The Theatre and Me
One of the questions my adult daughter has asked is why I was drawn to theatre. This really makes me think and wonder, looking back over the years--so many remembrances.
Was it the smell of the grease paint? Or the magical transformation of a bare stage into an intriguing set? Was it the teamwork required in order to bring a production to birth? Or the excitement of sexual temptation? To this day, when I enter a legitimate theatre, the odor takes me back and my heart beats faster.
I began college, in 1960, having only turned 17 the winter before. I was woefully unsophisticated and unprepared for being away from my parents’ strict control. Raised on the farm, I had never lived in a town, let alone a city. Central Michigan University had 4,000 students, which seemed huge to me. I felt terrified, lost and alone.
Early on I had to register for classes. There wasn’t time to get my parents’ approval. The mail took too long and I couldn’t afford a long distance call. My decisions about everything had always required their permission. Now I was on my own.
Unfortunately,my first dorm assignment was with three upper middle class girls from affluent Detroit suburbs--Gail, Barb, and Ann. “Your hair’s not right. Your shoes aren’t right. Your clothes aren’t right.” I felt their disdain from day one. Having no money, I couldn’t change even if I wanted to. All three belonged to Alpha Sigma Tau, an elite campus sorority. One day I heard Gail state, “Of course Carol isn’t AST material”. Well, I never wanted to be part of your snooty sorority anyway, I thought, wishing now I’d had the courage to say it aloud.
At Elk Rapids High School, a small school in northern Michigan, I had been class salutatorian, earned several academic awards, and won a couple of beauty contests. When I left Elk Rapids, I felt pretty good about myself. But this college situation popped my balloon almost instantly.
Feeling deflated, lonely and out of my element, at some point I found myself sitting in the back of Warriner Auditorium watching a rehearsal of “You Can’t Go Home Again.” I was transfixed. Later, when Tom, my first college sweetheart, performed in a small play, I knew what I wanted to do.
Little by little, as I hung around on the edges, the drama students began to notice and befriend me. I felt like I had finally found a place where I belonged. Most of the kids were more sophisticated and knowledgable than I was, or so I thought. I did a lot of listening, trying to understand what motivated them to be passionate about theatre.
Before the year was over, I had changed my Major from English to Speech and Drama, much to my parents’ concern. They felt my choice wasn’t practical and they probably worried about the decadent atmosphere, real or imagined, of the theatrical world. There was some truth in their stereotype. Casual sexual liaisons, lots of drinking and partying, accompanied our hard work.
Because CMU didn’t offer a comprehensive theatre program, I was limited in terms of actual stage work. Feeling I had little talent, I was reluctant to try out for parts in yearly productions. However, I did perform in the chorus for, “Carousel” and “Finian’s Rainbow”, as well as being prop master for “Kiss Me Kate”. I also learned about costuming, makeup and direction. One of my proudest moments was when I was initiated into Alpha Psi Omega, the honorary drama fraternity just before I graduated.
We definitely had some unorthodox relationships as Thespians. For instance, there was a student named Keith, very talented actor, singer, artist, writer, and charmer, who played most of the leading roles.
Though Keith was married, most of the girls, including me, had crushes on him, which he didn’t hesitate to exploit. Somehow this attribute failed to bother us. While I wanted to be one his groupies, that never materialized.
However, when he wrote an elaborate pageant about Native American history related to the Europeans’ arrival on the East Coast, he asked me to be his assistant, writing and editing along with him. I was delighted. We developed a real friendship, which lasts to this day. Incidentally, he cleaned up his act and is happily married to his second wife.
I spent the summer of my junior year (1963) as secretary to the producer at Houghton Lake Playhouse on, what else, Houghton Lake, in north central Michigan. Gene was my professor at Central, I was in love with him and thus was deleriously happy when he asked me to help him start the theatre. Looking back, I realize I had an outstanding talent for attracting and encouraging married men with questionable morals, being flattered that they found me worth pursuing.
That summer was a revelation to me. I experienced both beauty and kindness, exploitation and cruelty, and witnessed quantities of amoral behavior, sexual and otherwise.
The theatre had a resident company and a “star” each week, as the plays changed. A play was performed in the evening while next week’s play was rehearsed during the day. This meant that all of us were exhausted most of the time. There were 8 performances a week and Monday was our only day off.
And then there was our home, the lodge, which was about 3 miles from the playhouse. It sat large and impressive on the shore of Houghton Lake, as though important people had once summered there. I could imagine women having cocktails on the wide screened-in porch and children frolicking in the lake. But now it was abandoned, a weathered gray. Seems like everything about it was gray. Who knows how long it had sat deserted, a haven for mice, bats and all manner of creeping creatures.
This was just the answer for Gene’s dilemma--where to put twenty-some apprentices, students and other staff like me, the playhouse secretary. And it was dirt cheap.
The Lodge had three stories, with bedrooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors, At one end of the main floor was a huge stone fireplace, surrounded by a motley assortment of worn living room furniture. At the other end was the kitchen--not that bad actually.
Our first task was to clean, clean, clean, removing piles of debris, animal feces, spider webs, and grunge. Then we chose our bedrooms. None was elaborate, but I chose one of the few that was private. It reminded me of a monk’s cell, only not that nice.
There was a small bathroom down the hall. The tub was so terminally filthy, none of us could bear to clean it let alone bath in it. It was definitely a summer of sponge baths. My mother-in-law used to describe these as washing down as far as possible, up as far as possible and finally washing ‘possible’.
The lodge was well below road level and driving in at night you could see what seemed like hundreds of bats flying around. It was like something out of a horror movie. “Oh, my God, there are bats everywhere!” we girls screamed.
Often when entering my bedroom I spotted one hanging somewhere in the room. I was terrified. The guys had told us girls that bats loved long hair and frequently got stuck in it. And we believed them! So I stopped each time I entered the room and checked for bats in every upper corner. Usually none were there!
One night I went to the bathroom and found one hanging on top of the door jam. I would have to go under it to relieve myself. I froze. What could I do? Finally, nature’s call was so insistent I darted under it into the bathroom. Of course, it being a harmless bat, just hung there.
In the beginning, we tried to organize our eating in order to have nourishing meals and stretch our meager funds. I made an elaborate chart, so we could share responsibilities. It seemed like a good idea at the time!
However, being busy and often irresponsible young people, this system lasted about two weeks. After that, we fended for ourselves, meaning lots of fast food, erratic eating, and moldy leftovers in the refrigerator. I can’t remember who cleaned it, most likely me, but I’m sure it didn’t happen until the odor was nauseating.
Putting 20 hormone-rich young people in the same house with no supervision meant there was lots of bed-sharing. One young man, the youngest of the group, managed to buy a bottle of cheap wine, discover an old candle and drag an ancient mattress into one of the unused 3rd floor bedrooms. He failed to seduce one girl after another, including me, until finally one came along who was impressed. Unlike many of us, those two stayed together the rest of the summer.
For some reason, maybe to save our sanity, we decided to celebrate “Christmas in the Summer” on July 25. We fashioned some crude decorations, had a roaring fire in the fireplace, and sang Christmas Carols. As the caroling ended, Edward Everett Horton, that week’s star, sat in a rocking chair, wrapped in an old shawl, and told stories of his long career. A number of us sat on the floor at his feet, drinking wine.. He was elderly by then, but he had been an actor in films for years. We knew him as the voice of “Fractured Fairy Tales”, a regular feature of the Rocky and Bullwinkle TV show. Later, as I trudged up the wide staircase to bed, with a record playing “The Party’s Over”, I wept with joy at the beauty of our “Christmas”.
Down the road was the Family Bar, where we often went for cast parties after performances. In that warm and friendly atmosphere, we ate, drank and played pool till all hours.
Back to the theatre. It was in the round, bringing the audience close to the stage and to one another. Our first production, “Seven Year Itch” starred Cliff Norton. It was hysterically funny. The first night I laughed constantly. I attended subsequent performances, laughing throughout. Finally the frustrated director took me aside and explained that since I knew the play so well, I was laughing so loudly on the punch lines that they were drowned out for the audience. So embarrassing. From then on, I toned it down.
Those were some of the good times.
And then, well, there were other times. I remember when Gene sent me to the motel room of that week’s star, Hugh Marlowe, to help him rehearse his lines. Or so I thought. Hugh soon made it clear he had other expectations, which Gene had encouraged. I cried in embarrassment, explaining I knew nothing of this arrangement. Hugh comforted me, apologized for his behavior, put his shirt back on and took me to a bar for a quiet drink. That drink (which was actually illegal) helped to assuage my humiliation as I sat and talked with a kind and repentant old movie star. Naively, I remained loyal to Gene in spite of his cruelty and continued use of power over me.
Another star was a “young old” movie star named Charlie Ruggles. I had met him a few years earlier when he crowned me Harbor Day Queen in Elk Rapids. Based on that brief connection, we built a relationship during his two weeks at Houghton Lake. It became clear early on that he would prefer a more intimate liaison, but I saw him as an elderly grandfather figure and we retained those boundaries.
Finally the summer ended. Amazingly, I came home in one piece, to my parents’ great relief.
A year later, when I was about to graduate from college, Charlie and I exchanged letters, in which I expressed my desire to move to New York, work as a secretary and hope for a career on Broadway. He wisely counseled me to stay in Michigan, become a teacher, get married and have a family. A little sexist by today’s standards?
He said I’d be eaten alive in NYC, which was undoubtedly true. I followed his advice and got a teaching job at a Jr. High in Lansing, a city which seemed glamorous to me. My assignment, though, was teaching speech and drama to 9th graders, an appalling thought in my opinion. I reasoned that I could get involved with a local theatre group and that would be my saving grace.
However, soon after moving to Lansing I fell in love with Norris Ingells, a reporter/photographer who knew the theatre world well. After we married I pledged to him, though he never would have asked, that I would avoid the theatre. Its demands on time and energy were too great. And with my history, I feared I might have an affair and ruin our marriage.
Hard as it was, it felt like an authentic and appropriate decision. I never regretted it, but I never lost my love for the stage or that rapid heartbeat when I notice the unmistakeable odor of grease paint.
