Shouting at a Rabbit

In Livermore, California, every night around ten o'clock, a man carefully closes his living room door, then moves a hard-backed wooden chair near the living room closet. Placing some electrical equipment on the chair, he opens the closet door, and, connecting a device which rests therein to the equipment on the chair, he enters the closet and closes it behind him.

In the closet are a large variety of overcoats. These date from various periods throughout the 20th Century, the earliest being something French from after World War I. There's a white polyester suit he purchased so that a costumer wouldn't freak out when she bought the wrong item in preparation for a one-man show he did in 2009. That one-man show earned him a BATCC nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. The award went to a giddy twink from a show at the Nude Conservatory. He thinks about this as he adjusts his chair in the closet. There's the suit he bought so that he would not have to wear it, and here he is in a closet in Livermore. Somewhere in SF there's that handsome young twink, definitely not in a closet -- literal or figurative -- and far more likely to win a BATCC Best Actor in a Musical award; his looks, his youth, his nude cock onstage ... all of these things are things that our aging, slightly pudgy protagonist did not have in his favor in that one-man show in 2009. Besides, how do you justify full-frontal male nudity in a one-man Bluegrass musical about Jesus? More accurately, how do you justify that outside of the Nude Conservatory Theatre?

The white polyester suit is in plastic; who knows, he may need it dust-free at a moment's notice. Though why it's so close to the door he cannot guess. He thought he'd put it deeper into the closet, to hide his shame at owning something so very very bright bright white. It's as though the cast of Uptown Saturday Night were in a Crest commercial. He has to be careful not to touch the plastic over the suit while he's using the device in the closet. Worse still, next to the suit is a wrinkled tan shirt which he often accidentally nudges after snaps to reset. He has to be careful of that, as well. Thankfully, he recently took a cozy brown fake-fur blanket off the couch and hung it up over the clothing rod; it seems to be doing the trick, and it helps keep garments where he shoved them when moving the chairs and the little side table into the closet.

The device is on. He can tell because of the waves on the equipment in the room behind him; he can also tell because of the little red light glowing near the top of the white ball that makes up the bulk of this coveted device. Without it, he would not be able to do what he's doing tonight. He would not be able to get done what he feels he's too late getting to. He worries, now, every time he's doing something not related to his goal. It hasn't affected his sleep, yet, but that's because every other night he takes a melatonin with a Valerian root and has the deepest, oddest dreams ever.

Last night, he dreamed he found a secret and free room at a hidden Whole Foods headquarters: the room was protected by security but you could get in if you knew it was there and you knew the password and something about gardening. It was a very pleasant room, full of seeds. Full of root stock. Full of all kinds of books on gardening, and baskets of obscure, useful items craved by the home herbalist, the amateur alchemist, the clandestine potato farmer and the lonely pumpkin enthusiast. At a large communal table in the main area, lots of nice people were studying gardening and reading books and talking about it; the place felt like a pocket of delightful secret normalcy in a world where too many people seem to not care where their cigarette butts end up and why. The seeds, the books, the time in the room, the root stock, the advice or training one could have -- all of it was free. If you knew about the room, if you brought knowledge to share and the passion to help others grow wondrous gardens, that was price enough. There were carrot root stocks -- you'd buy this slice of withered orange thing and put it in the ground or a planting pot, and carrots would grow from it like an aspen grove. He felt like he'd come home. He felt like the luckiest man alive. He never wanted to leave again, and he couldn't wait to get started.

In the living room closet with the door closed on the cord that leads to the equipment on the wooden chair, he sighs. Burps. Sips some water from a refilled water bottle he refilled in spite of dire warnings from some famous singer not to refill water bottles. It's convenient to have a water bottle in the closet, and an open glass might spill. There are other solutions, but he's nervous about time and focused on the task at hand. He sighs again. The task at hand. Christ, what a fucking task it is. He shifts to the right on the chair, takes a pillow from the floor to his right and places it under his right elbow. He leans forward slightly, to the right. This is how he's been doing it every night since he finally got the configuration right, once he hung the blanket up and got the device. It's left him with an odd crick in his back, on the right, between the shoulder blade and his spine. He'll see the Chiropractor, as soon as he has time.

He farts. It's satisfying. He laughs because of the device.

A sound now, on the other side of the wall from the closet -- in the neighbors' side. The owner's side. There's a cubbyhole in the closet that goes under their stairs. It's full of Christmas decor and more coats and several prints. They only have one thing hanging on the wall (it's a limited original Edward Gorey print, she got it for him for Christmas several years ago, and he loves it), everything else has ended up in the closet because the living room keeps being used as a location for film shoots. He should charge for this, but he's usually in the films and that will eventually lead to money, right? Maybe. These days, it feels an awful lot like maybe not.

The sound comes again and he realizes someone is there, in the foyer of this grand old house; someone is there not ten feet away from him but on the other side of walls and stairs. He hears a creak, a slight jingle of keys or maybe little bells, then a thump. A click. The lock of the front door has been engaged after the door has slowly closed? Perhaps. Perhaps not. He turns off the light, because noise is louder in the dark. He stands slightly, to see through the little windows in the closet if there's anyone on the front porch. It's empty. But the foyer is not. Someone is slowly, step by step, moving up the stairs.

"I think someone's there," he says aloud. Louder than he intended. The footsteps stop on the stairs, to his right, not even on the landing over his head yet. He waits, breathing lightly.

The footsteps continue. Whoever it is, they are being very quiet. Clearly sneaking in after ... Eleven? Ten-thirty? He's left his phone and watch and everything else electronic outside the closet. Just in case. It's taken him weeks to get it this good, and having anything screw it up now would be devastating to his project. He glances at his left hand as he listens to the footsteps going across the landing over his head, then heading up the stairs directly above him and quietly into the upstairs hall; on his hand is written the following curious phrase: "Boobs -- Make Good Point, pronto -- nipples probably not." It's a mysterious phrase indeed, full of meaning, full of flavor and depth. He muses for a moment on boobies. Titties. Funbags. Nipples. Perkies. Puffies. Yum-yums.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, he realizes the house is silent again. He does not know how long he's sat there like that, but he knows that someone somewhere is writing this down as he does it and it feels surreal, as though he is seeing his life on a page and a stage as he lives it, at the same time all of this he currently experiences is exactly what he saw in his mind's eye during a prolonged moment of déjà vu at a crosswalk near the Lawrence Hall of Science as they went back to their car when they found out that admission was cash only. Who does that, in this day and age? Cash only? What the fuck? If you're in a booth at the farmer's market, okay -- but the Lawrence Hall of Science? He suspects that the same people who vote for nude twinks over seasoned actors are in charge of the admission at the Lawrence Hall of Science. He briefly considers returning and gaining entry by showing them his cock. He doubts he would gain entry, or at least gain the kind of entry he'd like -- or even get into the building. Twinks get away with everything.

Leaning forward, he takes a deep breath, clears his throat and takes another deep breath. He burps again, shifts in his seat, takes a slower deep breath, and begins.

It takes about 40 minutes.

The dog doesn't snore tonight -- or at least, he doesn't hear it snore.

But the rabbit. The fucking rabbit! Revenge, perhaps, for having his little rabbit balls cut off, the rabbit begins loudly chewing on wood and cardboard in his hutch about twenty-five minutes into tonight's portion of the project. He -- our protagonist of the slowly silvering temples, who gets teary eyed at stormy sunsets and who plans to walk 2,500 miles alone in 2013/2014 -- not the rabbit -- opens the closet door and says, firmly,

"Chauncey, shut up."

All noise ceases. The dog, on the couch, looks uncertain; riveted by his Alpha's tone, it's clear he thinks he's being reprimanded. As long as he isn't snoring, that's fine with Alpha. He -- Alpha, not the dog -- closes the door and continues tonight's work. Three minutes later, the rabbit starts drinking his water, the loud steel ball-bearing in the water tube clank-clank-clank-clank-clank-clank-clank-clanking with the same rhythm he -- our alphatagonist, not the rabbit -- imagines the rabbit would use were his balls intact and were he in the presence of an adventurous girly rabbit. He, you know which one, opens the closet door and raises his voice,

"Chauncey, stop it."

Silence. The dog is frozen, about to get off the couch. Shutting the door, our self-indulgent closeteer begins again and is several minutes closer to completion when the rabbit begins loudly gnawing a particularly sonorous portion of his hutch which seems to amplify the sound as though the rabbit were devouring timpani. He opens the door again and this time shouts,

"Chauncey: shut the fuck up!"

Silence. Broken minutes later by more odd rabbit noises.

"Chauncey! Fuck off, man!"

Silence, then tap dancing.

"Chauncey, what the fuck are you doing?!"

Silence. Silence. Rabbit brass band marches through playing The Liberty Bell.

"Fucking asshole rabbit!" he shouts from within the closet. He can't lunge out of there, he might knock the device over or pull down the thick blanket. He carefully extricates himself from the chair of big pillows, gingerly angles around to the door without slipping on the absorbent floor blanket or the cord from the device, jarnks the door open and stomps -- stepping over multiple cords -- past the wooden chair and the coffee table and the fireplace to the little gate which separates canine from leporine and leans on it, looking the frozen and intent rabbit directly in his big, dark left eye.

"Chauncey. What the fuck are you doing, man? What the fuck are you doing? Shut the fuck up. I'm serious. Just shut the fuck up! I have work to do, and you're fucking me up you little shit!"

So saying, he opens the little gate, steps through and puts a dried branch of Christmas tree (Noble? Douglas? he can never remember) in the door of the hutch.

"Here, you want something to chew? Chew on this you little fuck!"

Stepping out, closing the gate, he returns to the closet and this night's work.

Remarkably, the rabbit is silent for the last 20 minutes or so. The dog still looks a little scandalized, but some dog loves will erase that soon enough.

Sometime around 12:24 am, he finishes. He sighs. He get room tone. The rabbit is still silent.

Tonight in Livermore, California, a man shouted at his rabbit from the closet. Every night for the next several weeks, should you happen by after midnight, you will hear this man. Rabbits don't give a fuck what you say to them. They're going to chew what they want, when and how they please. They're going to spill their bowls of food ten minutes after you refill them and eat the legs of the hutch instead. They're going to stay silent all day, but the moment you're banished from the bedroom for rancid garlic farts and have just fallen asleep on the couch that was old in 1997, all rabbits on earth know you need silence and those cute little fuckmooks are going to chew, and drink, and prance their God-damned Rabbit Prances!

There's a man in Livermore racing against the clock. He's losing his patience, his sleep, and not enough weight as he would like. And what's he doing about it?

Shouting at a rabbit.

Middlestage Stage Competition Stagefest

I was invited to participate as an adjudicator in a theatre competition for the Middle Stage Fest in Sacramento on Saturday, February 11, 2012. I went to bed earlyish because I had to be up at 5 so I would be early to the Fest. Leaving the house by about 6:10, the roads were generally clear and the drive was uneventful. I did not stop for coffee on the way, preferring to arrive in a timely manner. I arrived at 7:30-ish, and a be-vested man in a backwards fedora told me that Ms. Elder was in her classroom. I was more interested in finding a toilet, so I elected to meet Ms. Elder, if ever at all, later in the morning.

My companion for the day, and the fellow who talked me into this, was Chris Guptill (Managing Director of SCT). I taught a very basic stage combat class for his lady's Pleasant Hill Middle School classes last year, and my Pied Piper effect has her convinced I should share my mesmerizing theatrical patter more widely. I accepted because he offered me gas money. See how easy I am? Such a gas whore. I should dictate foreign policy.

After the extremely disorganized check-in (I was one of several whose name had been submitted but for whom there was no information), there was a rambling, disorganized orientation for adjudicators. After that, Guptill bought me a coffee and we wandered the campus, searching for the room to which we were consigned for the bulk of the day. It was during our perambulations that I was accosted by a group of squealing tweens who had been the extremely lucky recipients of my brief but blindingly-bright tenure directing with Solano Youth Theatre. Brief because while serving as lead director of Thoroughly Modern Millie and The Wizard of Oz, I worked mostly with the Adult Cast, only fully directing a Youth Cast during Annie in Autumn 2010/Winter 2011. As usual, my habit of treating them like they will understand the basic concepts of acting led to my cult figure status among these young theatre geeks, so any time they see me somewhere, they screech my name like friendly harpies and swoop out of nowhere demanding hugs. Eew.

Allow me to digress for a moment on how to teach acting to kids. It's really simple, and can be boiled down to four easy steps:

1. Speak to them as though they are adults (family-friendly, always, but with direct respect and the expectation of excellence); to be clear: DO NOT BABYTALK OR MOLLYCODDLE THEM. Filtering theatre through babytalk makes it difficult to direct. Honestly, the habit of babytalking young actors is detrimental in the long run because it leads to an inability to communicate in a direct and open fashion with adult actors. I've worked with directors who had done so much youth theatre that they could not countenance my proactive, professional responses to their direction. Communication and performance become stymied as a result, and one finds oneself scratching at imaginary diaper rash.
2. Clearly communicate your expectations and establish and maintain the consequences of failure to meet said expectations; to be clear, consequences should come in five steps: 1. Verbal Warning; 2. Removal from Activity; 3. Note Home; 4. Meeting With Parents; 5. Expulsion (absolutely no refunds, ever, no matter what). Having the kids act these all out on the first day is fun, informative, and makes certain they all know the rules. Stick to these rules. Never make an exception, even if you've only got three minutes left and you're almost done staging the scene.
3. Laughter is the absolute best teaching tool there is. If you're not funny, sorry: you're fucked. They will always like me better.
   
4. See Steps 1 through 3.

There it is: my secret in four easy steps. Of course, if you've got a funereal visage and you treat people like shit, these steps may not work well for you. Unfortunately, one of the long-term effects of my teaching is my having to constantly discourage hugs from excessively energetic future members of the 99%. I make a point of warning them about how difficult it is to make a living in theatre, how they must learn Excel and have other skills outside of theatre, and their eyes always glaze over. But I see relief and clarity wash over the faces of the parents and the first spark of adoration in their eyes as well. Which is a plus when they're MILFy.

The last thing I left this gaggle of brace-faced theatre enthusiasts was, "Do the dishes tonight, and always remember: your parents gave up their dreams for you." I think it hit home.

Guptill and I had to ask the assistance of a somewhat pear-shaped young man in old-fashioned (non-digitized) camouflage; he showed us where L-1 is and we entered to find some tweens and a couple of Moms sitting a little awkwardly, waiting. There were apparently two different versions of the schedule. Nobody told them they were supposed to be somewhere else first.

Three other adjudicators showed up presently, all of whom were in High School. Seriously. The majority of the adjudicators for this thing were in High School. And, as most High Schools teach Drama (not Theatre), and since most Drama Teachers are actually English or Spanish Teachers by training, almost nothing they say can be relied upon. Happily, the three HS adjudicators were generally well-trained, but the two boys had to actively fight the urge to give line readings or act it out for the younger actors. For those of you who don't know, line readings and acting it out for the actor are both temptations to which the unprofessional mediocritist gives in.

Guptill and I far outranked the other three, and as I am the only person on that campus that day or perhaps this decade who has directed an independent feature with international distribution, we automatically had more quiet oomph. So I allowed the three younger judges to give their notes first. The fellow to my immediate right, Jose, is very correct. He follows rules. He wants you to follow rules as well. I'll bet that he goes and tells if anyone breaks rules. I broke several rules that day, and broke wind at least thrice. Mmm, savory. Psyllium in my yogurt is really paying off.

The note Jose gives the most often, which is echoed by the other two young'uns, is that the tween actors need to make eye contact. But since this is for the Monologue portion of the Fest, I disagree. Here's why: it's weird when, in an audition, someone is looking directly into my eyes while showing me their work. It's a very uncomfortable feeling, very naked-in-a-bad-way. I always ask actors to move their eyes about four feet above my head. Pretty much anywhere as long as it's not me.

Finally, I have to mention to the actors -- because I've arranged it so that I am the last to give notes, even though I am second-from-the-left and right in the middle of the room -- that most directors and casting directors I know do not want you to look into their eyes; that eye contact is more for your fellow actors on stage, for the imaginary partner in your monologue, for the audience if appropriate; and that some casting directors want it because they need to see what you're like looking right into the camera.

Now that I've said this, it becomes part of the mantra for the day; it's sage advice and Guptill repeats it a couple of times himself. In the morning, we do two practice sessions with two separate groups of young actors: they give their monologues, we give our notes, then they move to a different room for more of the same from other adjudicators and we await a fresh batch. In the afternoon, two different groups of actors perform for us, but we give no notes -- instead we gauge their work on a form and submit it to the Teachers' Lunchroom for tallying. At the end of the day, students will be awarded Bronze, Silver or Gold medals. Everyone gets a medal. Even Eye Contact Jenny.

Jenny must have had some traumatic experience wherein a director screamed at her about eye contact; that, or she switched her eyedrops for crazy glue. She makes eye contact like her life depends on it. This is right before lunch, and I've just finished explaining to this class the thing about where to put their eyes because the last girl's gaze was bouncing around like an abbot in an abattoir. Jenny gets up and introduces her piece with the earnest sincerity of a theatrical true believer.

"Hello. [eye contact with every judge] My name is Jenny Diver and I will be performing a monologue entitled, For My Father, from the Monologue Teenbook Book of Teen Monologues for Girls. Thank you."

Then she turns and looks right at me. Bores her eyes through mine and into my brain and out the back of my skull. And this is her monologue:

"Happy birthday to me, Daddy. I'm fifteen today. I've wanted to tell you how much I love you for the longest time. I've wanted to tell you how much I loved the bracelet you got me when I was twelve, the ring you got me when I was thirteen, even the necklace I'm wearing today which I got just a year ago. A pearl necklace. From you, Daddy."

Already, I'm frozen in the wasteland of Cringe. She's so sincere, and she's not a bad actor. Maybe it will be over soon. I say nothing.

"What will you give me today, Daddy? I know you're different from other fathers. I know your gifts to me are special. I wear them because I know you love me. And because I know that there's two gifts you could give me that would change my life forever.
[Dramatic pause indicating new thought]
I also wear them to remind me that, someday, I have to get away. I wear the bracelet to cover the scars, Daddy, from when I first tried to get away from you. I didn't know then that suicide is against Jesus. So I wear the ring because in my heart I am married to Jesus, my true Father.
[Dramatic pause]
Jesus would never rape me, Daddy.
[Another dramatic pause as her tears fill up with eyes]
Jesus would never, Daddy. But you're not Jesus. I know that now. I counted the pearls on my necklace after you left my room on the night of my last birthday, Daddy. Thirty-six pearls; that's eighteen times two. Sometimes I feel like I'm two girls inside. Three more years until I'm eighteen, and can go on my own. Will I take both of me? Two girls, leaving you forever in three years. But not today. Today I'm two girls with one of two gifts coming to her. Which one will it be, Daddy?
[Long, long pause; someone claps, but it's not over yet. She's still staring at me. I'm afraid she has a knife.]
Will you give me my freedom?
Or another ...
[screams it:] ABORTION?! [we all jump]

I can't keep the grimace of discomfort off of my face, and I can tell Guptill has been watching me. I glance at him. He's chuckling as everyone applauds. Bastard.

Later, before I leave, I overhear one of the moms talking to one of the instructors, "Well, she wasn't supposed to do an original piece in the monologue rooms; I don't know if she'll be disqualified."

The intstructor says, "As long as the adjudicators didn't figure it out, her medal stands."

I almost stop to ask. But I've got a long drive home and on a certain level I just don't want to know. I'm on 99 South when the tears hit and I'm glad it's a sunny day because fog would have taken me off the road at that last turn.

If Jenny Diver's monologue was original, I hope it helped.

I hope she keeps doing theatre.

I hope she heals.