King Lear

We were doing King Lear

In the spring of 1981

And we had about seventy-three student matinees

We did more student matinees

Than actual performances

And our Lear was an eighty-two year-old man

Who occasionally forgot where the theater was

So needless to say

He was a little more than shaky

On most of his lines

Not that anybody was awake enough

To notice

That was the show

Where I learned to sleep onstage

Believe me, it’s not difficult

Towards the end of my career

I could even do it

During fight scenes

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about

We were doing the show

Towards the end of the school year

For a group of graduating seniors

Which should have sent up a warning flare

To somebody somewhere

But that didn’t happen

These kids feared nothing

Since they were within an arm’s reach

Of completing school

And they sure as hell didn’t want to spend their final days

Watching a three-hour Shakespearean epic

Led by a guy who would occasionally recite his grocery list

Instead of his soliloquies

So they decided to make our show

Their senior prank

They all picked a moment

Towards the end of the show

When every student in the audience

Would run up onstage

And sing some stupid song

That was popular back then

‘Call Me’ maybe

You know, by Blondie

Well, we get to that point in the show

I’m half asleep

King Lear is doing a monologue from Butterflies are Free

And all of a sudden I hear—

‘Charge!’

And all of a sudden I see hundreds of teenagers

Come running at me

Now, I figured right away

That this was some sort of joke

But the guy playing King Lear

Had not only fought in two wars

(Probably the Civil War and the War of 1812)

He’d also been in an unabridged version of Titus Andronicus

Which was probably the most traumatic

So he must have had a flashback or something

Because instead of stopping the show

He yelled out—

‘KILL EVERYONE IN SIGHT!’

And even though the rest of us in the cast knew

That we probably should just wait for the prank to pass

Or for the teachers to get control of their students

We all looked at each other and thought—

Screw that

The next thing you know, I’ve got one of the kids in a headlock

And another littler one thrown over my shoulder

I look over at Cordelia

And she’s yanking some football player’s hair

While the Fool is chasing after half the cheerleaders

With one of the prop swords

Actors were fighting students

Students were fighting actors

The teachers started fighting with the ushers in the aisles

It was one of my fondest theatrical memories

Because, despite the fact that most of us wound up either fired

Or in the hospital

Or expelled

Or on the news

We took a stand that day

For art

We were the rowdy, obnoxious, criminalist theater types

They used to burn at the stake

In Elizabethan England

Or whatever

(Hey, what do you want?  I never said I was a history teacher.)

What I mean is—

We were a team

It was us vs. them

And it felt good being an us

That’ s what doing theater is all about

Finding a group of people

You can call ‘us’

That’s what I loved about being an actor

That, and beating the shit out of a bunch of snot-nosed

Teenagers

You know, I ran into one of them years later

He stopped me on the street

And told me he was there the day

The Orpheus Acting Company

Kicked the collective ass

Of the class of 1981

Before I could apologize to him

He smiled and said—

‘Mister, that was the best show I ever saw in my life’

I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a moral or a message or whatever

But it’s a damn good story, isn’t it?