite. She rinsed her hands and sat at the table, pulling out her sketchbook and using the movement of her pencil on the rough paper to refocus her mind onto the lines of her drawings and off the now-familiar curves of Emilie’s body. The way she moved into an acting role with the grace and fluidity of someone passing through a membrane and into another world. The way her hands expressed meaning with a surety that Arden could almost feel against her skin…

  The pencil lead snapped, and Arden pulled out her utility knife with a sigh and whittled it to a sharp point again. She erased the dark flecks from the paper and determined to capture her ideas on paper while she still had at least a little control over her wandering thoughts.

  Chapter Nine

  Arden sat on a bench next to the park’s main path and flipped nervously through her notebook. She had finally brought her sketches to show Jacob, but even now she was hesitant to reveal them.

  She wasn’t worried about his reaction to her idea of incorporating small stage settings in the park. She knew it was a good one, and that tourists and locals would love the miniature tableaux. This was exactly the type of novel inspiration Jacob had been asking for—as opposed to the gnome theater she had jokingly proposed to him the week before, complete with drawings. He hadn’t been amused.

  Arden set the notebook on the bench next to her and then picked it up again and thumbed through it. She wasn’t sure why she was so reluctant to share her plans. Maybe because she had never considered herself to be either ambitious or particularly passionate about her work. Ambition left town and passion broke hearts. Arden knew that all too well. Whatever the reason, Arden hadn’t even told Emilie what she was working on these days, and Em had been the one to provide the original seed for Arden’s vision. First as Titania, alone in the woods, and then when she had followed Arden’s directions and brought several characters to life among the park’s plants and water features. Arden had been partially convinced of the validity of her idea when she saw the family stop to watch Emilie perform, but mostly she had been sold on it by Emilie herself.

  Arden sighed audibly when she remembered how Emilie had looked that day. Slipping in and out of different personae with ease, blending art and nature in an organic way. Looking so alive and beautiful that Arden had been forced to pick up a pencil and occupy her hands with sketches because they were almost aching with a need to touch. She had let her fingers trace the curves and planes that formed Emilie, but only through the media of lead and paper.

  As if conjured by her thoughts, Emilie was walking down the trail toward her. Arden put the notebook down again and rose to meet her. Emilie’s face still showed signs of garish stage makeup, and her thick blond hair was loose and heavily curled. Arden’s heart jumped at the sight of Emilie’s welcoming smile, but she had to remind herself that Emilie liked being around her because she was a safe place, a refuge from the stressful theater world. Still, Arden felt her muscles stretch into an involuntary grin in response.

  “Hey, Em,” Arden said. Once Emilie was close enough, she reached out and twisted a lock of Emilie’s hair around her finger. When she pulled back, the curl bounced like a released spring. “You look pretty wild for a young maiden.”

  “I know,” Emilie said, with the wide eyes and naïve look that Arden had come to associate with her portrayal of Anne Page. “Mama and Daddy would be shocked if they could see me. I’d be locked in the tower for days.” She flipped back to her normal Emilie expression. “I might have to submerge my head in the duck pond so I can get it under control again. Those braids are so tight, my hair practically explodes when I take them out.”

  “How was the dress rehearsal? Did you ever figure out the artistic reasons behind the whole flapper, gangster setting?”

  Emilie shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair, unsnarling some of the tangles. “No. The director tried to explain his vision, but it didn’t make much sense. I think he likes to imagine himself as a mobster from the Twenties, and he’s forcing Shakespeare’s play into his fantasy world. He even takes on an accent when he’s giving us directions. “You go stage left, see, and meet Legs by the fountain.”

  Arden laughed at Emilie’s exaggerated gangster voice. “I take it you’re Legs?”

 
Emilie smiled and sat on the bench. “Hardly. He calls me Dollface sometimes, but the guy who plays Fenton is Legs. He has decent ones, I guess,” she added with a shrug. “And the rehearsal went well enough. I don’t get the reason behind this time period, but the costumes are fabulous and I think the audience will like it. I hardly have any lines, so I spend most of my time thinking young and virginal thoughts.”

  “Huh. I don’t have any of those.” Arden sat next to Emilie and casually moved the notebook to her other side.

  Emilie propped her elbow on the back of the bench and grinned at Arden. “Maybe someday you can tell me about the old, nonvirginal thoughts you’re having. But for now, I’ll settle for hearing about the notebook you’re trying to hide from me.”

  Arden hesitated, but finally handed it to Emilie. She suffered from self-doubt and stage fright. If anyone understood Arden’s uncertainty, it would be Emilie.

  “It’s an idea I wanted to show Jacob. You know he’s been after me to contribute to the park in some way, and I came up with this after watching you rehearse out here.”

  “The gnomes were a no-go?” Emilie asked, not looking up from Arden’s drawings.

  “He accused me of being facetious. Can you imagine? I tried to convince him I was deadly serious—I don’t joke when it comes to garden statuettes.”

  Emilie met her gaze and smiled. “Did he really use the word facetious? I can’t picture him saying that.”