Trust Exercise(20)

SARAH to DAVID: You’re angry.

MR. KINGSLEY to SARAH: No mind-reading. Again.

SARAH to DAVID: You’re bored.

MR. KINGSLEY: (Exasperated) Live honestly, Sarah!

SARAH to DAVID: You’re wearing a blue polo shirt.

DAVID to SARAH: I’m wearing a blue polo shirt.

MR. KINGSLEY: I don’t hear listening.

SARAH to DAVID: You’re wearing a blue polo shirt.

DAVID to SARAH: I’m wearing a blue polo shirt.

SARAH to DAVID: You’re wearing a blue polo shirt.

MR. KINGSLEY: Who’s in the moment here? Anyone?

DAVID to SARAH: I’m wearing a blue polo shirt.

What is the moment? thinks Sarah. Where is the Now she’s supposed to respond to? How does repetition not void all the moments, like a great spreading darkness behind which David hides, safe from all observation, and nursing his hatred of her? But such thinking, such hapless confusion, is exactly the reason they’re failing at this, it’s exactly the reason Mr. Kingsley, again, makes the gesture of rapid erasure: get-the-hell-off-the-stage.



* * *



COLIN to JULIETTA: Your hair is curly.

Indisputable. Julietta’s emblem is her corkscrew-curl hair. Her hair stands up and sideways from her head and bounces when she walks and is an extension of her radiant smile. Julietta’s cheeks are downy and pink at all times. Her eyes sparkle. Her mother is French, and has bequeathed to Julietta adorably unique pronunciations, like, for the common white spread, “MY-OH-NEHZZZZ.” Julietta’s mother has also bequeathed to Julietta an ecstatic Christian faith. Unlike Pammie, Julietta never seems to feel obliged to defend her religion. When her classmates inform her God doesn’t exist, she beams at them without condescension. She loves them for sharing their thoughts! Just as Jesus loves them, and they don’t even need to believe it.

Julietta dazzles Colin with her smile: what a perfectly right thing he’s said! “My hair is curly.” She chuckles.

“Your hair is curly.” Damn, girl, when you look “curly” up, there’s your hair!

“My hair is curly.” Oh, is it ever, Colin. You cannot talk my hair out of curling. Isn’t it funny?

“Your hair is curly,” tries Colin. Come to think of it, Colin also has thick, wavy hair. Anywhere else Colin’s hair would be “curly,” but here it’s competing with Julietta’s storybook hair, her bouncy fairy-princess hair, her hair from an idealized painting of some nature-maiden with springtime’s own blossomy vines for her hair! Does Colin’s hair, his coarse tufty hair, even count?

“My hair is curly.” Julietta shrugs. Big deal. Plenty of curly hair here.

“Your hair is curly,” Colin says suddenly, his voice rough with impulse, as if the words got ahead of their sound. He stares a narrow bead at her, and just like that, Julietta flushes crimson as if he’d unbuttoned her jeans. A disbelieving titter streaks the room. Damn, how did he do that? He’s good. Colin is usually so busy playing the rude Irish thug of his ancestral imagination they forget that he’s actually good.

Silence! Mr. Kingsley snaps his fingers, then nods sharply to Colin. Next level. Colin still leads.

The next level is subjective observation. Subjective: an opinion, a feeling. A judgment. Very often a confession. As opposed to ostensibly simpler objective: a statement of fact. By and large they tend to think of the objective as describing the follower (here Julietta, who speaks second, responds) and the subjective as describing the leader (here Colin, who speaks first, makes the leading statement). But that’s only because their dichotomous thinking is undeveloped.

Without a pause Colin says, “You’re a virgin.”

Whoa!

“Oh shit!” cries Angie, unable to “button it,” as Mr. Kingsley will sometimes snap out, though he usually says it with no more than a look or a snap of his fingers. He does so now, angry SNAP! and they all wiggle, agonized, in their chairs, some straining forward with avidity and some cringing backward with dread. The composure of the audience member is a lesson they strangely have never been taught at this school of performance. They’re only shushed and snapped at as if they were dogs.

Julietta had already been maximum crimson. As they watch her, her usual roses-and-snow very slowly fades back as the heat of her blushing fades out. She is taking her time, perhaps wondering, as many of them are, if Mr. Kingsley is going to call foul because “You’re a virgin” is really objective—but is it? Isn’t that up to her? Isn’t it subjective—Colin’s mockery of her—until she confirms it as fact? Yet she can’t not confirm it as fact, the rules state that she has to repeat, only changing the pronoun and verb conjugation, which makes her assent meaningless—so does that, after all, make the statement subjective? Their dichotomous thinking is undeveloped, this conundrum is pulping their brains. Pammie clutches her temples, then covers her eyes.

But Julietta, in her protracted silence—for she’s entitled to silence as one of the actor’s most versatile tools—has tilted the balance of power. Her complexion is fully restored. She is not smiling. Nor is she scowling or exhibiting uncertainty, embarrassment, or fear. Julietta regards Colin with unbroken composure which Colin tries to return, but they see him shifting his hams on the hard plastic chair, tilting his face slightly at her. He’s mirroring her, but poorly.