CHAPTER SIX
College and Musicals
A great atmosphere filled my college. It travelled among the motley crowds in the corridors, swirled around the pretty girls and hovered in a faint September breeze. I met many new friends, and spent my lunchtimes playing rugby or smoking cigarettes.
I studied Drama, History and English Literature. All my classmates had studied Drama at high school. So I had a lot of catching up to do, but I worked hard, reading about theatre practitioners like Stanislavski, Artaud and Brecht. During my first week of college, auditions were held for the musical version of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. As I wandered into the audition room, a lad turned to me and asked, ‘Can you sing?’
‘No, not really. Can you?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware.’
‘What are we doing here?’ I laughed.
‘My name’s Michael.’ He grinned.
‘Mine’s Daniel.’
The audition went okay, considering I didn’t exactly have the best singing voice in the world. But Michael gave a superb audition. When he wasn’t tensing his biceps or showing his chiseled abs to the nearest girl, he sang beautifully, in the haunting notes of a curlew. He was cast in the lead role, as Jean Valjean. I ended up playing a pimp.
I hit the weights to stand out like Michael. My shoulders exploded, and I could mimic Michael’s leonine gait. He believed you had to be supremely confident to be an achiever.
‘I know what’ll get you far in life,’ he once said to me. ‘Love that is bent towards self, or “incurvatus in se ipsium.” That’ll give you a sense of importance.’
‘You mean self-importance, Narcissus.’ I grinned. ‘I’ve gotta say, despite your surfer dude qualities, mate, you’re actually very clever.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment…’
I spent a lot of time strutting around with a large group of friends, trying to be James Dean with my brown leather jacket and shiny cigarette case. I also liked to be alone sometimes, so I could play the part of the brooding hero, smoking a cigarette under the September sunlight in pensive quietude.
Michael and I liked to hang out in the local park, smoking marijuana. The sweet scents of primy flowers touched our nostrils, and the vivid greens whirled around us as we floated across the turf. When we weren’t high, we were at the pub getting drunk before lessons. We’d stumble into rehearsals, trying to suppress our giggles. Our musical director Mrs Weir took the production very seriously and often chucked plectrums and drumsticks at us for upping an octave or botching a line. She didn’t like me at all, because I mistook a quaver for a savory snack. But her desire for perfection meant the musical turned out to be excellent.
People travelled a long way to see the annual shows, and the past college productions of Oklahoma and Fame had achieved legendary statuses. ‘Les Mis’, as the cast affectionately called our musical, was mentioned on radio stations and in newspapers. Extra tickets had to be printed for the last night due to popular demand. The show became a brilliant montage of sporadic lights, beating drums and white smoke rising above the barricades. When the five nights of chaos ended, I knew I’d miss the costumes and props.
The cast celebrated the show at a local restaurant. It had been a long week and none of us had slept properly, so after a couple of beverages we became dribbling wrecks. Michael and I were given the award for Production’s Biggest Pair of Tits. We had everyone singing songs from the show, which continued even as we stumbled towards town, exclaiming, ‘One day more!’
The play is over. And now it’s time
for the familiar after-show party -
debauched, full of booze, cigarettes,
and sometimes drugs. Actors will do
just about anything to get away
from themselves. The more liquid goes in,
the more liquid pours out. This starts with the girls, who wipe their eyes
with a tablecloth, murmur lost lines.
It reminds me of school. The kids,
watery-eyed, missing their mothers.
The play was our mother, I guess.
Now we’ve been dropped off her lap.
How many casts have felt like this?
Awards are handed out by the director:
‘Production’s Biggest Pair of Tits’,
much to the disappointment of the girls, goes to me and my mate.
I stumble over a chair, top up
my spilt drink and murmur what
I can remember of a Senecan line:
‘Every new beginning comes
from another beginning’s end.’
People are too pissed to notice.
I woke up two days later wondering how I’d gotten home, the memories of heavy music and murky mishaps slowly coming back to me.
I jumped at the opportunity of doing West Side Story with an amateur theatre company in Canton, near my old neighborhood. I loved that theatre and its arty atmosphere, the troubled writers editing their manuscripts in the café, and the walls plastered with anarchic art. It was there that I realized I gravitated towards the arty types, those with odd piercings who liked to play the guitar at any opportunity, sang obscure ditties and talked about politics but believed politics was just for the ‘white shirts’ and ‘stiff collars’.
I played a Jet, so most of my scenes involved heavy dance choreography. The director Robert wanted to do something different with the show. West Side Story is a sacred cow, but he took it to pastures new. A lot of effort went into making the fight scenes realistic, and emphasizing the brutality of gang warfare. The only time the Jets seemed likeable and cuddly was during their mimicry of Officer Krupke. I had to work hard during rehearsals, because I wasn’t a natural dancer. The camp choreographer constantly hounded me until I got the routines right.
‘Come on, Daniel. This isn’t difficult!’ he’d bark. ‘You don’t know what difficult is. Difficulty is tucking your package out of the way when you’re playing a drag queen in Cabaret, and nearly fucking yourself when you do the splits.’
As the show drew closer, I told Robert I was struggling with some of the dance routines. He told me to relax; he knew I’d get it together in time. I paid a lot of attention to his style, because I wanted to be a director one day.
The first performance night went okay, apart from a few botched lines and black eyes. The rest of the week went really well. The audience loved the show; they could see how much the cast were enjoying themselves. I relaxed, and danced like a professional. My mother came to watch me, but she wasn’t impressed. She said I looked like a stiff bodybuilding thug, and we argued in the car on the way home.
‘You’d have to win an Oscar to make me believe that prancing around on stage is the right career path for you!’ She laughed.
I told her to give me time.
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