Walking Dunes by Sandra Scofield

Author:Sandra Scofield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

18.

He often found himself staring at Patsy. She was a puzzle he wanted to unlock. She intrigued him; on stage, she mesmerized him. She might listen to the director intently, leaning slightly into the pool of light, and the act of listening was suddenly fascinating. She spoke with such clarity and resonance, you could hear her perfectly anywhere in the theatre. He asked her about her voice; he knew his own was weaker, that he strained to match her. It’s all in the breath, she told him. She showed him how you have to breathe from deep in the cavity of your body, how your diaphragm is a floor. She put her warm hands flat against his ribs. He caught on fast. She said, “Of course you would, any athlete has learned something about breathing!” The strain in his throat went away. He could hear the difference, and so could Mr. Turnbow. “You’ve relaxed, David,” he said. “You’ve started really acting.”

The acting had seemed easy at the beginning, like playing dress-up. It was only as he got better—Patsy told him so many things—that he saw how much work it was to get it right. He learned lines easily, he learned how to turn, stand, walk across stage. He learned to keep his body “open,” for the audience to see. Derek was a big Dr. Sloper, and David enjoyed the feeling of taking him on, standing up to him. He thought their scenes worked fine. Derek had a big voice and lacked subtlety, so David tried to be especially smooth in his scenes with him. With Patsy, something else was happening. There was a fine wire between them, a tension he could almost reach out to touch in the air. She could have taken every scene from him, but what mattered was that they were a team. What they made together made the play work. “Lucky me,” she told him. “I thought Mr. T. would cast Jerry McCain, Morris straight off the ranch.” He realized she considered it her play.

He took her home after rehearsal each night and stayed a little while. They talked about their scenes. She told him about parts she wanted to play some day: Nora in “A Doll’s House,” Antigone, Lady Bracknell in “Earnest,” Gittel in “Two for the Seesaw.” They talked about what it would be like to move to New York. You would be poor, you would have to find work as a waiter or a clerk or who knows what, but you would be in the heart of the heart of the world, where everything was happening, where there was everything to learn. She thought about going there and taking acting classes on Bank Street (he wondered how she knew about these things); she said, “You could, too, you’re talented,” but it was unimaginable. He said he wanted to go to college, and as he said it he wanted it more than anything. College was how you climbed up out of the hole your parents were in.

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