In Pieces(42)
“It’s the Actors Studio. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes,” I muttered.
“Well, you’re coming. I’ll meet you there.” She stopped and stood back, watching me.
Registering the challenge I saw in her face, I replied, “I’ll be there.”
10
Together
IT WAS JUST an ordinary-looking house in an ordinary-looking Hollywood neighborhood a few blocks south of the Sunset Strip, twenty minutes from Columbia. After parking on the street, I walked up the steep driveway with my heart pushing against my shirt, hoping that Madeleine’s would be the first face I saw. At the top of the drive was a small building that perhaps had been the garage at one point; now, where the wide car-size opening might have been was a long white clapboard wall with an ordinary door standing open at the end. A cluster of people gathered under the yellow glare of the naked light bulb mounted above the door, while a swarm of moths danced around the glow.
Still looking for Madeleine, I stepped through the back door of what appeared to be the main house, sliding awkwardly between those waiting at the coffee machine, nodding at everyone who met my eyes. These were all actors and as I scanned the small group, I recognized several faces, though I couldn’t pinpoint from where. At the same time, I felt the energy of being recognized myself, if for no other reason than the fact that I was new and nervous. And there she was, lost in an animated conversation with a tall woman who wore her frizzy gray hair pulled back in a long ponytail. When she saw me, Madeleine’s pixie face crinkled into a relieved smile, as though she had half-expected that I wouldn’t show up. She moved forward, calmly introducing me to everyone while pulling me out the door and up the path to that onetime garage, where everyone eventually headed. Inside was a mini theater with gradually elevated rows of chairs facing a curtainless stage. People were taking their seats, moving with a kind of certainty that indicated they’d done this before and had a preferred spot. Madeleine chose two chairs, not in the back but not in the front where force of habit had been pulling her.
A longtime member of this historic acting workshop, Madeleine had done her studying in New York, which had resulted in a remarkable stage career. She had originated the roles of Abigail in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible as well as “Sister Woman” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Miss Lucy in Sweet Bird of Youth, both by Tennessee Williams. She was a force, that’s for sure: She had been blacklisted in the McCarthy era, had worked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, was arrested while participating in a freedom walk, then jailed and sentenced to six months’ hard labor for “endangering the customs and mores of the people of Alabama” until her lawyer, the first African American to represent a white woman south of the Mason-Dixon Line, secured her release. She rarely talked about any of this, but you could feel it in her, like something lashing around, unwilling to settle down. A dust devil looking for loose dirt.
Two scenes were up that night: The first was from A Moon for the Misbegotten, by Eugene O’Neill with two characters, and the second was a monologue from Euripides’s Medea, adapted by Jean Anouilh. As everyone was filing in, Madeleine explained to me what I was to see, and how I should see it. The performers were to pick one or two very specific things they wanted to work on, and the scene was in no way to be considered a finished performance. Everything was a work in progress. It was study. She also told me that during the winter months the position of moderator would rotate according to whoever was available. Veterans and longtime members like Ellen Burstyn, Bruce Dern, Shelley Winters, and even Madeleine herself would show up on different nights, always actors who had studied closely with the guru—the acting teacher who had made the Actors Studio so famous and infamous, Lee Strasberg. But during the spring and throughout the summer Lee lived in L.A., and for those months it was the master himself who taught at this little neighborhood residence.
The lights went down and the first scene was up. I wasn’t familiar with A Moon for the Misbegotten, but even if I’d known it well, I wouldn’t have completely understood what was happening because whatever the two actors were working on, being heard wasn’t one of them. It didn’t matter. Their focus made it worth holding my breath to catch whatever words I could, as if we, the audience, were eavesdropping on something personal happening between these two people, something that they would hide if our presence were known.
After the scene, the actors gathered their things and adjusted their clothes, never looking out at the watchers, talking only to each other, as if allowing themselves the few moments it takes to leave the privacy of concentration. Tucking their emotions out of sight, just as they tucked in their shirts and tied their shoes. Eventually they sat on the edge of the stage with varying degrees of awkward composure until the moderator (I’m sorry to say I don’t remember who it was that night) asked them what they’d been working on. After the actors explained their tasks, the moderator gave comments and finally asked for comments from the audience—all actors and members or, like me, invited observers.
When the short break ended, everyone took their seats again and quieted as a tall, striking woman, a character actor I vaguely recognized, moved to center stage, keeping her eyes down. She stood still for what seemed to be a long time, then began to speak as Medea. Slowly, she raised her eyes and searched the audience, meeting one face, then another. And with a booming voice, she began to wail while strutting across the stage, then laughed insanely with her mouth open wide, looking toward the rafters. It was periodically mesmerizing, boldly unafraid, and at the same time hovered constantly on the edge of embarrassing. At the end of the long spew of words, she screamed with fierce abandon, ripping the bodice of her dress open, yanking it with the most authentic behavior thus far, and finally stood in the middle of the stage, breathless and bare chested. No one moved. I must admit, I admired her freedom, though perhaps not her sense of economy. After a moment, Madeleine leaned in to me, whispering a little too loudly, “She finds a way to do that in every scene, no matter what the play.” But I couldn’t take my eyes off of this exposed actor as she gathered her things just like the others had done, pulling herself back, transitioning from the place where she had been to look at the people sitting in front of her.