“What the hell is this?” he nearly screamed. Frantically he flipped through the notebook page by page. And on virtually every one of the pages, one or more lines had been obliterated with a thick black marker.
“Those are some corrections I’ve made.”
“You’ve crossed them out!”
Woland shrugged. He’d seen this kind of reaction from writers before. As if they thought they knew something he didn’t. “Sometimes a deletion is a correction.”
“But you’ve erased my words. My words!”
“Calm yourself. Words are our common property. You don’t own the language.”
Jean-Baptiste threw down the notebook. “This language I do. Words I write down are mine. You’ve no right to delete them.”
“I thought you understood there’d be work to do.”
“You don’t just erase the first draft! Changes, yes, but for God’s sake, make the damned photocopy before you erase the words.”
“But my dear boy, then we’d have two different scripts. How would we work together on the revisions?”
“Revisions?”
“Yes, of course. You must rewrite much of it according to my direction. And I can pay you nothing.”
“What? Why should I agree? What do I get from such an arrangement?”
“Simply that I will produce your play. Your name will appear on it and you will have this credit. It will begin your career.”
“And why rewrite? And which parts? Why not use my own words?”
“First of all, you have too many characters. We’ll have to lose many of them. Actors cost money, you know. And you’ll have to cut out these words entirely. You cannot say these words on the stage.”
“I hear them on television.”
“Perhaps. But the theatre is high art, and in high art we don’t have every character begin or end every exclamation with a blasphemous expression.”
“How about merde?”
“Merde is fine. We’ll just switch all these tabernacs and calices for merde. Shit has been acceptable onstage for over a hundred years.”
And that’s the way it went, for weeks. Woland demanded cuts and changes that baffled Jean-Baptiste, which convinced him Woland was a complete idiot who understood nothing. For his part, Woland made free with the play as if it were his own and continually insisted he was older, wiser and more experienced in the theatre than the young playwright. But Jean-Baptiste had to admit that at least there was nothing personal in these attacks and changes: he was often surprised when, at rehearsals, after a particularly fine scene had been played out, Woland would rise and berate the actors.
“No, no, no! Don’t you understand what you’re saying? Stop jumping on your lines, let the audience absorb them! Don’t look downstage as you come in, you idiot!”
Nevertheless, the time came when he had to argue. “You’ve completely made a hash of it. You’ve taken out all the transitional scenes.”
“They were unnecessary, Jean-Baptiste.” “It doesn’t make any sense without them. They were some of the best scenes.”
“It doesn’t matter. The audience will understand better what your play is about if we cut through the explanations and let the characters get on with it.”
“But now it’s too short, for one thing.” Woland heaved a sigh. And then, as if by magic, he said the one thing that could possibly have shut Jean-Baptiste up. “It’s not about how long it is, is it? Is that why we’re here? Look, son, you’re a big admirer of Artaud, aren’t you? Well, what did he say? No more masterpieces, right? Stop hanging on to your favourite scenes as if they’re the best scenes. They’re not even what the play’s about. What we need is a play that will startle people, one that jabs in the gut. Right? Theatre of cruelty? I know it’s hard for a writer, but liberate yourself from the text and see what’s going on onstage. Okay?”
There was nothing for Jean-Baptiste to do but surrender; even though he couldn’t bring himself to feel right about it.
On opening night Marie volunteered to stay home and care for Mother so that Father might see the premiere of his son’s play with the rest of the family.
“I almost wish you wouldn’t come,” Jean-Baptiste said to them. “I think maybe it stinks.”
Father was excited, happy and proud. “If it stank, they wouldn’t put it on, would they?”
“Sure they would,” offered Uncle.
So Jean-Baptiste sat in the front row, with Uncle and Grandfather on one side, and Father and Aline on the other. He was trembling as the audience took their seats: people actually showed up. Then he realized, of course, all the actors have family too. By the time the lights went down, he was soaking wet.
As the curtain rose a light appeared in the upper left corner of the stage, glowing yellowly. It grew brighter until the audience recognized it as a cross shining down from a mountain. The set was in forced perspective and looked as much like something from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as anything the audience perceived as a local geographical feature. From stage right two characters appeared, dressed in rags, bent over from the effort of pulling behind them a large chest, which might even have been a coffin. One carried a sack, the other a spade.
Grandfather’s heart squeezed itself; Uncle hissed in the darkness. Father shifted uncomfortably, and Aline burst into sobbing tears. The rest of the audience assumed she was supplying atmosphere.
A sinking feeling developed in Jean-Baptiste’s stomach.
Onstage, the two characters were silent. The chest was obviously genuinely too heavy for them to lift. It scraped across the stage and up the painted set; the actors were struggling, breathing heavily.
The closer they got to the top, the steeper the slope became, and the narrower the path they could take. It was, after all, not really a mountain but only a low sloping platform. The painted perspective began to look ridiculous: the chest didn’t really get any smaller or further away. Finally, the huge box dwarfed the tiny shining cross. With a last desperate effort, the two actors pushed the chest over the crest of the hill. The audience heard the bulbs smashing as the light disappeared.
In the darkness, finally, an actor spoke:
“What was in it, anyway?”
“Nothing. It was empty.”
“Why was it so heavy, then?”
“I don’t know.”
When the lights came up again, Father was no longer quite so proud. It had nothing to do with whether the play was any good or not. As far as that went, Father’d hardly noticed. But how could Jean-Baptiste have mocked his family so?
How could he have paraded them in front of the public? How dare he?
Father turned to Jean-Baptiste beside him. “What the hell is this?”
In act two, civil war had broken out. A barricade had been thrown up to protect what might be a hospital, a government building or even a prison. The actors were using real guns loaded with blanks, and the audience was going deaf. Styrofoam bricks were flying back and forth when the hero appeared, crawling, holding up a white cloth, waving it about as he approached the line of defence. The defenders ignored it, shooting wildly at him, pelting him with whatever came to hand. Since the props didn’t harm him, he made it to the barricade and climbed over. Atop, he was met by a defender who held him back.
“You’re not crossing this line, brother,” he declared in a thick French accent.
“But I must get through. My mother’s dying!”
“Don’t worry. No one dies in English here.”
At the end of act three the splinter group of murdering terrorists, who had been robbing graves to support the revolution, were now trapped by the police. When they began to fight among themselves, Woland himself, dressed as the devil and laughing maniacally, rode in a flying canoe across the stage and rained turds down on them as the curtain dropped.
The Desouches sat staring wordlessly at the stage as the actors took their bows and the audience politely applauded. They rose and shuffled out without comment. They wouldn’t look at Jean-B
aptiste, and made their way out of the theatre without caring whether he joined them or not. He followed behind worriedly, like a chastised dog afraid of being abandoned.
Although Woland had taken out ads in the papers, invited all the anglo critics, phoned and faxed all the media, and tried to drum up as much publicity as possible, as usual only a handful of people showed up for the premiere. The play got mixed but unenthusiastic reviews, and it seemed as if they’d all go home at the end of the week and forget all about it. For Jean-Baptiste it was a disappointment, but he wasn’t happy with the final script anyway and felt the production had been uninspired. He consoled himself with feeling that at least he’d started. At least one production was done. He’d been written up in the papers even if only lukewarmly, and from now on he could refer to this experience as granting him some kind of entree into the world of the arts. An item on the resumé, if nothing else.
He did get invited, on the strength of it, to read some poetry at a monthly gathering in a bar on St-Laurent; and that was all the gravy he could really expect, he told himself. The play had led to something else. This second item, no matter how insignificant, also counted. He saw before him an endless succession of small steps leading off into a murky and ill-defined distance. But at least there was a path.
And then, on a slow week, noticing that the author’s name was in fact French, the drama critic of the French-language daily L’Obligation came to see the Thursday evening show. His review was printed in the Friday edition and that evening the crowd was doubled. Woland was pleased; if this meant they could expect even a half-house on Saturday, anything at all on the Sunday shows would come near the mark of at least covering expenses. He was jubilant before the performance that night, springing around backstage and waving his walking stick in the air.
The cast was tired, had been disillusioned all week before near empty houses. They were fed up with the moody, irritable Woland himself, and they were weary of a play which through its failure with the public had let them down.
But something happened that night. The audience was charged; many had come not because the latest review pronounced it good, but because it hinted at something scandalous. Throughout the first act there was a smattering of laughter, and the cast was energized: they were being liked. Act two began to sing on its own, and the entrances and exits were crisp and sharp. The audience leaned forward with a new appreciation. There was a tension onstage, something happening between those people up there, and what were they going to do?
For the first time, the lines were delivered in the passion with which they had been written. The actors began to hear the words coming from their own mouths. Suddenly an offhand sarcastic remark took on a new significance, and when the protagonist turned away from the other actors to look out over the audience, the gesture was now full of import, the play was carried off in a new direction.
When the curtain rang down on act two, the audience realized with a start they were sitting in a theatre, and they had been enthralled. Their hands came together in true appreciation, and behind the curtain, the flushed actors could hear a woman in the first row say to her companion, “My God, what do you think’s going to happen?”
The audience waited nervously for the denouement; the actors breathlessly changed costumes and shifted some furniture about onstage. Woland was jubilant. “This is the night. This is it.”
The curtain rose on a hushed expectation. The protagonist entered, but then ran off left. No one cleared their throat; no one shifted in their seat. The actors began a slow dance towards the climax of the play, and though the words were coming from their throats by rote, they shared the physical tension of the audience and told themselves, under the lines they were delivering, Breathe slowly, relax your muscles. And even they began to wonder where exactly the play was going. Was this a tragedy they were performing? Yes, there was a heightened emotion present. But was it mere melodrama, would it all be burst by some unexpected comedy lurking somewhere in the wings? An actor heard his cue and moved about the stage in a predefined sequence, speaking his lines all the while, and wondered: have I just said that?
Suddenly, a wailing broke out. The noises offstage rose to a thunderous crescendo. The protagonist lowered her gaze from the heavens. Her face took on a look of dread as a horrible certainty gripped her, like a blow from an uncertain and frightening world. A turd fell to the stage. Another, beside her. As the lights faded, more fell, in increasing numbers as the final curtain rang down.
Half the audience rose spontaneously and began the applause.
But then, as the curtain rose again for the cast to take their bows, began a lowing as if of cattle. By the time the star of the show stepped to the centre of the stage, it was clearly booing.
It grew. Nervously the cast took their bows, looking with puzzlement into the stalls. What had happened?
The chorus of booing increased. A few brave souls were still applauding, trying to win the day for their approval, but it was no use. The disaffected had won the field. Many were leaning forward into their disparagement, cupping their hands around their mouths like funnels for the noise: BOOOO!
They began to throw their programs back up to the stage; some were torn and merely thrown in the air. An argument broke out in the lobby, but the critics were stronger, louder, more vehement than the supporters.
Distraught, the cast sat backstage and wondered: What went wrong? But Woland was still happy. In fact, he was ecstatic, for now, once word of this got around, they’d surely sell out the remaining performances.
And they did. They sold out the theatre for Saturday, Sunday matinee and evening. And each time, nothing but booing and catcalling, with garbage of all sorts thrown to the stage. Which of course only disrupted the actors, who naturally turned in terrible performances. There was still laughter, but it was no longer innocent: it was the punishing laughter of derision.
“Don’t look so glum, Jean-Baptiste,” said Woland. “Your name is made!”
Who began the booing? Marie.
Marie had been impressed with the reaction her brother’s play had generated in their family. When they returned that first evening none of them would really tell her much of what they’d seen. Father seemed struggling to contain his anger, his face red and pursed when he thought of the play, and could only bring himself to erupt with, “He’s betrayed us.”
Aline was still puffy-eyed and began weeping anew as she climbed the stairs. “It’s not that he said these things,” she said. “It’s that they’re true.” And she blew her nose.
Grandfather shrugged and said, “The little bastard used us. I hope he makes some money.” And he strode down the hall to the kitchen, lighting a cigarette.
Mother was the single remaining member of his family with whom Jean-Baptiste was on speaking terms—and she slept.
What, Marie thought, could be in this play?
She laughed at the destruction of the cross in act one; she assented to the reality of the coming physical struggle in act two; she was offended by the existential epiphany, the realization that the struggle for ideals was as corrupt, hollow and egotistical as any revolution—Russian, French, American; but she was enraged, furious, livid, by the denouement: the FLQ betrayed their own ancestors and sold their souls to the devil.
Marie booed.
She informed her colleagues. Incredulous upon seeing that what she’d told them was true, it was they who’d instigated the booing that first night.
And the placard-carrying protests the second.
On that Sunday morning, his birthday, Jean-Baptiste sat waiting in silence with his mother. As one by one the family moved about the house without making any overture to him, he gave up anticipating any presents. He was no happier than the audiences had been about his play, but he went to the theatre anyway, since he was not welcome at home. Sent to Coventry.
Still, “This is your day, my boy,” announced Woland. “Your name day. It’s your birthday as well, isn’t it? Well, I have a present for
you: I’m extending the run. Today’s performance will not be the last.”
“But the crowd boos every night. They throw things at the actors.”
“Awh, the actors can take it.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“The theatre has been full for days. Packed. We’re sold out both shows today, and the phone keeps ringing. Tomorrow we’ll be dark, but we’ll do at least another full week. Maybe longer.”
Jean-Baptiste was angry. “But they’re only coming to boo.”
“Let them. If they’re paying for the tickets, let them boo. Remember, Molière was booed. Jarry, Cocteau, Sartre. You’re in good company. We’d be crazy to close the show. What a splendid day.”
St-Jean-Baptiste Day was always a time of high nationalist sentiment. During the bright afternoon’s cheery parade, members of Marie’s cell worked the crowds thronging the parade route on rue St-Denis, handing out denunciations of her brother’s play—and pointing out how conveniently located the dilapidated theatre was, mere blocks away on St-Laurent.
And so with enough heat, enough beer and enough bravado generated by a flag-waving agent provocateur, a small delegation of louts spontaneously dispatched itself from the main route, detoured to the Sunday matinee and stormed the theatre in the middle of act two.
They broke windows out front and burst through the door shouting and spilling beer. A puzzled audience looked from the stage, where a bastion was being stormed by a single crawling anglophone with a white flag, to these boisterous intruders and wondered if this were all part of the performance.
But when the gatecrashers dealt some unlucky audience members a few quick and painful blows, fights began to break out, and the actors all fled in terror. Woland called the police and the sirens sent the Patriotes running. But by this time a few were laid out with injuries sustained in the attack, and others were drunk enough to be easy even for Montreal police to run down.
Only Marie escaped.
Black Bird Page 15