I’ve been thinking of taking an acting class to get myself thinking about verbs again. To imagine dramatic action. Understand how we get all those dead bodies at the end of Hamlet. So I can hear characters whisper again in my ear. (Then again, maybe that was just the schizophrenia.)
The class I am thinking about is full on. Is for a year and would be every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening. I don’t know if I have it in me. They require applicants to audition so I have been thinking what might I do if I get off my arse. Pulled Lanford Wilson’s Serenading Louie off the shelf because it isn’t overdone and the scene where Gabby confronts her husband is fiery.
There is a moment in the play that I remember Davey always talking about in classes that makes me ache inside.
MARY: Carl was thinner, firmer then. Hard as a wall. And really agile, for his weight, and eager. We made love after he studied till midnight. And then. . . sleeping so close and warm, we used to wake up just as it got light out.
CARL: Summertime; summer term.
MARY: . . .and go at it all over again. I’d fall back asleep, curled up against his chest with his sweaty-wet face at my ear murmuring, “Marry me, Mary, marry me, Mary, marry me. . .” I don’t actually think. . . that I loved him then. But I love him then now.
It makes me cry.
