Nicholas Thurkettle

Tomorrow morning I’ll be spending all of a long day in LA, directing another 10-minute play for Sacred Fools‘ produced-whenever-we’ve-got-nothing-the-hell-else-going-on-this-weekend Fast & Loose showcases for 24-Hour Theatre. At this very moment, my script is in the early stages of writing by some caffeine junkie with whom I’ll be randomly matched in the morning. I’d really like one of those writing slots one of these times.

The first time I did this, I got a lively case of the hots for one of the actresses in my cast, pursued her with an uncharacteristic boldness while I was still in the early stages of re-assembling my heart after a breakup, and ended up getting embarrassed, ignored, and punched in the groin. Ah, the Theatrical Life.

I’m taking an early bedtime tonight, and have downloaded the sound-mixer Audacity for my laptop. The last time, with my old laptop that was a glorified word processor/porn storage device, I lost two hours driving back and forth to Orange County to mix and burn the music and sound cues on my home desktop. When you only have eleven hours to stage a play soup-to-nuts, you cannot just go giving away two hours to LA traffic. I remember almost crying from the CDs not playing in regular CD players, calling to push back my tech rehearsal so I could give it one more shot, and barely making it in time to smuggle the final working versions to the sound operator before tech period closed.

I keep doing these little quick-hitter jobs, and they do scratch the itch; but they also serve to remind me how long it’s been since I got involved in something bigger. I can’t remember any point in my life when this close to 100% of my creative energy was going solely into writing. Maybe that’s a good thing, or maybe it’s going to drive me mad soon. I do know I jumped at this opportunity, and I anticipate enjoying it. I also anticipate you won’t hear much from me Sunday, while I recover.

I’m in Peoria, Illinois, in the upstairs lobby of Bradley’s theatre building – the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts. I remember quite distinctly that there were not computers just laying around for anyone to use back when I was here. I do remember there was an excellent little crash couch on this spot, and that at one overnight lock-in we set up a Nintendo 64 and played Mario Kart from it in the wee hours.

The students are all running around rehearsing the tech schedule for the shows tonight; walking through lighting changes and furniture moves, last-minute costume approvals, vocal exercises. I have had a big grin on my face ever since I got here; this place is a home to me, and that feeling took me the moment I walked back through the doors. The students are different people but the same types I knew – passionate and determined and still not-quite-formed, awkwardly brilliant and beautiful.

I don’t have any job to do today but plant my ass in the seat with the “Reserved” sign on it, but I am absorbing this hectic electric urgency happening all around me. There’s a show about to happen. Only hours to go.

On my first day of my first acting class in my first year as a theatre major, the teacher arranged us in a circle on the floor; and, one-by-one, we had to leap to our feet, brandish an imaginary spear, and shout: “I will dare to fail gloriously!” The point is that in the theatre, there is no going back and there is no room for apologies. If you are going to screw up, screw up big.

I have always loved this philosophy because it incorporates the idea that mistakes will happen no matter how much you prepare. The imperfections are as much a part of the music as Jackson Pollock’s cigarette ashes are part of his paintings. Every night, the audience gets a version of the show that will never be done again, because of the hundred little accidents, deviations, and discoveries.

This spontaneity is part of the reason I moved away from acting – I have a hard time with trust and letting go in the moment, and my best idea usually only comes after rumination and calculation. It’s why I’m better as a writer than a performer – I get a chance to think rather than just react.

But even though since college I have rarely sought out opportunities to perform on stage, I have developed this strange pattern over the years of ending up on a stage anyway. It started in high school. A community children’s theatre group I had performed with in the past needed someone to fill in on tech – and on our budget, by “tech” I mean flipping a light switch and operating a CD changer in the back of a cafeteria. So I showed up for one rehearsal, watched the show, and noted all my tasks.

On opening day, at one o’clock, the director called and said: “Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea. Want to act in the play?” One of the cast (and strangely enough, he might be reading this post right now) had twisted his ankle after the last rehearsal and couldn’t perform. The director needed someone who could memorize the part in six hours.

Now this part I do well. I’ve done Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard and I adore words, so I have the skill for recording language in my brain on short-notice. I will freely say I am not all that good an actor, and I’m tricky to cast – I can’t dance, my singing is so-so, I’m too odd-looking for the leading man roles, too tall and soft for the energetic character roles, too cerebral for the boisterous roles, too rubber-faced for serious roles, too unthreatening for the macho roles, and too young for the old crafty roles. But I understand stagecraft and discipline enough that people I work with can trust that they don’t have to start from square one. I can be plugged in on an emergency basis and they won’t have to worry I’m going to crash the show.

It happened again when my sister was helping produce her fiancée’s musical. They needed an extra set of backstage hands and someone who could walk on to do two lines at the end. And with one rehearsal, that’s exactly what I did. Auntie Mame happened a few years later because of my brother. He had kept doing community theatre as an occasional hobby, and when a production needed to fill a supporting role eleven days from opening, a friend of his in the cast dropped his name. He wasn’t available for the whole run, so I got brought along as part of the family package for half of the performances.

After that, when I was directing my 10-minute play for Sacred Fools in LA, and my lead dropped out three days before the show, my good friend Mishka the Hairy Russian, who I had also cast and have known since college, was the one who convinced me that searching for a new actor on such short notice was foolish when we already had a perfectly capable one who knew the script available – by which he meant me.

I auditioned for one play a year or so ago, but didn’t prepare, mumbled my way through it and didn’t have a serious chance at a part. I have never been that good at auditioning and it wasn’t a show for which I was actually appropriate, in hindsight.

But Norma Jean, one of my castmates from Auntie Mame, remembered my ability to swing in at the last minute (and actually has a far higher opinion of my abilities than I do), and on Saturday night she dropped me a Facebook message which is the reason why I haven’t been able to post, or really even think much, since then.
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Excellent news today. The three 10-minute plays I wrote recently were all picked by student directors for the Alumni Play Festival happening at Bradley in April. I have no idea if this means the plays were well-liked, or that the others who were asked to submit plays just didn’t come through to the same extent. (You will notice that, as usual, I just can’t take a compliment.)

The last time I visited Bradley was almost seven years ago. The school has always wanted me to come back, and I’ve always wanted to go, but between money, time, and needing a good enough reason to commit the first two things, it never quite happened. Now, to get to see a few scripts of mine on their feet, and talk with this generation of theatre students, and reminisce, and hopefully even coax a few fellow alums down from Chicago for some ol’ times kinds of fun…that all adds up pretty nicely.

And if I happen to pop into a couple of classes to say a few words, and if they happen to cough up a small check, that would make it add up even better. Good luck to that in today’s economy, but I’ll hope.