Forward to Glory

by Brian Paul Bach

  A seminar might now ensue: amidst all the matrices of competing media, formats, and content, what do audiences want?

  But this is neither the time nor the place…

  Sonny’s cobbled production of ‘Merchant’ had, through unsung miracles and under-documented trials, jerked and zapped its way into reality. Had Mickey and Judy and Busby and Fred F. Finklehoffe been available, all would’ve been no sweat. But suffice it to say, there was a powerful lot of last minute coming-throughs on the part of thunder-thigh gals who wore summer stockings under all, sensitive and repressed Melvins who settled for codependency with Mom, and grandmas who still fostered illusions about some Cyrano plucking them up from their moribund worlds and elevating them to exceptionality. They coaxed their retired spouses into let’s-put-on-a-show action, who looked around suspiciously to see if any of their pals would mock, but finding them on the same stage as ‘volunteers’, tacked together ersatz Venetian Gothic arches with their battery-powered DeWalts, as surely as they would attach ‘winter’-style paneling in a basement rec room. Their participation in such a dubious enterprise was accomplished by maple bar, butter-horn, and hot-plate-coffee bribery.

  Witnessing these simple acts of charity warmed Butterbugs’ heart. Novice to grouped efforts that he was, he marveled that here, in this nowhere, was crew enough to create a domain that would well serve the play, so that he in turn could well serve the audience. Just what he’d been trying to achieve with the Tailgate Performances! Real frankness, real connection, on a concrete level. All possible.

  That was what he was trying to do, wasn’t it?

  But, truth to tell, he was rather busy with getting his role down, just now.

  He already knew it, of course. Backwards and forwards, but in lieu of a director (Sonny employed the front office manager, J. Mule, to ‘supervise’ the production) there was a lot of glad-handing and talky-talk over the doofus tasks to be tackled. Supporting roles were filled by the willing, and no one could lay claim to the whole enterprise as not being a Rather Big Deal.

  ‘Gittem together, Muley, on stage, and they’ll cement it themselves!’ Sonny advised.

  And so it came to be. Funny thing was, Butterbugs reveled in it, without any kind of complication whatsoever. Because he was going to act.

  And the time passed instantly.

  Just before curtain, word got around backstage that none other than Whit Bissell was in the audience.

  ‘He IS?’ marveled Butterbugs.

  Novella, the all-purpose stagehand, manager, and curtain puller, who knew everything about everybody once they crossed the threshold in this, his bozo-town that he’d never-ever left, whispered excitedly to the Merchant.

  ‘He’s here on a camping trip, after wrapping Irv Feldman’s Technicolor production of ‘You Just Don’t Have Any Idea What I’m Even Starting To Talk About’, which is still shooting at RKO Radio Pictures in Hollywood! Just think!’

  ‘Wow! He I admire,’ Butterbugs replied in a hushed, epic tone.

  ‘I should hope to shout! One of the screen’s most unforgettable performers! Oooh, if I only had a nickel for every picture I’ve seen that had ‘Whit Bissell’ in the credits! Know something? I call every character actor that I see more than once a ‘Whit’, in his honor!’

  ‘As well you might,’ returned Butterbugs, in full makeup, having considered such nomenclature a good idea. ‘And now, I am on.’

  ‘Give yer best, young person! Break-a-leg! For Whit!’

  Thus, the first leg-breaking of Butterbugs.

  ‘I WILL, sir!’

  There was a new kind of enthusiasm bursting forth inside. The actor within him, searching for the best track to get on. He instantly detected it, for it was there, directly in front of him. The total thrill of dramatic fulfillment, even out here in the desiccated back country, joyously coursed through his supple veins.

  The second he stepped onto these boards, his route was fully defined and surely marked. The important thing was that it actually led somewhere, as opposed to the spur-lines of dinkin’ around he’d been lost in, since the heady days of live theatre in Yniguez Terrace Alley.

  An actor must live in the present and go forth accordingly, otherwise he or she is dead meat in a still kettle. An independent and adjustable self-judgment device is a necessity. What better than the nagging, spurring notion presented by a live audience, no matter how minimal, with their expectant thoughts on one’s performance, as an incentive for artistic development?

  With no director per se, and no one past the curtain puller to judge any measure of effectiveness, it is up to the actor and his audience to analyze ideas, test-drive them, and judge each problem-solving sequence as either a black triumph or a white failure. Or grey blah.

  Back in the glory days of provincial entertainment, there were enough kindred spirits around to bounce critiques off each other as part of a performer’s survival kit. After all, your average strolling vaudeville artistes did not come with their own private director; they were expected to have their acts together or face The Hook. However, so little competition existed in these rarefied country precincts that a liberating, even avant-garde set of possibilities awaited for the adventurous actor to entertain.

  Surely it would be tempting, strolling this rustic path, in order to fashion some sort of purposeful crucible from the dumpster of amorphous oblivion that had pressed in from all around. Because, left alone, such an ominous container would certainly overturn if something progressive wasn’t attempted, spreading its nothingness like gravy-fire. Therefore, the sky – quite possibly – was the limit, as there was nothing but mud below.

  Still, pity the poor, stale vaudevillian, already spent, who only goes through the motions, and will until the machinery clinks out. Any renewal is quite unlikely. Old Red Roberts, way back at the Goth Theatre in Carstairs, his trail, having led through many a fine vaude house, almost at an end, nevertheless could not give up the louche but nourishing environment of the backwater stage life. Why escape something that was so successfully unsuccessful?

  An end in itself, it could very well be, to be sure. That was why Sonny Projector made a cameo appearance now and then. That was why he drove the desert miles to check up on his investment, even though a talented associate could have done it in his place. Because, to Sonny, an end in itself out here was unthinkable.

  In the meantime, the play rolled, and though the supporting cast were pretty terrible, and most of them had scripts tucked amongst their rummage sale robes and aprons, there came the day when the curtain parted upon about fifty or so paying customers who had chosen the Bard over Wild Weasel on the DuMont Network, so that what passed as ‘The Merchant of Venice’ was seen for the first time in 74+ years in Kunky Creek. If the cast back in that specific touring version had been Theodore Roberts, Helen Hayes and Henry Travers, who did one performance only then got the hell out to Barstow, the players this time were wholly unknown, and basically on their own.

  All that mattered now was that this thing was on a stage, with lights, teasers and tormentors, and exit lights way out there in the dark. To he who played Shylock, it was all he’d dreamt of, and, thus, entirely natural.

  When Butterbugs undertook his ‘How like a fawning publican he looks, I hate him, for he is a Christian’ speech, he decided to address the audience head-on. It was a last minute, onstage, even defiant, decision. No director could tell him otherwise, so he chose, on a whim, to grandstand his point across.

  With these words, I proclaim my entrance as an actor onto the legitimate stage.

  ‘Straight out there! Sock it to that face – That one – standing out so clearly!’

  Holy shit, it WAS Whit Bissell! Third row up, center.

  ‘Please don’t hate me, Whit. What the…? What if – What the hell…’

  He was playing a role. Shakespearean, for Pete’s sake. What would Larry Olivier do?

  ‘Play it, fool. Play it.’

  SHYLOCK: How like a fawning publican he looks, I hate him,
for he is a Christian…

  After he’d played it, and the slight tremor of scattered applause faded, which sounded for all the world like the modest crowd’s roar that followed his second Tailgate Performance (only with large-room resonance added), the houselights came up. Whit was nowhere to be seen. Novella announced that Mr. Bissell had had to take off late in the last act, as a kettle of rock-like spudatoes he’d left on the camp stove had boiled over. So Butterbugs ran the sparse gamut of hesitant congrats from his fellow players/readers, and went out the backstage door to make sure the stars above were still there.

  Simplicity became the modus of his winding-down. He crossed the soft dust of the street, saw the tall neon blink out in top-to-bottom sequence, and caught dim passage back to Dinkelsbuhl Mansions.

  As he reached over in the thick heat of the night and turned down the wick of the kerosene lantern, Butterbugs thought first, then uttered out loud, in character:

  ‘I am content.’

  16.

  Parker The Ninth

  On his Hollywood desk, Sonny found a note from Del Nind. Though it was signed with a name that could only be termed a parody, there was no one else who would concoct something like this:

  The STANDARD DRAVIDIAN

  Pictures, plc

  Streevygoondrum Studios

  Oh Hi-Hi Dear-Dear Saucy Fellow,

  Well, jolly good to hear that your esteemed production of The Shylock Follies in the footsteps of Sir Henry Irving hath been commencéd by Sir Buttery-Buttery-Good Bugs, Esq. If he’s got what it takes, baby, he’s got to FLAUNT iT, FLAUNT iT! Sir Henry, Lord Larry, Whit Bis’l and other great Shylox are looking down on this Yung Person, and if he ever be in need (and he WILL, I tell you, he WILL!), he should invoke their illustrious names so as to bail his ass out of forgetting lines. Not to mention a blabbery-bad performance, what with mis-pronunciations of the very building he’s in and all. Hopefully, B’bugs’ next role will be in ‘Titus Andronicus’, where he could and shall seduce the savage Tamara, Queen of the Goths. Let’s see what kind of lover he is! Surely he would really excel in the various mutilation and cannibalism scenes, as well. Huh?? After that: Ritchurd the Therd, Hamlutt, Yorrick, and all the rest of the Grate Rolls. After having proven himself capable of articulating Bardian Inglisch, he can then approach your average Jared at William Morris and get meaty roles in OxyCynara-driven teen toilet humor pix! (Merely kidding)

  Say ‘hi-hi’ to the Kid, ‘Merch’ hisself, as he Shakespearically pontificates before the stunned flea pit full of howling groundlings. I’ll give Harry and Sol a call to see if we can’t get that boy into something really big. – YEAH, RIGHT!!!!!!!!

  No longer a loser, no longer lost.

  (signed)

  Saturninus d’Goth

  ‘Old Del’s having a bit of sport with me,’ Sonny laughed out loud. ‘At least I think he is. Still calling my project a loser; a derelict prop-up! Well! Now that I think of it… I’ll show him!’

  He grabbed the blower.

  ‘Badger? Honey, get me Howard. No, not Hawks. Strickling.’

  Pause.

  ‘Howard? Sonny. No, I got the candied yams and the Twill liqueur after the premiere. But Howard, baby, that’s not what I called about. Howard, do you realize that – No. Listen, I got a terrific opportunity that’s just come my way, and thought you might like to participate…’

  Lots of detailed conversation filled up the next nineteen minutes.

  ‘… Uh-huh. Good. Great, Howard. Love ya, baby. Beautiful. Ciao.’

  Meanwhile, out in Kern County, in the not quite picturesque has-been wide-spot of Vrurr, to be precise, in the Coptic Theatre, the largest cinema hall in California outside of LA and San Francisco, the last house still standing before the horror of Death Valley: this was Butterbugs’ current port of call.

  He was onstage with two entities: a ghost light, and a fellow actor, the only one who’d expressed any sort of kindred feelings concerning the activity in which they found themselves. Protected from the furnace heat without by the immense Axum-styled body of the stage house, it was actually cool enough by 11:30PM to relax without the aid of some sort of punkah.

  The ‘season’ was over. Everyone else in the cast and crew had to get on back to their normal lives, whether it was resumption with a drunk spouse, a mate’s possessive downer-trip, prepping principal-focus offspring for their tightly-scheduled highlights on the morrow, or a life of lesser duty (as in, everything aside from The Drama being lesser). It was a somber fact that most returned to regimes that filled their worlds with self-imposed torture, rather than exploring the lessons to be learned and taught on stage, and the expansion therein.

  Quite a few of the impromptu actors in ‘Sonny’s Troupes’, thrown together from town to town, regarded the whole ‘thiertre’ thing as something they’d always longed for, and had achieved at last, but a truth to be denied, in light of the life they always lived. Oh, to tarry amongst the scholar gypsies and drink fresh liquid bread! To learn about life and love! To understand the words spoken up there with the props and settings, under all the lights, whether penned by the Bard or typed by Robert Anderson or tweeted by Glollglooey Pamberzuk! Oh YESS! A glorious life to love! Not a few were the girls and no-longer-girls, who wanted to stay on, just to see what transpired, to see where all the worthiness of human expression would lead, in lieu of just getting another beer for their Bubba or Brad or Tarl. But because the prospects of doing so were so wonderful, and the temptation so dangerous, best to get on home before that beer-lacking Bubba’s jealous rage set in. It was enough to make one downright bawl, because here, on stage, was uplift. But, by force of circumstance, uplifts were cut off and sent packing.

  So, because of these and other human tragedies, all the girls, gals, and demi-thesps were gone. One dude remained, because he had nothing to lose, and there were ambitious ideas in his head, as well.

  ‘I, Perry Flask!’

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘I do! You know I do!’

  ‘Where do we go from here, boys, where do we go from here?’

  ‘Oh, glory, I suppose.’

  ‘That sounds good!’

  ‘I know it to be!’

  ‘I have to tell you, since Rhondie left to attend to her kids in Palamore, I thought there were no more of those who might share the stage with me – you know, who cared about anything past the moment…’

  ‘Well, I think I’ve proven that I do.’

  ‘I think you speak the truth.’

  ‘Well, I think I do, too. I want to act.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘That much is plain,’ said Perry. ‘I honor your Shylock. Is that all you can do?’

  ‘I know many other roles. I only wish to prove that –’

  ‘Butterbugs, are you gay?’

  ‘No. No, I am not.’

  ‘Oh. Neither am I.’

  ‘But if you were… If I was… If we were… Do it with dignity…’

  ‘Why sure.’

  ‘You won’t find me complaining.’

  ‘Non-issue, then?’

  ‘You know it.’

  ‘OK then. That’s out of the way. You know what they say about the theatre. Or thiertre. It’s just that, I feel such a joy. About –’

  ‘About just being here, right? I know, Perry. I know.’

  ‘Yeah, and being able to – to know that someone else, across the crowded stage, knows, too. It’s really just plain belonging.’

  ‘That’s a good way of putting it. I want to belong, too.’

  ‘But what do we have to go on? Here we are, out here, I don’t know, way out in this, this Vrurr place – It’s as if we’re supposed to be some kind of disposable ‘thing’ out here, while –’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about that. I think we’re doing something out here that…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘I always thought that, if one were – unworthy – and co
ming in from the way-way-outside… Why should anyone care?’

  ‘But someone does care. You’ve got Sonny, for big sakes!’

  ‘Sonny! That’s right! I do! I’ve got Sonny! Do you realize that, well, I don’t really know what that means.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? Don’t know what it means?’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to come off as too naïve, but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I’d best…’

  ‘Cut the crap, Butterbugs! You’re ‘in’!’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘If I’d had some beverage alcohol by this point in the evening, I’d rip another hole in your speaker system to make sure you hear what I’m saying. And to prove my point, here, sit there. Stay put. Here, here’s a scripty-scrawl I dreamt up. Couple pages of dialogue. Let’s do it. OK? Here. You do the part I’ve underlined, and I’ll do everyone else.’

  Jack Kresters Presents

  ‘The Tragicul Mystery Histery

  of the

  Erstwhile and Exiled Ruffian-King,

  Parker the Ninth’

  by Randy Sheighkschpeere

  (Acts I–XIV not included)

  Act XV, Scene 37 (Scenes 1–36 not included)

  (Note: all sic-like words are indeed sic.)

  (Note: Underlined text, like this: means: really give it a lot of emphasis!)

  The Characters in the Play:

  KNAVE

  PARKER IX, king of a Realm, possibly the England or ye Haroldland; a ruffian & wretch

  438 courtiers