Dramaroom, Part Two
How the theater became a home for me, continued. From South Carolina to Arizona, 1995-2005.
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This two-part essay series is dedicated to all the incredible Drama teachers and directors who have mentored me over the years, especially Donna McKenna-Crook, who will always hold an enormous spot in my heart for all the love and dedication to both the craft and to her students. She trusted us and gave us so many opportunities to stretch our dramatic muscles in all kinds of ways; the time and energy she poured into A.C. Flora High School’s Drama program made it one of the best in the state. I owe so much of my knowledge (and more!) to her.
(Oh, and I use “theater” and “theatre” interchangeably).
Read Part One here, which follows my theatre journey from elementary school to the first half of high school, and meet plenty of the people who walked beside me and mentored me along the way (and one witch)!
Act Two, Scene Three: SCTA
A group of actors walk out onstage en masse. A dozen, maybe more. They begin to speak their lines simultaneously; clear enunciation from individual mouths, a jumble of words together.
Fall of my Junior year of high school, we were invited to compete in the South Carolina Theatre Association’s (SCTA) Youth Theatre Showcase, held at Winthrop University. It was a small play, called “A Kind of Alaska,” with a cast of just three: Tim as the doctor, Brianna as my sister, and I was a woman who had just woken up from a years-long coma (hence, the metaphorical title).
This play was very serious. Waking up from a coma is very serious. The only set piece was a giant bed in the middle of the stage, gleaming and white, and I was in it (almost) the whole time. I was a child (well, sixteen at that point) playing an adult who had been unconscious since she was a child, who was confused about all the childlike things she wanted to do, and this new body she was in, looping in and out of what seemed like madness. I had to do a lot of acting lying very still. It was all very surreal.
The best part of the weekend, though, was the rest of the time we weren't on stage. There were about ten of us there from A.C. Flora, cast and crew, and we all had a blast, hopped up on cloves and the thrill of meeting other Drama freaks from all over the state.
There was a “mixer” one night that we were betting would be pretty dorky (inside joke for the rest of the year: the word “mixer”) and so we engaged in some riotously obnoxious behavior, like crawling down the Hampton Inn lobby staircase and lying in the middle of the floor during The Electric Slide, dancers shimmying around us, thoroughly confused. People thought I was drunk. Nah. I was just high on my own venom.
A bunch of us were hanging out in the lobby at 2:00 am, and this uber-charismatic guy (another actor) who reminded me of Rivers Cuomo comes in and asks if he can do his monologue for us (of course he can). He says his name (“John”) and his school (“Wade Hampton High School”) and launches into a five-minute monologue and he’s looking at me the whole time and he knows he’s got my attention.
Once he’s finished, he walks over to the elevator and I follow him like a shocked puppy, and as the doors close, he raises his eyebrows at me and disappears. Whew.
Even later, 4:00 am, I'm trying to write in my journal, probably about that guy, but there’s a pillow fight happening in my room between Terry, Patricia, Kathy, and our new Spring Valley friend Walter.
At 5:00 am I have to go to sleep. Terry is asleep in my bed, under the covers. I’m so tired so I just climb right in next to him. No touching, but I am in a bed next to a boy. A little while later, Patricia comes in and kicks him out and he falls asleep on the floor.
“A Kind of Alaska” didn’t win the competition, but Tim, Brianna, and I were three of the strongest actors at our school, and I thought we did an amazing job.
One of the winners, Heathwood Hall, was deserving of the accolades it received. At the awards ceremony when their whole cast of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” went up on stage, this kid comes out with a spork behind his ear (he’d been carrying this spork the whole weekend, winning him the nickname “Sporkboy”). Rachel leans over to me and whisper-shouts, “Ashleigh, yell something!” I couldn’t not. Loud and clear, my voice rings out in the packed auditorium, “SPORK!”
The whole place, a hundred teenagers, erupts in raucous cheers and laughter. We’d all seen him caring for that spork, taking it with him everywhere, all weekend long, and though we were all weird ourselves, that, my friends, was weirder.
I didn’t care that I was being obnoxious or disruptive or even if I hurt anyone’s feelings (I don’t have any regrets. I hadn’t let on that I actually knew Sporkboy already, from another time in my life. He’ll show up again in a later essay). My one-word performance was the culmination of a weekend filled with teenage hormones and cigarettes, not enough sleep and too much wild energy reverberating inside a hotel in Rock Hill for 48 hours.
I’d earned that response, and in that moment, it felt legendary.
(Inside joke for the rest of the year: the word “spork”).
Act Two, Scene Four: Drama Club President
The stage is brightly lit now, the spotlight on a young lady in the middle of the floor. She knows that she belongs here, and her posture shows it.
Of course there were egos in the theater, and every single director I’ve had wasn’t shy about favorites. For Mrs. McKenna (and for a lot of us girls), charming and talented young men were easy to admire, sure. But it was the whipsmart, mature-for-their-years young women that Mrs. McKenna truly appreciated, and we all loved her back.
I wasn’t the favorite favorite Drama student in the ACF Class of 1997 (we all knew who it really was), but when it came time to vote on the dual-role President for both the Drama Club and our chapter of the International Thespian Society, I was nominated, and I won. One of the reasons I was chosen was because I wasn’t terribly confrontational; for better or worse, I chose to land softly in the middle of arguments instead of picking a side.
But I knew, both deep down and on the surface, that I was also picked because Drama was something I was good at. I knew I was good, and the people around me did, too.
There were a lot of areas in my life where I felt overshadowed; I was smart, but I wasn’t the smartest. I played softball with a lot of heart, but I was far from the best on our ragtag team. Drama was the primary pursuit in which I knew I was appreciated for the talent I had that many others simply did not.
Among us, it was clear who was pretty decent and who was really good. I prided myself in never overacting; I was subtle. The goal was to not look like I was trying at all. My years of quietly observing others showed me that the people with the most expressive personalities were usually the worst actors; they had a hard time reigning it in to be believable. You had to harness your skills in the precise way that that moment on stage called for.
Sure, maybe there were some of us who cared too much and got a little snobby about it, myself included, acting like A.C.Flora Drama was the most prestigious theatre company in all the city. (But wasn’t it, though? We were worlds better than Dreher)! Sometimes I forgot that some people wanted to get out there because it was fun, not because they cared about being taken too seriously.
Even still, I truly believe that acting skills can be taught. Actors can get better, and they do. It just takes the desire to do better, the humility of knowing when to scale back, and the self-awareness of when to push harder.
After portraying suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton in a short play during Women’s History Month that spring, my friend’s boyfriend gushed about how “awesome” I was, that I had done the best job out of all of us on stage. He was also an actor so I knew his opinion meant something. My friend had been in the play, too, and she was standing right next to me. I never asked her what it felt like to hear all this, but to my attention-seeking sixteen-year-old self, I know what it felt like to me: validating.
I might only have had a ghost of a boyfriend myself, but impressing my friends’ boyfriends wasn’t such a bad consolation prize.
By my senior year, I would hang out in the Dramaroom every day at lunch, sinking into the overstuffed couches in the back, tucked under the racks and racks of costumes, surrounded by others, going over lines or chatting or trying to figure out how I was going to make a move on the guy I liked (which I never did).
Lunchtime was also Game On for…Lunchbox Theatre! You could pay $1 to eat your lunch in the theater and watch us do improv games, act out original skits (usually making fun of beloved teachers), or perform short plays, like the time I was Queen Gertrude in “The Fifteen-Minute Hamlet,” in which I wore the best costume I’ve ever worn in any show, a fabulously snug, glittery dress, and died onstage multiple times, each time more melodramatic and abbreviated than the last, until the very end when I flop over and drop the cup, dead and done.
By that point, there was a lot of new blood; there was an admirable assortment of the next generation of Drama nerds. My brother and his friends were freshmen now, and they would join in Lunchbox Theater or some of the other smaller performances, and the abundance of young males was always helpful in casting other performances, too.
One of them was cast opposite me as a love interest (I was “Isabella”, and Michael was my lover “Tristan”), and it was rumored that Mrs. McKenna was going to ask us to share an onstage kiss; for the sake of the art, you know. Thankfully, it never came up in rehearsals, but I was preparing myself to throw a fit if it had. It would have been like kissing my brother, and if the President of the International Thespian Society had any sway in anything, it was going to be this!
The most dramatic news of all, thank god, wasn’t that I was going to have to swap spit with my little brother’s best friend; through the hard work of Mrs. McKenna and the dedication of all of us students, even the ones who came before us, we had been awarded a spot in the American High School Theatre Festival, held every summer at the world-renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We were going to Scotland, baby!
Senior year was spent preparing to take “A Company of Wayward Saints” to the Fringe, and we wore that play out, performing not just that fall in school, but in festivals all over town, at special events, meeting the mayor, etc. We were just a group of teenagers trying to raise money, unprepared for the commitment that entailed, but told over and over again how special we were and how lucky we were.
I knew it, but I didn’t really know it. Other than preparing to go to college, Drama defined my senior year in high school more than it had any other time before.
Interlude: Scotland to Wake Forest
And so, I graduated from high school, did lots of summery things, and then in the middle of August our little troupe—about two dozen actors, crew, and chaperones—traveled to Edinburgh and performed in front of high schoolers from all over the U.S. (and, theoretically, some Scots, too).
The experiences from that trip resonate with me, with all of us, even today. The haggis. The Auld Hoose. “Big River.” Arthur’s Seat. Our Idaho friends.
I’ve written snippets about our time in Scotland here and here, and in a few years I’ll share a bigger project about it, so I’m saving all the juiciest details for then. But it goes without saying that it was the chance of a lifetime, and we were so fortunate to be able to go.
I got back from Scotland and went directly to college, where I had intended to major in Theater. Upon landing on the picturesque North Carolina campus, I headed straight to Scales Fine Arts building. I auditioned for one play and didn’t get a part; I did, however, meet another theatre hopeful, a brilliant, cynical girl from West Virginia who would end up as one of my sorority sisters and best friends.
But before all that happened, I realized that I was burned out on theatre.
So I took a break from acting, but still signed up for an 8:00 am Theater History class. I wrote a play for my final project, got a B. I worked as a student intern in the theater office sophomore year, and then returned to acting classes my senior year, and was in an improv troupe during graduate school. I couldn’t stay away long.
Act Three: Acting Like An Adult
Scene One: Theatrikos
Pitch-black stage. Lights come up on a young woman sitting in a comfortable chair, downstage left. She holds a magazine on her lap and is looking offstage, waiting for someone. She’s not thinking about anything else but right now.
When I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, I gravitated to the community theater, Theatrikos. The Doris Harper White Community Playhouse is a black box theatre in an historic downtown building, situated on the corner of Cherry and Beaver, with room for about 100 audience members.
I auditioned for and was cast in The Vagina Monologues; I had the fewest lines of anyone in the show, but it was a start. Around the same time, I directed the Christmas play at the church where I worked, a bootleg “Charlie Brown Christmas.” And with my new best friend I co-wrote a play (Love, Lutheran Style) and got to see it performed by college students. It was entrancing to witness the characters I’d conceived of and words I’d written come to life through the actions and voices of others.
The theater is a sacred space; not quite like a church, but not quite not. The theatre where we performed in Edinburgh, Church Hill Theatre, had previously been an actual church. Former church or not, though, in any theater the stage is an altar, all eyes focused in its direction, hearts open, waiting to know what will happen next, waiting to find out how you will be changed and made new. In those moments, audience member or actor, you’re transfixed and transformed.
The theater is also a changeling. Just as the altar at my church in Arizona could become a stage for Charlie Brown, the stage at Theatrikos became an altar one night, when we gathered for a memorial service for a guy who had been part of the Theatrikos family. He and his girlfriend had been stage managers for The Vagina Monologues. I had hardly spoken to him during that run, but I can see his face to this day. There was no pastor, no cross, no coffin, but being together in that dark space reminded me that when a community gathers to remember, they form something new, something living and breathing, even in the midst of darkness.
In early 2005, I was cast as one of the main characters in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean at Theatrikos. (If you’ve seen the 1982 movie version, I’m Cher). The plot is complicated and kind of soapy: the members of a “Disciples of James Dean” fan club in a small Texas town reunite in 1975, 20 years after his death, and everything is laid bare:
The child who Mona claimed was Dean’s baby? Not his baby! The enormous breasts that made Sissy the talk of the town? She got cancer and now they’re fake! The mysterious woman who just happens to drop by? (Sorry, I can’t spoil that one for you). All the characters have to reconcile the lies they’ve told themselves and each other, and come to terms with their notions of identity, sexuality, aging, illness, and mortality.
I got to play “Younger Sissy”, a teenager in the 1955 timeline, when James Dean visits the town to film what would be his last movie, “Giant.” Despite the heavy themes, it’s also funny, and because my character was what would have been called “oversexed” back then, I got to deliver some of the best lines:
Sissy (to Mona): I just can’t get over somebody your age haven’ never been over to the graveyard with anyone before…some of the guys get scared an’ have trouble gettin’ goin’, but they’re mainly after my “bazooms” anyhow. They all gotta squeeze an’ feel aroun’...most of ‘em get their kicks just doin’ that. I always do it on top of Colonel Jasper P. Ramslan’ the second… soun’s dreamy, don’t he?
I played her with heart and a deep awareness of the sadness surrounding all the things she was covering up. To strengthen my performance, I studied the West Texas dialect to make my accent more believable (the director said I didn’t sound Southern enough) and I wore prosthetic breasts (I wasn’t “filled out” enough). I had to work to be more me; all those years of downplaying my accent meant that what I was left with wasn’t enough. (And just one D wasn’t enough, Sissy was a triple).
(Sidenote: I found out later that my now-husband and sister-in-law were in the audience of one of those shows, before we’d even met. I’m sorry to report that he does not have a specific memory about being wowed by the girl who played Young Sissy)!
I felt like I gave a great performance, we all did, bringing depth to our characters, pushing boundaries, and portraying, as honestly as possible, that the reality we all believed to be true might not have ever been true at all.
Our awe-inspiring director, Jason (not his real name), brought a level of professionalism to the craft that was reflected in our performances. He was about a decade older, “community theater royalty” (i.e. well-known and respected in my new hometown) and hot and straight and charming. More than that, though, he understood the complexities necessary to bring this play to life.
Jason’s commitment to the show impressed and entranced us all. We were a cast of mostly young women, and we admired and adored him. Even with the power dynamics in our relationship, we all knew that he was going to try to sleep with one of us when the curtain closed. I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be me, but was still mildly disappointed when my prediction turned out to be right.
After the show went dark, I felt that old familiar way; the magic we’d created together had vanished into the air, that the community we’d created had been unfolded, like origami turned back into a simple sheet of paper.
Jimmy Dean was my last play.
I didn’t know it then, of course. I auditioned for another play about a year later. This one had a smaller cast, and I didn’t get a part. I was disappointed but not bitter. Life changed, things changed. Time goes.
I haven’t been on stage, not really, since 2005. Nineteen years gone.
Act Three, Scene Two: My Reflection
Pretty much just Emily’s posthumous closing soliloquy from “Our Town.”
When I close my eyes I can see all of us on stage at the Five and Dime in 1955; we’ve assembled in places right before the second act. “Rock On” by David Essex—surrealism in music form—reverberates over the loudspeakers, and I’m staring at Cy and Laura (“Joe” and “Young Mona”), and we’re all mentally getting into character in the last few seconds in which the lights come up halfway between the “Jimmy Deans” punched out in Essex’s voice.
And then we begin.
“In the spotlight” and “center stage” get thrown around quite a bit when describing actors. We like being performative and we like to be on display.
But theatre people also spend a lot of time in the dark. Sometimes we’re waxing gibbous and sometimes we’re waning crescent, but the dark and the light are always there. It feels a little bit dangerous, like the very makeup of your deepest self is being transformed.
It’s a cliche, but one thing I love about theatre is that it's always pushing the boundaries of social issues, questioning reality, all for the purpose of meeting our basic biological need for connection. It’s all about relationships, endlessly telling stories about alternate timelines and universes, illuminating our own humanity. We know it’s not real, but the suspension of disbelief helps us try to make sense of what happened in the past and lead us to what’s possible in the future.
There are ghosts in the theater. This is a fact, plain and simple. There’s a reason why my favorite Shakespearean work, “Macbeth”, gets named as “The Scottish Play”: the ghosts on stage hold great power over four hundred years of productions.
There are lists upon lists of “The Most Haunted Theatres” across the world, and maybe some of it has to do with the architecture, but people are just clamoring to call a place haunted, whether it is or not. I’m not a ghost hunter or a psychic, nor do I watch any of those shows, but haunted places are more interesting anyway, and the ghosts won’t bother you unless you bother them, right?
The Doris Harper White Theatre in Flagstaff, for its part, is over a hundred years old. When I was in Jimmy Dean, there was a family portrait hanging in the basement, four actors in black and white, a prop from a previous show. The eyes of the dashing young man would follow you as you walked through the maze of costumes on your way to the green room. That basement flooded a few years ago, and everything was lost. Coincidence?!
But the ghosts I’m referring to, the real ones, are the ghosts of us, a spiritual imprint from every play performed in a particular space. What that means is not only a connection between the stage in a theater across space and time, but also to the people who were there at that moment.
They’re still there, they’re always there, playing out the same lines, following the same stage directions. It’s why I can so clearly feel that moment from my last play, waiting for the lights. It’s not just a memory, it’s a whole other plane of existence, a shadow world, composed of bodies still moving and breathing.
The theater will always be a place that is half-perilous, half-familiar and comforting. There’s the unexpected and the unpredictability and the “what are we going to create today?”-ness that makes it perilous (and the ghosts, of course). To cross that threshold, to go to an audition, to be vulnerable around other people, these can all be paralyzing. Making that leap from audience to actor is not something everyone feels comfortable doing. For me, it’s tough to enjoy simply watching a play from the audience; despite my demeanor, I’m a savage critic.
The benefits of a theatre education at any age will be reaped for the rest of your life. Drama forms kids who move on to all sorts of roles. Looking back at my own theatre circle, there are those who can call themselves professional actors, a professional comedian, a professional Broadway stage manager, and countless others who continue to do community theater: improv, acting, and directing.
And the rest of us, all of us, really, who live with it inside us, always.
The theater has, for me, been the home I could come back to, no matter how long away. I know it will always be there, as it has been many times before. And, perhaps, when I’m ready, I will find myself, again, in one of those blank, black spaces, surrounded by others just like me, filling the room with stories and lives and the deepest parts of myself that have been resting, quietly, waiting for their moment to awaken.
CURTAIN
Reflection questions:
Think of a time when you did something that seemed “out of character” for you. What did that moment feel like? How do you feel about it now?
Is there an old ghost calling you? Do you listen or not?
Columbia is in present day Richland County, South Carolina, on the land of the Tsalaguwetiyi (Cherokee, East) and Congaree nations. Northern Arizona and the Flagstaff area are home to many Indigenous tribes: the Havasupai, San Juan Southern Paiute, Hopi, Diné (Navajo), Hualapai, and Kaibab-Paiute peoples have all lived here for centuries. Many others are deeply connected to this area. Here is a map of federally recognized tribes across the state.
Image: Me as Young Sissy, onstage at Theatrikos, featured in FlagLive!, February 2005.