Crowns and Fingerprints

   This happened 40 years ago ... while I was in kindergarten. Boy, did I hate kindergarten. It was in the early seventies, and at this school I had my first run in with gender roles. The teachers being less fanatic at it than the children!
   Before I went to kindergarten I had always played with my brother and my back door neighbours: three brothers. Even the girl next door had a brother and they played with my brother and me, the four of us. So I was used to playing with boys and doing boys games. Watch me play soccer!

   At kindergarten I joined the boys to play with the cars. Guess what? These urchins scolded me and sent me away to the "dolls corner" . That was the area for girls. Girls were not supposed to play with boys, nor with cars.
   Lucky for me there was a dirty old bear in the dolls corner that the other girls didn't want to play with, because I did not want to play with the dolls.  I hated those all-too-sweet faces with the unnaturally pursed lips (was I being sharp on mouths at that time already?) And now that I had started to go to kindergarten,  I hated those faces even more. Because I noticed when the blond girls in my class, the ones with the angelic faces, ratted on me, I was convicted! No defence. The blondie was always telling the truth, and I was never believed**.


   One day 'Dolf' and his friends decided to make paper crowns and sashes. -I don't really remember if the boy's name was Dolf or if I called him that, because he had a T-shirt with a dolphin on it.-  Anyway, the boys asked the the teacher to give them paper (cut to size) and I asked for it too. They quickly drew into a tight circle around a table shutting me out. I heard Dolf whisper he was going to make the best one ever, because he was going to decorate his crown and sash with animals. And I noticed he had taken some of the animal shapes, precut templates, from the cabinet. -Apparently we used to decorate them with geometrical figures, probably precut circles, stars and squares?-

    I decided to outperform little Dolfie. Took some of the animal patterns and instead of going for the colouring pencils, I took scissors, glue and transparent paper.  I remember red and dark blue. Not being able to close up ranks on my own, I squeezed myself in between two cabinets,  my back to the classroom.
   Normally, I was pretty slow (still am), but I worked hard to get my crown and sash finished at the same time as those boys did.  Just as I was glueing the two ends of my sash together, the teacher asked the attention of the class. She pointed at the crowns and sashes of the boys, while they were wearing them. Dolf's was the last one shown. He was even allowed to stand on a chair, because his was soooo beautiful: he had drawn animals on it and coloured them. He  was gloating!
  And then, tadaa! Like a devil out of a box, I  jumped from my hidy hole and showed a crown and sash with translucent animals (I was smart enough to glue the coloured paper on the backsides to let the shape come out better).  The teacher held them close to the lamp to show it and declared my creation the best one. I don't know if I gloated, I must have.  I only recall enjoying Dolfie's p.... off face. Hah, girls could be better than boys!
(Me, vindictive?)

   Why did I think of that ancient victory?  Well, maybe it wasn't even the victory that came up, more the hard work, solo, squeezed in between those cabinets. Working on a self-proclaimed challenge.  I obviously haven't changed much.
   I'm currently spending A LOT of time squeezed in, in my attic (which serves as my living room, kitchen, bedroom and studio) and cut scenes from my favourite films and TV series. I have set up a quite movie database for this and  I plan to put these clips together from a viewpoint I expressed in my blogs Winks,  Twitches and Spoken Words and What's in the name?  I call my project 'Actor's Fingerprints' and I have absolutely no idea how it will turn out. Will I press the delete button in the end or do I jump out of my attic (not through the window of course) shouting 'Tadaa!' ?
   Only time will tell. I have 190 cuts already and over 40 'titles' left to plough through.



** Yes, you suppose right, I am not blond, my hair is what the dutch would call  'the milkman's dog's hair'.

... there are no small lives? - pt 2-

jump to part 1

So actors with supporting roles and extra's can help build up the team, towing the entire play to a higher level. Is that what is meant with 'no small actors' ?

   What about this boy, who desperately wanted to be Joseph in the school's nativity play?  Alas one of his classmates got the much desired role. All there was left was the role of an innkeeper. Or he could say no to the entire play. There's always a choice, you know.
    His teacher gave him some time to make up his mind, the part of the innkeeper did not need much rehearsing anyway. After a few days the boy announced he'd take the role and he appeared faithfully at every practise.
At first there was little enthousiasm, but he suddenly changed a few days before the 'grand performance' . The teacher complimented herself on being able to help this boy accept his humble fate so well.
    And now it was the evening of the school's Christmas celebration. The hall was filled with parents, brothers, sisters and grandparents. Watching Joseph and Mary struggling on, desperately knocking at the last door of all the taverns of Bethlehem. Our boy openend the door of this inn and Joseph stammered  "Dear sir, do you have a room, for my wife is pregnant and ..."  "Of course my dear Joseph," the innkeeper beamed, "I have saved my best room for you!"   An ominous silene fell over Bethlehem and the school hall. Mary hid her face in her robe, Joseph grew pale around the nose, and swallowed hard. Then Joseph straightened himself and turned to his wife. "Wait here darling."   He went inside, returning only a moment later.  "These rooms are no good Mary. Let's go find ourselves a stable."



   How often do we feel cheated out of the role we dreamed up? Receiving a much smaller part in this play called "Life on Earth".  And how do you respond to that? What do you settle for?
    Do you participate in a team effort to put up a great show and support the main cast -whoever they may be- ?   Reward: without having planned it, the Review turns out to be positive about you.
    Or do you put all your energy in that short performance you are allowed, even if it were only to please yourself? Rewarded an upturned thumb of the Great Director, because you at least managed to shake the others out of their numbness? And you thoroughly enjoyed the moment you were on stage.
    Or do you behave like our little boy. Try to rewrite the play by yourself, knocking on opportunity's door instead of waiting for it. The boy did not receive a plume from his teacher, but his antic lives on as an anecdote that is absolutely worth telling.  He didn't ruin the play, it takes a lot more than one hairpin turn to ruin Life on Earth. Sometimes hairpin turns save us.

   Or do I look at life from a false perspective? Is there more than one play going on? A Broadway production that is being repeated a zillion times, with different people playing the main roles in different ways. And we are not just actors, we are directors, playwrights,  props managers and audience all in one life.

The cast extra's inServant of Two Master Yes I'm on it too.

   In my 'up days' I have the Zillion Performances Perspective and I am truly happy with all these different functions and my role(s).
   But on other days ... I feel horribly cheated. I feel like declining my role in that One Big Play. That one big Yoke, or should I say Joke? Why can't I find my spectacles on those days? Put them on to change to a happier perspective ?
   Don't think I never tried to work myself out of the shaft I fall into.
-  I've tried being like the innkeeper, but I ran into a smart Joseph. Dead end street.
-  I'd go for enthousiasm, but sometimes it is lacking and there's no supermarket that has it in stock on the shelves.
-  Going for the team effort is not always an option. In some groups I miss a sense of belonging. And faking it is a deadly choice: it means alienating you from yourself.

   When I get depressed, I am no better than a ball.  Once I'm going down, I'm not able to change direction. I just have to hit the bottom of the shaft, before I can bounce out of it.
  But then ... it is at the bottom of this horrid shaft where I've found the small scraps of diamond and gold that I carry with me.
 
  You know these tiny particles are good enough for me.  I'm using them in  my art, my humour, my habit to let cats loose among pigeons.
And I'm trying to share that with others -during my 'up days'-,  hoping to create up days for others as well.
  
   What do you do with your Part in Life ?

There are no small parts... - pt 1-

    Enjoying the luxury of not having to go to any job yet, I was sauntering down my favorite lane a few days ago. There I ran into Madame LeBoeuf. Madame LeBoeuf was my supporting role in Eugene Ionesco's 'Rhinoceros'.
I especially remembered a rehearsal when the other actors were all a bit down and out. They were summing up their lines without interest, almost dragging me along in their boredom. But Madame LeBoeuf was soon to run upstairs into the office of Berenger...
    With such a small part, you rarely get the chance to actually be playing and I didn't want my moment to be spoiled.  I decided not to wallow in the prevailing lack of lust, but to be the lump under the carpet: irritatingly energetic between the apathetic. I mimicked running upstairs like I'd never done before and panted as if I had been chased by hordes of rhinocerosses instead of one. 
    I ended my part with an enormous leap into the stairwell and and took to my seat, since I had no more lines left. Then I saw what I had done: my enthousiasm had been contageous, the others were acting again and the director put his thumb up at me. It was the first time I realised that  -even though my part was small- I could have an impact on the people around me.

    So when I heard, several years later, that an amateur theater group was looking for cast extra's I said 'Yes!'.  It was for Servant of Two Masters (Carlo Goldoni) and it was to be a staged as a costume drama. All the extra's got a rough sketch of their character and furthermore were free to improvise during the second act in which is a road scene. Our director turned it into a lively square, with his 12 extra's going impro.

The main cast of Servant of Two Masters

   Alas, there was only one performance and the atmosphere was really weird that night.  Actually: it all started in the afternoon, during the last rehearsal.
   During this dry run one of the actors fell into the orchestral pit. The fallen actor was the person who kept the whole group together as one, cast and extra's. The accident had shocked us all. What we feared was true: some ribs were broken. But the actress decided to perform in spite of it. As the painkillers began doing their work, the company started to feel relieved and concentrated again on their 'premiere'.  

   The audience was for a considerable part made up of members of competing theatre groups. One of them was going to stage 'Servant of Two Masters' a few months later. It was as if the audience had practised too. In not laughing.  During the first act, the extra's were waiting, all dressed up, in a room where we could listen to what was happening on stage. We heard the witty lines of Truffaldino, and each joke was followed by this ominous silence of the audience. Truffaldino's voice started to sound pretty insecure. We all placed our chairs in a circle and listened to the progression of the first act with sinking mood.
   Except for one: our guitar player  had no experience with being on stage in a play. He was nervous as hell and kept tottering through the room, tripping again and again over the ribbons tied to his instrument. He even left our backstage room. One of the actors, not on stage, begged us to please stay inside, when our guitarman tripped again, causing nervous laughter from some of the others.  The -supposed- widow in our group, in an imposing black dress, reprimanded our poor guitar player and pointed at the empty chair in the circle. The troubadour sat down so promptly and meakly  that the widow was stunned by her own boldness. But this interaction was a turning point: we all slipped into our roles and prepared ourselves for a literally 'supporting' act.

    One of the critics had his own interpretation of small parts and small actors. He wrote that the only acting he had seen, was done by the extra's. True, we made quite a scene, but I still resent that remark. The actors gave a good performance and deserved a lot better than that. Even without considering the circumstances.
Maybe the smallest actors were in the audience that night?

 To be continued ...

Announcement: There are no small parts ...

I like to announce my blog plans, just to keep myself going. Maybe it works as a cliffhanger for you?
Just be patient and check my blog in a few days!

Yes, this one will be about the famous quotation   "There are no small parts, only small actors"

Actually, it is written by a very small actress:

I was the smallest kid in my class, yet my teacher*  decided to put me in the back row. My friend Peter is just turning around to tell me he's got the jitters because his line is coming up. That should give you an idea of where I might stand.

(* = with whom I used to quarrel a lot, would that have been of any influence?)