“I love polka dots, and I hate roller coasters,” Amy finished. She turned. Oh, right—me!
“I’m Cass,” I started. “I’m from Weehawken. New Jersey.”
Drew snorted and rolled his eyes. I glared. I knew that snort of tristate-area prejudice well. There is nothing wrong with New Jersey!
“I’m playing—”
“The shrew,” he interrupted, quiet enough that Lola couldn’t hear it, but I sure could.
“They call me Katharine that do speak of me,” I shot back. He may have technically been referring to my character, but I could tell he thought I was a total shrew. Rude. “I mean, I’m playing Kate,” I amended, slightly less hostile, for the benefit of the group. “I hate raisins, and I love blue nail polish.” I liberated my left foot from my Converses and waggled a turquoise toe.
“Very nice,” the boy with the yellow headband remarked. “My name is Rhys,” he started. Reese. What a cool name. Like a Reese’s Piece. “I’m from Dover—it’s just outside of Boston. And before we begin, in my defense, I would just like to say, I don’t normally look like a gay werewolf.”
He kind of had a point. When we signed the contract, there had been a stipulation about not cutting, coloring, or altering hair in any way—which specified that the boys shouldn’t shave. And by the looks of it, they hadn’t shaved for a long time. The only one who looked at all decent was the boy with the Southern accent; he’d grown a light beard of scruff that made him look like a sexy cowboy. Drew looked like a crazy lumberjack who’d been roaming the woods for the better part of a decade, and Rhys did, in fact, look like a gay werewolf. His beard grew most of the way down his neck until it blended into the tuft of chest hair sticking out of his mint green striped Oxford.
BANG! “Don’t denigrate the facial hair!” Lola remonstrated.
“Sorry, sorry,” he sighed, and blew a flop of his bangs out of his eyes. “I’m playing Hortensio, a.k.a. Loserface McGee Bianca’s Suitor Who Doesn’t Get the Girl. I love scratchy old Billie Holiday records and I hate an improperly steeped mug of tea.” He nodded seriously. “You need to set the timer, or it’s worthless. NEXT!”
“Oookay.” Arrrgh. Next up was that stupid crazy lumberjack. “I’m Drew. And I’m playing …” Oh, please don’t say it. Please don’t say it. “Petruchio.” Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This was the worst of all possible worlds. He was playing—gag me—my love interest. Oh, gag me with a long-ended spoon. This was even worse than the time I’d been cast opposite Jeff Butts in Much Ado About Nothing the winter he tried to grow a mustache.
“I’m from New York.”
“The city?” Amy interrupted, eyes sparkling. “Oh, how exciting! Uptown? Downtown? Where? Oh my God, are you from SoHo? Don’t tell me you’re from SoHo!”
“Oh, uh.” Drew colored. “I’m actually from Rye.”
Now it was my turn to snort.
“It’s basically the city,” he addressed Amy.
“Rye’s about as much New York City as Weehawken is,” I rolled my eyes.
BANG! Lola fixed me with a stare. I shut up.
“Anyway,” Drew cleared his throat, also glaring at me, “I love … um … Sir John Oldcastle.” We stared at him blankly. “The Elizabethan play.” More blank stares. “It’s part of Shakespeare’s Apocrypha.” He rolled his eyes, exhaling in an exasperated fashion. “That means the collection of works that are sometimes attributed to Shakespeare, but most modern scholarship has since refuted those claims. Pericles, for example, was once considered apocryphal, but has since been included in the canon.”
Oh my God. What a show-off. You don’t bust out obscure Elizabethan theatricals while playing get-to-know-you games. That’s just rude. Also who loves Apocrypha? If it means the stuff that’s been left out, it was probably left out for a reason. He probably said that just so he’d sound smart. Also probably the same reason he referred to Shakespeare’s works as the canon. Fancy schmancy. And his tone of voice just grated on my nerves. It was like he was explaining arithmetic to a kindergartener.
Here’s the truth: This small, petty part of me was pissed that I hadn’t known what Apocrypha was. Of course, I knew that there was still debate about exactly which plays Shakespeare had written and that some people thought he hadn’t written any of them—personally, I thought those people were nuts—but I’d never heard of Apocrypha. I knew it shouldn’t have bothered me, but I hated that Drew knew something I didn’t. It made me feel so stupid. I wished I’d said I liked something a little bit more profound than blue nail polish. That was what I chose as my defining characteristic? Blue nail polish? Real stellar first impression, Cass. God, I hoped everybody didn’t think I was an idiot.
“And I hate active listeners,” he concluded, satisfied.
What did that even mean? Who hated being listened to? I hadn’t even known it was possible to come across obnoxious in a simple getting-to-know-you game. All of my suspicions about Drew had been confirmed: he was officially the worst.
“Well, alright,” the Southern boy drawled, laughing slightly. “Apocrypha. There you go. Learning already. I’m Noah, and I’m from Pecos, Texas.” That explained the accent. It was very Matthew McConaughey. Alright, alright, alright. “And I’m playing Lucentio.” Lucentio is Bianca’s suitor who marries her at the end of the play. “I love the Dallas Cowboys, and I hate wet socks.”
“Excellent.” Lola bopped softly on the bongos. “Excellent. The journey begins. You’re getting to know each other. You feel that? Feel that?” She looked at each of us in turn. Not sure what I was supposed to be feeling. Except if it was confused. Because that was what I felt. “That’s tension. Sexual tension.” Oh, Lord. I was starting to turn into a tomato again. Amy was also blushing, looking less like a vegetable, and all the boys were looking at the floor. Only Heidi was nodding, like she knew exactly what Lola meant. I bet she could have gender-in-performance-movement danced the shit out of some sexual tension. “Feel it. Use it. A group of good-looking teenagers in a house together, studying the greatest work in Western history on the war of the sexes. Yes.” She and Heidi were now nodding in synchronicity. I hadn’t felt any sexual tension as of yet. But if there was anything that could kill sexual tension more rapidly than your artistic director commenting on it, I couldn’t imagine what it was. “Oh, yes. Nevin.” She changed the subject abruptly. “Pass out the packages.”
He did. I pulled apart the brown paper to look inside: There was a camo print T-shirt, and something black. Camo? We’d already climbed a mountain. What else could be in store?
“Report at oh-eight-hundred hours for Bard Boot Camp,” Lola smiled.
Bard Boot Camp?
BANG BANG BANG.
“Dismissed!”
CHAPTER 4
This all just feels a little too Patty Hearst for my taste,” Heidi said as she pursed her lips and adjusted her black beret. “I’m not comfortable wearing such a militaristic outfit.”
“Agreed.” Amy frowned at herself in her compact mirror. “Camo is so 2001. What are we, extras in Save the Last Dance? On our way to STEPPS with Julia Stiles? Proving that white girls can bust a move?”
I yawned in agreement. A yawn was about as much brain function as could be expected of me before eight in the morning. Particularly since I’d never seen Save the Last Dance.
The three of us were sitting under a little tent in front of a folding table. Well, technically, I was curled up in a ball on top of said table, trying to nap, while Amy and Heidi were sitting in two of the folding chairs behind it.
We’d made it to “Bard Boot Camp” bright and early. Except for Langley, who was busy sweeping the water from last night’s rainfall off the stage with an old push broom, we were the only ones there. The Shakespeare at Dunmore stage stood in a little green clearing on the shore of the lake, nestled between the gazebo in the Dunmore town square and a long reddish building that looked sort of like a barn. The stage itself was a good-sized wooden platform featuring three archways and a staircase t
hat led up to a tiny balcony—in case of an impromptu production of Romeo and Juliet, one supposed. There was nothing in that valley but the birds chirping and the swish swish of Langley’s broom.
Heidi sang a few bars from “The Heather on the Hill,” her voice trilling prettily, like a bird’s, on the high notes.
“Too early,” I mumbled.
“Too early for singing?”
“Too early for Brigadoon.” There should never be show tunes before noon. There’s a reason matinees start at two.
“Hopefully today won’t be quite so … extreme.” Amy sighed. “That was the weirdest day of my life.”
“What, yesterday?”
“Mm-hmm.” She nodded. “They blindfolded us and threw us in a van! I thought I was going to wake up two weeks later in Mexico or something.”
I laughed. It was nice to know I wasn’t the only one who’d thought yesterday’s events were entirely bizarre.
“I liked that hike,” Heidi said brightly. “Seriously, one of my top five theater exercises ever.”
“Can you explain to me how, exactly, hiking up a mountain constitutes a theater exercise? Not being sarcastic. Honestly wondering. How was that a theater exercise?” I asked.
“Well, um, I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m not completely sure how that applied to The Taming of the Shrew. But it was enjoyable! The landscape on the East Coast is so different than it is back home. It’s beautiful, too, but in a different way. Everything’s on such a smaller scale. It was nice to be hiking, even if it was just up a little hill.”
A little hill? I shuddered. Thank God Heidi wasn’t in charge of picking our theater exercise hiking excursion venues. I didn’t have the aerobic capacity to survive a Heidi-run Shakespeare theater.
“I just wish I hadn’t picked the salmon in the pool,” Heidi moaned, as the brightness suddenly drained out of her voice. “I had no idea what I was supposed to do! I was trying so hard to be a fish. But I couldn’t figure out how to swim on carpet. Was I supposed to get on my stomach and flop? Or swim upright? I was so scared they’d send me home if I wasn’t fishy enough.”
“You were perfectly fishy. I peeked,” I admitted.
“Cheater!” Amy squealed.
“Whelp, there goes all the trust I built.” Heidi’s pretend disappointment radiated from every freckle.
“I am perfectly trustworthy, and I don’t need a salmon to tell me that. What a bunch of BS. That Lola St. Clair is … something else.”
“Oh, she’s something, alright.” Heidi nodded vigorously. “But no BS. She’s the real thing. Lola was a huge deal in the whole protest-theater movement.”
“The what?” Amy asked.
“You know, theater as a form of social change? Like Boal and the Theater of the Oppressed?”
I nodded, like I knew what that was. I had a basic idea—the name was sort of self-explanatory. Even if I had no idea what, or who, Boal was. “She was a celebrity. A complete fixture on that scene in the village. Bob Dylan wrote a song about her.”
“He did not,” I scoffed as Amy whispered, wide-eyed, “Wow.”
“He absolutely did,” Heidi insisted.
“Gonna play my bongos all day, gonna find me a ski chalet, cover it up with jewel-tone silks, get some actors …” No idea what rhymed with silks. And my Bob Dylan impression wasn’t very good.
“Of all ilks?” Amy suggested. “Can ilk be plural?”
“Works for me.”
“It was a real song, guys! I swear!” Heidi did not seem amused by our musical creation. “But then she had some kind of falling out with the rest of the movement, left New York, moved up here, and never looked back.”
“That’s nuts.” I shook my head. I could totally picture Lola protesting stuff in The Village with her bongos, but Bob Dylan’s muse? No. It was just too much.
“It’s impressive, really. She turned a tiny artist’s commune in the green mountains into one of New England’s most respected summer stock Shakespeare theaters, pretty much all on her own. Of course, it’s not the Public, but it’s nothing to sneeze at. Frankly, Lola St. Clair is a goddamn hero.”
“A goddamn hero, huh?” I marveled, unable to keep a laugh from bubbling out. “That’s some strong language, Heidi.”
“I meant it. Goddammit.” She smiled.
“Where are the boys?” Amy snapped her compact shut and checked her phone as she slid it back into her purse.
“Who cares,” I mumbled and rolled over as Heidi mused, “Dunno.”
“They’re gonna be late.” Amy checked her phone again. “It’s like seven fifty-eight.”
“Well, they’re definitely not here. So I’m totally within my rights to go back to sleep.” I closed my eyes. Ahh, sweet, blissful darkness.
Heidi sang the opening measures of “Goodnight My Someone.”
That song. That show. If I never heard it, or anything from that score, ever again, it would be too soon. Anything that reminded me of my humiliating turn about the boards as Winthrop was slightly traumatic. Trust me—no ninth-grade girl wants to play an eight-year-old boy in a sailor suit. Those knickers were unfortunate. Some nights I still woke up in a cold sweat, lisping my way through “The Wells Fargo Wagon” in my sleep.
“First Brigadoon? Now Music Man?” I cracked an eye open to look at Heidi. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Broadway baby. What with the whole theater of the oppressed thing. That’s about as far from show tunes as you can get.”
“That’s the beautiful thing about theater though, isn’t it?” She smiled. “It can be so many different things. It feeds so many different needs, for different people or for different sides of the same person. That’s what’s so wonderful about theater. It’s as complex as human nature itself. That’s what it’s reflecting back to us, after all.”
She was right. I’d never really thought about it like that, but it was just like Hamlet said: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!” And yes, that monologue was about how Hamlet totally didn’t want to deal with people anymore, but even in his state he could appreciate the infinity of human possibility. No wonder Hamlet used a play within a play to reflect back on his uncle’s own lack of humanity. Oh, Shakespeare. He never got old. Always more to discover.
It was nice to be in a place where everyone was pretty much obsessed with Shakespeare. A lot of weird stuff had happened in the brief time I’d been at SAD, but I’d never felt like I was weird. I felt like I belonged, somehow, already. Like Amy and Heidi would never think I was weird. Not even if I was just randomly contemplating the genius of Hamlet on a Tuesday morning. And that felt nicer than I would have guessed.
My eyes had fluttered closed, and I had just started to drift off to sleep, when I was rudely awoken by, of all things, a bugle.
CHAPTER 5
What the what?” I muttered, sitting up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “A bugle? What the hell is this, ‘Taps’?”
“It’s ‘Reveille,’” a voice said smugly. I blinked and opened my eyes wider. Drew. Of course. The boys had arrived during my brief nap. “‘Reveille’ is a bugle call traditionally used to wake military personnel. ‘Taps’ is played at funerals.”
“Just wait, I might have been right after all,” I muttered, hopping off the table. The way things were going there was a pretty good chance I would kill him before day’s end.
The rest of the cast was gathering in front of the stage. I walked hurriedly toward it, away from Drew.
Nevin, dressed in a black turtleneck, military beret, and camouflage cargo pants, was walking slowly through the archway onto the stage, playing the bugle. I stared at him, slack-jawed. He was seriously playing the mother-eff-ing bugle. Unbelievable. Where was I? Both Heidi and Rhys had their hands over their ears. Noah and Amy just looked confused, and Drew was rolling his eyes so rapidly he looked in need of an exorcist.
After one long, extended blast of the bugle, Nevin brought it down from his lips.
“
Welcome to Bard Boot Camp, Thespian Soldiers!” he barked, coming to stand next to Langley, who leaned on her broom.
“Sir, yes, sir!” Rhys shouted flippantly.
“No back-talk!” Nevin ordered.
“Sorry, sir, sorry!” Rhys called, more meekly.
“Fifteen laps around the barn!” Nevin ordered.
We stared at him.
“Just me?” Rhys asked tentatively. “Or everyone?”
“Everyone!” Nevin thundered. “Move, move, move!”
As Langley waved goodbye, we took off in a confused mass toward the big red barn, jogging around the long building. Heidi easily outdistanced us, breaking away from the pack. I smiled smugly as I watched Drew try again and again to overtake her, but with no success, clearly desperate to be the fastest but unable to pass Heidi. Hee hee hee. That brought me so much joy I didn’t even mind running. Noah, Amy, and I jogged comfortably in the middle, while Rhys followed behind at a more leisurely pace.
Nevin called out the lap numbers as we jogged by, until, finally, we hit fifteen, and we collapsed into a slightly wheezing circle.
“Fifteen push-ups!” he shouted.
No rest for the weary. Groaning slightly, we scrambled into positions and began.
“Your form is wrong,” Drew hissed at me from across the circle.
“Excuse me?” My form was wrong! I looked at the two people on either side of me. Amy had her knees on the ground and Rhys was doing little more than leaning his chest in a vaguely downward direction.
“Yes. It’s not a correct push-up. Which makes it not a push-up at all. The angle of your arms is wrong, and you haven’t stabilized your core. Basically, for all the good that’s doing, you might as well be sitting on the ground,” Drew concluded. “Actually, everyone,” he started speaking again, at a slightly louder volume. “Your hands should only be slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Don’t look straight down. Look slightly ahead, otherwise your body will be misaligned. Like Cass’s.”
The Taming of the Drew Page 4