BillLindau

Local theatre anecdotes

My brilliant career (local theatre)

By Bill Lindau
Here's a story based on my acting experiences, both in my teens and lately, after landing some roles. I sent this little group of anecdotes for my friend Jonathan Farlow, a twice-published novelist of Archdale, N.C., for use in one of his speaking appearances. For this blog, I have added another incident from my high-school acting days.
The play I was in turned out to be a bust, namely because I had a lot going on and didn't have enough time to memorize my roles. I do have a smaller part in another play, so the director and I are still on friendly terms. And I even got some funny moments out of my attempts at the first play.
Michael York talked about some comic moments from his early years on the stage, in his 1991 autobiography, "Accidentally on Purpose." Also, from his part as Tybalt in the 1968 film version of "Romeo and Juliet". You ever see it? He wears a codpiece. He wrote that it was the first film in which "I entered the scene from the crotch upwards."
Bill
Playing it for laughs
You know what I think everybody ought to do at least once in your lifetime? Get a part in a play -- your school, your local community theatre, your church, whatever. Even if it flops, the effort you put into it will leave you with plenty of things to look back on. I think it'd be a great idea if somebody could bring a camcorder to rehearsals.
I (or "My friend Bill Lindau") had the lead in two plays in high school and has recently gotten back into local theatre. One of his high-school plays was a comedy. To get the cast used to the laughter from the audience, the teacher who was directing the play impressed some of the actors' friends into service, to laugh at the funny parts. Well, one of the hired laughers had the most raucous guffaw you ever heard. You cracked up just hearing Bobby laugh, even if you didn't know what he was laughing at, and even if you just heard the saddest news in the world.
Bobby's half-donkey, half-hyena noise stood out among the five other kids, and the actors couldn't get through the scenes without breaking up, too.
Bill said there was one person who managed not to laugh: Miss Phelps, the poor director. I mean, she was fuming.
Bill also remembered another part of stage drama you had to get used to: Makeup.
If you're in theatre, you usually wear some kind of makeup even if you play an ordinary person, close to your own age. In Bill's high-school play the cast marked the lines in their faces so the audience could see their expressions better.
The first rehearsal in makeup was a bust. One of Bill's scenes had him coming to a door and the maid answering. Bill introduced himself and both he and the maid went into hysterics at the sight of each other's makeup. Miss Phelps had them try it over and over, but each time ended up the same way, with Bill and Sherry pointing at each other, doubled over with laughter.
The fourth time, the petite teacher upped and hollered, "I'LL GIVE YOU THREE SECONDS TO STRAIGHTEN UP OR I'M GONNA KICK YOU BOTH OUT OF THIS AUDITORIUM!"
Talk about scared straight!
Recently, the lead in one play had a line that referred to an act by the legendary escape artist Harry Houdini, in which he got out of a pair of handcuffs inside a milk can in 10 feet of water. Now are any of you old enough to remember milk cans? Or even those wax cartons?
During an early rehearsal, the actor said "Ye Gods, Houdini opened his cuffs inside of a milk carton in under 10 feet of water."
If looks could kill, the director would've turned Bill into a pile of ashes.
Wouldn't that be a trick, escaping from a milk carton? Only if it was a regular quart-sized carton.
Now, the trick would be to fit you in it?
Can't you imagine that? You're about to make breakfast one morning, you get your quart of Pine State out of the fridge and a little man about 8 inches tall in a top hat and tux bursts right through it!
That's another thing: How many of you actually knew a real person who said "Ye Gods"? Or "Good thunder!"
Maybe Clark Kent's editor at The Daily Planet. Or somebody in the antebellum South.
Nobody else, honestly. Don't know if I'd ever want to. I'd have to check a calendar to see what year I was living in.
The high-school play I mentioned was not the first time Bill gave that instructor a fit.
Earlier that year, the drama class produced a radio play, a version of “The Hitchhiker” by Orson Welles. Bill got the part of the narrator.
One night the group put together what was to be the final cut of the play. A senior student who worked at a local radio station did the taping. The cast took a break midway through. Bill and two other youths in the cast went to the parking lot, where a friend who was waiting outside had some liquor. The young men put away several drinks and so much for stage fright.
But Miss Phelps found out about the boozing and made everybody tape it over.
This took place Saturday night of Thanksgiving week. Steve, the student radio announcer, told Bill right before the retaping, “You read good as hell.”
But by the end of the night poor Steve was fit to be tied. When one of the cast flubbed a line, he pitched a fit, his face growing redder and redder.
Bill said he was just glad Miss Phelps did not report him and his friends to the principal.
Two years before, in Bill’s freshman year, one of the English classes put on Charles Dickens‘s “Great Expectations.”
Things were going pretty well until the scene between the adolescent Pip (the main character) and a wheelchair-bound spinster named Miss Havisham.
Anybody see the 1947 B-movie “Kiss of Death”? Richard Widmark made his screen debut as a gangster who pushed an old lady down a flight of stairs.
Well, Robert B. (Pip) did a re-enactment of that scene when he wheeled Ginger W. offstage. Two seconds later you heard poor Ginger’s chair come crashing down and her cry out. She was unhurt, but the audience cracked up.
Another challenging test for a director: Dealing with Yankee actors for the parts of Southerners.
Bill was recently cast as Mitch in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The first time the cast got together, they all did a read through. Everybody had to talk with a Deep South accent, even the New York Irishman who played Stanley Kowalski. Sean, who played Stanley, came off sounding like Elvis.
Ever hear how antsy Southerners become when somebody makes a movie set in their part of the country? Especially a Civil War movie? When “Gone with the Wind” came out in 1939, one Southerner said, “Well at least she’s not a Yankee,” when hearing the British-born Vivian Leigh was playing Scarlett O’Hara. I heard a similar reaction when Nicole Kidman played a Southern belle from Charleston, S.C., in the film version of “Cold Mountain”. “At least she’s not a Yankee!”

posted by Bill Lindau @ 4:41 PM