CAREER
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I answer the phone and it's Gregory Mosher, the director of
Lincoln Center Theater, saying, "Listen, Spalding, how would you like to
play the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town on Broadway?"
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I can't believe what I'm hearing and I say, "Gregory,
listen, thank you very much. I am honored, but I don't think I could do it. I
simply don't think I could say those lines. They're too wholesome and folksy.
Get Garrison Keillor."
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"We don't want Garrison Keillor, we want you. We want
your dark, New England, ironic sensibility."
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"Well, Gregory, you got me there. I'll tell you what.
Give me a day to think about it."
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I hang up. I think, My God! This is a chance of a lifetime.
Here it is. It's a limited run. The role is great. I could speak from my heart
at last - provided I could memorize the lines - and I could at last use my New
England accent.
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So I think I'd better just call my Hollywood agent, see if
she has any opinions on this before I say yes or no.
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I call her up and she says, "Dear heart, dear heart! No
way! Why, after all these years of acting, would you want to be a stage
manager?"
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So I say yes.
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Much to my surprise, I find that I love doing the play
because I'm able to get in touch with Thornton Wilder's language. I get swept
back to New England where I came from. I get swept back to New England where I
used to believe in God and eternity and all the things the play is about.
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The cemetery scene is the most powerful for me. You see,
Emily dies in childbirth and her funeral takes place on stage in the third act.
And when the mourners exit, Emily dressed in a simple white dress walks across
the stage to sit in the straight-backed chair that represents her grave.
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And she sits down amongst all the other recent dead who are
all sitting bolt upright, staring up at the stars above. Everyone is so
peacefully concentrated. Franny Conroy, who is playing Mother Gibbs, is sitting
in the front row. She has been doing transcendental meditation for the past
fifteen years and she's in a deep trance.
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The little boy playing Emily's brother, Wally Webb, is an
eleven-year-old boy, and he is sitting there, as well, not blinking for forty
minutes while I talk about eternity. And in the play I say, "And they stay
here while the earth part of them bums away, bums out. .. They're waitin' for
something they feel is comin'. Something important, and great. Aren't they
waitin' for the eternal part in them to come out clear?"
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And every night I would perform this and every night it
would basically be the same.
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Except often, when you do a long run of a play you have what
I call a unifying accident, in which something so strange happens in the play,
that it suddenly unites the audience in the realization that we are all here
together at this one moment in time. It's not television. It's not the movies.
It happened as I was speaking of the dead and I say, "And they stay here
while the earth part of them bums away, burns out. .. They're waitin' for
something they feel is comin'. Something important and great..." As I say
this, I turn and gesture to them, waiting, and, just as I turn and gesture, the
little eleven-year-old boy playing Wally Webb projectile vomits! Like a hydrant
it comes, hitting some of the dead on their shoulders! The other dead levitate
out of their chairs, in total shock, around him and drop back down. Franny
Conroy, deep in her meditative trance, is slowly wondering, "Why is it
raining on stage?" The little boy flees from his chair, vomit pouring from
his mouth. Splatter. Splatter. Splatter. I'm standing there. My knees are
shaking. The chair is empty. The audience is thunderstruck!
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There is not a sound coming from them, except for one little
ten-year-old boy in the 8th row. He knows what he saw ... He is laughing!
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At this point, I don't know whether to be loyal to Thornton
Wilder and go on with the next line as written, or attempt what might be one of
the most creative improvs in the history of American Theater. At last I decide
to be loyal to Wilder and simply go on with the next line, and I tum to the
empty chair and say, "Aren't they waitin' for the eternal part in them to
come out clear?"
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Spalding Gray "Spalding Gray
Stories Left To Tell" (2008)
