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A Place to
Admit Things to Yourself
by
Marvin Payne
A journal can
be a place where you admit things to yourself. You can write "Nobody
knows it, but I'm scared." You can write "Whenever I walk into a
room, I instinctively glance around for a grown-up to be in charge
of me." You can write, "I picked up the phone this morning and nearly
sang because there were no messages from creditors."
Of course, first
you have to discover something about yourself before you can formally
admit it. This happened to me, according to my journal, on the ninth
of February.
Tim Slover's
new play Hancock County, about the trial of the murderers
of Joseph Smith, is up and running (I should say "rearing, raging,
and resounding") at BYU. I love being in this show. (That's not
what I admitted in my journal.) Playing J. Golden Kimball prepared
me well for the abuse of English that is required of me as the hard-drinking
prosecutor of the murderers. And Golden's great sense of theatre
is handy, too. Trials of this sort on the early nineteenth-century
frontier were a lot closer to circus than to what we see on Law
And Order (which itself is probably a lot closer to circus
than what you'd see in, say, an actual courtroom).
My character,
Josiah Lamborn, was a master showman. One afternoon, (this isn't
in the play, it's just in mere history) the defense attorney in
a murder case was so eloquent in his closing speech to the jury
that Lamborn reckoned he couldn't beat him for sheer emotion and
power, so he faked illness and asked if the court could reconvene
in the evening. In the interim, Lamborn asked the sheriff if the
courtroom could be lit that night by only a single candle. No law
against that, so the sheriff agreed.
When the court
gathered, counsel for the prosecution hovered close to the candle,
casting huge and ominous shadows on the walls, and simply intoned
one scriptural passage. He said, "He who sheds man's blood, by man
shall his blood be shed." He said it three times, his eyes hollowed
by the ghostly candle and his shadow dancing eerily on the wall
behind him. Then he leaned over the flame toward the jury, pointed
an accusing finger and warned, "Ignore that at your peril!" They
convicted. Pretty quick, too. The guy was way confident, as you
may hereby discern.
But what about
the actor playing the guy? Is he confident? I thought I was. But
opposite me in the play, scorning me, shouting at me, probing me,
finally burdening me with trust and then breaking me, is Stephanie
Foster Breinholt. And I'm suddenly intimidated. The reason is four
words (actually, two sets of two words each): "Irene Ryan" and "Utah
Shakes."
To most of you,
the words "Irene Ryan" will mean very little. To a very few, mainly
Nick-at-Night addicts, those words will evoke images of hog-belly
and grits and the cement pond, because those words are the name
of the actress who played Granny, miniscule matriarch of The
Beverly Hillbillies on TV. Not a particularly intimidating
image, perhaps (if you catch her without her shotgun)--and anyway,
what does Granny have to do with my stage partner, Sister Breinholt?
Well, some very, very, very few of you will actually tremble and
quake at the words "Irene Ryan," because you will know that they
are also the name of an award established by the late actress to
recognize the Very Best College Actor or Actress (actually, the
politically correct thing to call both boys and girls these days
is "Actor") In The Whole Country Of America, The Only Superpower
Left On The Planet Of Earth. Stephanie won it.
Speaking of
trembling and quaking, the other two words, "Utah Shakes," are what
theatre workers call the impending collapse of the Wasatch Fault.
No, really it's what they call the Utah Shakespearean Festival,
which a couple of years ago won a Tony Award for being The Coolest
Regional Theatre In The Whole Country Of America,The Only Superpower
Left On The Planet Of Earth. Now understand, the only thing about
Utah Shakes that's actually regional is its location in Cedar City.
The actors are mostly from New York, which has mysteriously escaped
being designated as a "region."
Almost nobody
from Utah is ever cast in a show at Utah Shakes. (This may be the
subject for a whole column sometime, or perhaps for an entire online
magazine.) Actually, I have one friend who I saw in a play there
and thought his having been cast was miraculous, and told him so.
Then he explained to me that he went to Connecticut--which is a
small suburb of New York--to audition. He fooled Utah Shakes. Stephanie
just went ahead and was from Utah and got cast anyway. This I found
intimidating.
The way said
intimidation manifested itself in my behavior was that for two months
of rehearsal I never said anything to her that I hadn't rehearsed
beforehand. One night recently (my journal says February ninth)
I was rehearsing something I wanted to say to her, something meant
to explore and bond, not to mention "impress," something like "Yo,
Stephanie, that one scene you do with all the acting in it is totally
awesome," when I realized what I was doing. Rehearsing. I realized
that I'd never talked to her--I'd only performed, conversationally.
That made me laugh.
Later, backstage
in the dark, waiting for the run to start, I heard her say to the
cracker-munching assistant stage manager that she was starving.
I popped an Altoid into her hand (Harrison Ford allegedly calls
them "acting pills") and told her it had food value. It seemed to
mean something to her. She could probably tell I hadn't rehearsed
it. Something of a breakthrough. Maybe now I could get past "Irene
Ryan" and "Utah Shakes" to seeing a "Kind Of Glorious Child Of God."
I mean, even without the awards. Pretty glorious.
I admitted to
my journal how oddly I'd behaved. And, oddly, my journal listened.
Maybe it's not so odd, really. I've often found myself noticing
people walking along the street with their eyes down and lips moving,
people driving all alone in cars who are jabbering their heads off.
Probably rehearsing. Probably not actors. Probably performers, though.
Getting ready to perform, conversationally. If the weather were
nicer and their windows were open, I'd toss them an Altoid--just
to see what happens.
Funny thing,
Josiah Lamborn ends his story in the play by admitting something
to himself. He admits to himself (while denying to the jury) that
Joseph Smith might have been right, and it scares Josiah's socks
off. Because he suddenly realizes why Joseph was killed. Lamborn
tells the jury, who are themselves woven into the wide web of the
murder conspiracy, that it wasn't because of Joseph's morals or
his militia that he was killed, but his ideas.
"As far as I
can tell, this man believed that human beings can turn into gods!
How's that for blasphemy, members of the jury? But just try to grasp
it for a moment, if you can--all our meanness, and our fear, and
our little hatreds, and our weakness, all turned into glory..."
And it's too big for him. Too huge of a change. He's terrified at
suddenly imagining that he was meant to be glorious. The admission
that he has been touched by the flaming finger of truth comes too
late.
A journal can
be a place where you admit things to yourself. You can write "Nobody
knows it, but I'm scared." You can write "Whenever I walk into a
room, I instinctively glance around for a grown-up to be in charge
of me." You can write "I picked up the phone this morning and nearly
sang because there were no messages from creditors." You can write
the awesome admission, "Today I felt like a child of God." And if
you write it soon, it might not be too late.
I hope Stephanie
has written that in her journal. I hope you have, too. Both of you
may, because you are. (I'm leaning over the candle at you now.)
"Ignore that at your peril!"
--------------------------------------
Visit
marvinpayne.com!
"...come
unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from
the last page of the Book of Mormon)
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