#12 Learn Our Lines
Apr 22nd, 2008 by doing better
I’m in a play this week, and there is a Scottish guy, Campbell, who is charming and clever, and a good actor too, but even though we’ve been cast in the play since November, he never took the time to learn his lines. At every rehearsal he’s had the script in his hand, and if he tried to go without it, he would forget his lines and throw everyone else off. After the technical rehearsal, two days before the opening night, the assistant director hauled him off to a dark corner of the theater to inflict unknown threats and torments. The next night, at the dress rehearsal, he finally knew his lines. For this he received praise from the assistant director. “Well done, Campbell, for learning all those lines overnight.” Were any of the rest of us praised for learning our lines in a timely fashion? We were not.
That was on top of all the other disasters that have befallen our production. In the ten days before opening night, we lost three actors. One to the flu, one to a mother’s illness, and one to unknown causes. The director found replacements for two of them, but the third part, a major role, could not be filled, so the director himself had to take on the role with only four days to go. This means he only half knows his lines, and he has to carry a little book around with him as a prop.
The lead actor, who leans toward the prima donna at times, took the moral high ground that this was an absolutely unacceptable standard of performance before a paying audience, and we ought to cancel the show, but the director stood to lose too much prestige and money. He said too many school groups had booked tickets and arranged their transportation; he didn’t want to disappoint the children.
One of the replacements, William, plays a judge in the last two acts. Like Campbell, through whom the director recruited him, he appears to have no intention of learning his lines. The director is permitting him to hold a binder of papers in front of him like a real judge so he can read the lines from the script. William, a student in his final year of college, sauntered into the theater an hour late for his first rehearsal. He was wearing a linen jacket and jeans and flaunting an expensive watch which he described as a “sailing watch”. In a conversation with a fellow cast member who is a lawyer in her day job, he began to talk about “what a jerk my lawyer is”.
“My lawyer makes me carry all his stuff around, even though I’m paying him.”
I thought this was an odd statement coming from a twenty-year-old.
“Why do you have a lawyer?” I asked.
“Oh, stuff,” he said, tossing his head indifferently. “You can read all about it on page sixteen of the student newspaper.” He clearly believed himself to be famous in this town.
When the conversation turned to legal ethics, he boasted, “I told my lawyer I did it, but he doesn’t care. He just wants my money. It’s costing me thousands.”
“Oh dear, did you have to get a loan for that?” I asked.
“No!” He laughed at the notion. “My parents are paying.”
Later he informed the cast that he has never done his own laundry. Last year he lived in a house with a “manservant” who did all his cleaning and washing for him, and this year he has enough clothes that he never has to wash them.
Somehow he does not strike me as the kind of person who will bother to learn his lines before opening night. I just hope he takes the trouble to show up.