In college, I was in a production of Lanford Wilson’s The Rimers of Eldritch (excerpt here). It is a grim bleak play about a bunch of hopeless people.
I was in it with Mitchell, Brooke, Nancy, other dear friends. I’m still very proud of that show, and what we were able to create. Great experience.
However.
We had a photo call after one of the productions. All of the photos I have of that show are from that night. And Brooke and I, who played best friends (teenage girls), were possessed by a DEMON of laughter, of the laughing-in-church kind and we could not stop. We would get it together for one particular shot, and the second the camera clicked, we would EXPLODE in laughter again. We got in trouble, for God’s sake! We got yelled at! “Girls, we have a lot to get through – can you keep it together?”
We could NOT. It ended up not even being funny. It was more like agony. We would determinedly not look at each other, but we could FEEL one another peripherally … I could see Brooke’s shoulders shaking, and I would LOSE it which would set her off. The bad thing about all of this (or, one of the bad things) is that it was one of those shows where everyone was onstage at the same time. So even if the focus wasn’t on us, we were in the background, so not only were we ruining our own shots, we were ruining other people’s (which was much much worse). We laughed, I am not kidding, for four hours straight. We cried rivers of tears. We had to have our makeup redone. We were unbelievably unprofessional.
The joke began in this way: The play, as I mentioned, is grim and dark. Nobody in the play is happy. It is a terrible story. So there’s that. It’s not like we could somehow turn our laughter into something that would work for the photos. We were totally TRAPPED. We played Patsy and Lena, two bored high school girls in the 1950s in a little dust-bowl Bible Belt town. Brooke played Patsy, a restless “fast” girl, a bit of a slut in those days, she put out … and she had big dreams for herself. She was gonna get OUT of that town. (Keep dreamin’, sister.) I played her kind of dumpy sidekick, Lena, who was a much more conventional person. She had a boyfriend, and that was important to her … she wants to get married and have kids, settle down in the town … but she also has deep THOUGHTS about things and wants to SHARE it with her boyfriend, who, frankly, couldn’t care less, and basically tries to date-rape her every time they go out. Lena, of course, is a virgin (unlike Patsy), and wants to be one on her wedding night (typecasting. Well. At the time). Her dreams for herself are so different from the reality. There are awful wrestling-match scenes between the two of them, where she would be trying to talk about the universe or God and he’s putting his hand down her blouse. But this is the guy for her. Lena is not the type to flirt around, or find someone more suitable. She’ll marry him. And in a year or two she will be as grim and judgmental as all the other women in the town.
Meanwhile, Patsy is falling in love (“love”) with an aimless trucker who comes through town, who seems glamorous, like he could take her somewhere, take her out of the town … but she’s going to sleep with him, get pregnant, and in the process trap him and herself.
Okay, so there’s the setup. BLEAK.
Brooke and I had been friends for a year or so when we did Rimers, but Rimers solidified our bond. To this day, if we find ourselves at a bar picking out songs on the jukebox, Brooke will glance at me and say, “We are totally Patsy and Lena right now.”
So the joke during photo call, which began innocently but then ballooned into a laughing fit that annoyed pretty much EVERYONE was that during the scenes when we weren’t in focus, but were in the background, we started joking that the two of us would be boozing it up like two blowsy whores – so the characters in focus would be doing their thing, but in the background would be a blurry image of the two of us, teenage bobbysoxers, clinking glasses, or rubbing our breasts lasciviously at the camera or bending over to take it up the ass as we winked grotesquely at the camera – all SO not in the world of Rimers … and finally, we couldn’t stop. We found it so hilarious that we were totally overtaken. We would stand in the background of scenes, arms clenched across our stomachs, trying to hold it in while the photos of the other actors were taken. Tears streamed down our faces. We were reprimanded repeatedly. We begged for mercy. “I’m so sorry – we can’t stop!!”
So now. I have those Rimers photos. I am amazed at how much we were able to keep it together. Each photo represents about 4 or 5 tries from the photographer to get us in between wild guffaws. But she ended up getting the shots she needed.
At the end of the night, the costume designer wanted stills of each character in their costumes, so there was one photo taken of me, in my dress, and then Brooke and I had to stand together and get our picture taken. These last photos were not about acting, it was only about the dresses we were wearing, so we were able to let it out a little bit. We weren’t playing a scene. In the first one, I am obviously blurry, I am moving on by, completely undone by the hilarity I am trapped in. In the second one, you can see that we are both a bit blurry, and I look, frankly, insane. A demon has overtaken me and it has worn me OUT.
I love these pictures. The birth of a lifelong friendship.
I actually came across your blog via Stumbleupon, but felt the need to comment on this one…this reminds me of when I was 18 and got cast in “The Laramie Project”. I was the baby of the cast and there were only 8 of us, and I was so pleased that the other actors who had been working with the company accepted me as a peer almost instantly.
If you’re familiar with “The Laramie Project”, you will know that in its intended form, their are only 8 actors in the show, each playing a plethora of characters. This is the way we did it. Over the course of rehearsals, everyone got really tight and a great deal of amazing friendships began.
On press night, for some reason everyone had the giggles. Another girl in the show and I were doing a scene together and started laughing and couldn’t stop. The camera was going off and we were trying to keep it together — all to no avail.
In this show, all of the actors are onstage the entire show as well and this girl and I couldn’t stop silently laughing to ourselves. The worst part (and the part that wound up getting us yelled at) was when we were overcome with silent giggles during a very poignant moment in the show.
The Doctor was, in front of the press (the remainder of the company with tape recorders / notepads) giving the announcement that Matthew Shepherd passed away. As he came to this part, he and I made eye contact and he burst into laughter in the middle of the phrase, “Matthew Shepherd died.”
It was horrid. Additionally, we wound up skipping around twenty pages in Act II that night…the night before we opened.
I’m still amazed the actual show turned out so well.
Sara – Oh God!!! Nothing worse than laughing onstage – not to mention bursting into laughter at a really serious moment. You just feel so trapped!!
Thanks for sharing – very funny!
It’s nice to know that this happens to people everywhere. This reminds me of the story about filming the lineup scene that opens “The Usual Suspects.” The actors could NOT keep it together, even though the scene was meant to be sober and serious. (IIRC) Benicio del Toro just decided to go with it and completely tick off Bryan Singer, and before you know it ALL of them are intentionally wrecking every take. That’s the stuff they wound up using on the finished film, complete with a furious Bryan Singer yelling at them to say the line seriously.
My only real brush with acting was doing dramatic pairs for debate team in HS. (You just KNEW I was that kid, right? Sigh.) Opening scene of “The Prisoner of Second Avenue.” My long-suffering wife asks me what’s wrong. I am supposed to reply, “I don’t know… it’s the apartment, it’s the city… it’s everything.”
Sure, I remember it NOW. But then I got as far as “I don’t know…” and realized – “SHIT! I really DON’T KNOW.” The whole thing ground to a halt. I didn’t know enough to ad-lib at 16, with no prior acting experience at all; my partner didn’t know enough to simply move to the next line or cover somehow.
Ah well. All my fault. What I wouldn’t have given for a giggling fit at that point. Heck it may even have been considered an acting choice by a charitable panel of judges, instead of a complete disaster, which is what it was.
It’s been 20 years and I am still very sorry.
Every word true. My sides ached and to this day I do not believe I have ever laughed as hard for as long a time. We truly became two teenage high school girls that night. And yes, a lifelong friendship set sail.
Dear Patsy:
Blood red rain.
A cloud is slain.
love,
Lena
First of all, Sara’s comment made me laugh and scream out loud. But, Sheila, do you remember doing Lysistrata (Ly siiiiiiis trata) in school? The old womens’ chorus was so ill behaved that I laughed so hard I literally wet my pants on stage. I peed in my pants, onstage, in front of an audience.
While looking directly at me.
Member when Marilyn blacked out her tooth???
God, any way to survive that piece of SHITE!!
I had one of these moments once… I was in a melodrama in high school. I played the cousin who comes to the heroine’s rescue – freeing her from an insane asylum. Somehow my character (and the hero, if memory serves) get the doctor in charge of the asylum wrapped in his own straightjacket, at which point he asked (rhetorically) if we had gone mad.
All well and good, right? Well, closing night (and I stress, completely by accident), I answered Yes to the rhetorical question. I didn’t realize that I had spoken until the audience, crew, adn other actors started giggling…
F-ing hilarious, Sheila. I completely know what you’re talking about here. Also your incredible description/fantasy of being a couple of blurry, blowsy whores in the background makes me think of the visual artist John Currin’s work. If you haven’t seen his paintings, you must. In particular–i.e. with regard to your lascivious tweens–check out “Bra Shop” and “The Girl in a Veil.” He does work that’s part Rembrandt/Old Masters, part Norman Rockwell, and part porn. The combined effect is hilarious, eerie, and really unsettling. Like a lot of the greats, he has his detractors. I’m not one of them. You might also check out his “Bea Arthur Naked”–if not for any other reason than for the timeliness of the topic. (R.I.P. Bea Arthur.)