No Great Magic | Page 7

like that of a bewildered and characterless
child ghost about to scatter into air--and the edges of my charcoal
sweater and skirt, contrasting with his strong colors, didn't dispel that
last illusion.
"Oh, by the way, Greta," he said, "I picked up a copy of The Village
Times for you. There's a thumbnail review of our Measure for Measure,
though it mentions no names, darn it. It's around here somewhere...."
But I was already hurrying on. Oh, it was logical enough to have
Martin playing Mrs. Macbeth in a production styled to Shakespeare's
own times (though pedantically over-authentic, I'd have thought) and it
really did answer all my questions, even why Miss Nefer could sink
herself wholly in Elizabeth tonight if she wanted to. But it meant that I
must be missing so much of what was going on right around me, in
spite of spending 24 hours a day in the dressing room, or at most in the
small adjoining john or in the wings of the stage just outside the
dressing room door, that it scared me. Siddy telling everybody,
"Macbeth tonight in Elizabethan costume, boys and girls," sure, that I
could have missed--though you'd have thought he'd have asked my help
on the costumes.

But Martin getting up in Mrs. Mack. Why, someone must have held the
part on him twenty-eight times, cueing him, while he got the lines. And
there must have been at least a couple of run-through rehearsals to
make sure he had all the business and stage movements down pat, and
Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage
minute they could spare with Sid yelling, "Witling! Think'st that's a
wifely buss?" and Martin would have been droning his lines last time
he scrubbed and mopped....
Greta, they're hiding things from you, I told myself.
Maybe there was a 25th hour nobody had told me about yet when they
did all the things they didn't tell me about.
Maybe they were things they didn't dare tell me because of my
top-storey weakness.
I felt a cold draft and shivered and I realized I was at the door to the
stage.
I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it can
face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all capable of
being switched around completely. To your left, as you look out the
dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an open-air place
for the audience--a large upward-sloping glade walled by thick tall
trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On that side the
stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to look part of it
by a green groundcloth.
To your right is a big roofed auditorium with the same number of seats.
The whole thing grew out of the free summer Shakespeare
performances in Central Park that they started back in the 1950's.
The Janus-stage idea is that in nice weather you can have the audience
outdoors, but if it rains or there's a cold snap, or if you want to play all
winter without a single break, as we've been doing, then you can put
your audience in the auditorium. In that case, a big accordion-pleated

wall shuts off the out of doors and keeps the wind from blowing your
backdrop, which is on that side, of course, when the auditorium's in
use.
Tonight the stage was set up to face the outdoors, although that draft
felt mighty chilly.
I hesitated, as I always do at the door to the stage--though it wasn't the
actual stage lying just ahead of me, but only backstage, the wings. You
see, I always have to fight the feeling that if I go out the dressing room
door, go out just eight steps, the world will change while I'm out there
and I'll never be able to get back. It won't be New York City any more,
but Chicago or Mars or Algiers or Atlanta, Georgia, or Atlantis or Hell
and I'll never be able to get back to that lovely warm womb with all the
jolly boys and girls and all the costumes smelling like autumn leaves.
Or, especially when there's a cold breeze blowing, I'm afraid that I'll
change, that I'll grow wrinkled and old in eight footsteps, or shrink
down to the witless blob of a baby, or forget altogether who I am--
--or, it occurred to me for the first time now, remember who I am.
Which might be even worse.
Maybe that's what I'm afraid of.
I took a step back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a
high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those
of a table. The piano was just a box with yellowed