Like It Never Happened by Emily Adrian

Author:Emily Adrian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

Charlie took to delivering his lines in this really crazy voice. Sort of like he was drunk, or had a sock in his mouth. The first time he half slurred, half honked his words, the cast looked at each other in shock and waited for Mr. McFadden to protest. He didn’t. We had to finish the scene wondering if Charlie had experienced some kind of stroke. At the end of rehearsal, our director said, “Nice job, Brando,” and I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.

When I got home I did some research. Apparently the original stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire—and later, the movie—featured a ridiculously good-looking actor named Marlon Brando as Stanley. I watched the movie and quickly deduced that Charlie’s new voice was an eerily accurate imitation of Brando’s. And by the end, I could understand why Charlie would steal another actor’s interpretation. It was suddenly hard to picture Stanley any other way.

Every day Charlie grew more dedicated to his role. He started wearing plain undershirts beneath his signature sweaters and stripping down for rehearsal. The flimsy white sleeves revealed his increasingly muscular upper arms. He perfected a way of leaning against the set and staring at his female costars with animal hunger. It was kind of funny to watch from a distance, like when he was acting with Liane, and I was offstage. Charlie was a lot of things, but he had never been overwhelmingly masculine. His shoes were always very clean and teachers praised him for things like “shrewd insight” into Robert Frost poems. Even at camp, where he went barefoot and tan, he had been more boyish than manly.

But as Stanley he was rough and rude—shouting, stumbling, grabbing Liane by her wrist and yanking her across the stage. It was all very mesmerizing or embarrassing, depending on my mood.

As for my part, Mr. McFadden explained to me that Blanche was kind of a poser. She wanted everyone to believe certain things about her—like that she was innocent, so prim and proper that everything about Stanley’s life scandalized her. But in reality she had slept with every man in her hometown, including one of her high school students, and always within the walls of a seedy motel. The first page of the script called Blanche a moth, which I knew was meant to describe her skin: all white and translucent. But when I played Blanche, I pictured the brown speckled moths infesting our front porch. Every time I slid my key into the lock, they rushed toward the light and beat their wings against hot glass.

Liane, for the record, made a perfect Stella. She was even better than the actress in the movie. Liane made it clear that Stella was not actually oblivious to the tension between her sister and her husband. Her silence was partly owing to the fact that she was pregnant and she wanted a good life for her baby. And the other thing you understood after watching Liane was that Stella’s love for Stanley was not necessarily pure, or selfless.

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