Salempost 11: Integration 2

At my first entrance, everyone on stage stares at me. Everyone in the audience stares at me. I am the intruder, the outsider. There is a suspended moment, a breath, then I speak as Hale for the first time: “Pray you, someone take these!” and Parris comes to take my books from me. Hale is constantly interrupting awkward moments, arriving in the middle of arguments. He does it in the first two scenes of the play, and then again in the last scene. Inadvertently, he witnesses this community in its pain. This speaks to him as a minister. It’s information that gets stored away, then detonates in the courtroom. But here, he is all business. He is the expert consultant, called to discover, or not, the Devil at work.

Act 1, scene 1 memories: the way Chris slinks off stage as Proctor. Marsha’s eyes when she tells she’s lost seven children in childbirth. Holding Claire in my lap and connecting to Hale, the father of two. My little scene with Tom as Giles over the book. Julianna as Abigail screaming “I want the light of God!”

Then there’s the Tituba sequence. It is where the fear becomes horror enacted. Tituba is thrown to the floor and knows that in order to live she must admit to seeing the devil. This moment got disturbing laughs from some high school audiences. The image of Lenny being thrown to the floor struck some of them as funny. Lenny was occasionally furious backstage afterwards. “Little fuckers” she would mutter. It has been a painful experience for her – the one person of color in this cast – playing the slave. It is an open wound for her, and the children’s perverse laughter was especially galling. But for me, it was working with Lenny in this scene, in which Hale tries to save her, which either propelled me into the rest of the play, or warned me of heavy lifting when I was tired.

The people of Salem Village are ensnared, the girls are screaming accusations, Chaz’s percussive, pounding sound design kicks in, the lights dim and we quickly move scenery offstage during the change. I hold the curtain to the green room open for Lenny and we check in with each other. Sooz is standing there as Elizabeth, quietly focused. We softly slap hands as I pass her. Marsha hands me my coat and hat, occasionally complimenting us all for a scene well performed. I have 10 minutes or so before my next entrance in 1.2. I usually sit quietly, background listening, chatting softly with the offstage company. I hear Sooz as Elizabeth and Chris as Proctor arguing. I think, what a modern relationship in the midst of an ancient culture. A husband and wife battling through their pain and betrayal, locked together because there’s no way out. And despite the infidelity there is still something speaking to them both which says, we’re better together than apart.

Mary Warren exits and I put the great coat and hat back on. In one of my peculiar actor vanities, I desire to look different in each scene. I originally chose not to wear the grey dress coat for the Proctor visit, but Marla felt that the white of my shirt was too much. So I enter with the blue great coat unbuttoned, and hair tucked into the collar. Another peculiarity: the phantom VIP in the audience. I imagine someone I am connected to, or who excites me, to be in the audience: a director, an old friend, a family member. I think of that person out there watching the play and it somehow turns me on. I was embarrassed about this peculiarity for the longest time, but then, like audience peeking, I discovered what it was really about. It is my way of personalizing my relationship with the audience. The main stage at People’s Light is vast, and the phantom VIP helps me make an intimate connection to the masses gathered there. Ironically, when I actually know there’s a VIP in the house, it can rattle me, like the three shows I thought a director I was about to audition for was there (she wasn’t), or the night my half brother came with his wife, and I kept thinking I saw him in the house left or right delta (he was actually mid-way up the center section).

The Proctors are fighting and I am waiting in the woods. I stand there quietly for about two minutes, listening, centering, staring at the “trees”. “She has an arrow in you yet!” Elizabeth screams and I move into the woods, meeting Proctor halfway through the door coming at me. This is the second of Hale’s awkward interruptions. We stare at each other, and through the door I see Elizabeth whip around to hide her face and compose herself. I am invited in.

We spent a great deal of time in rehearsal talking about why Hale was there. David tried strenuously to move me to the position that Hale was making sure these were good Christians, but through my performance of this play 56 times, I am convinced of something else. Hale is there to warn them, though he doesn’t know how to when he arrives. He quizzes them about the ten commandments less because he wants to make sure they know them, and more because he has now witnessed the way it works in the Salem courtroom, with Hathorne bringing down Sarah Goode with the commandments inquisition. Hale wants to see what will happen to people like these if they are drawn into court and set upon by the judges in the same way. He isn’t happy with what he discovers: that the Proctors are imperfect people, which makes them vulnerable in the current climate.

He has also just come from Rebecca Nurse, and as I stood in my ready position for this scène one night early in the run, it dawned on me: what did she say to me about all of this, this woman I clearly hold in the highest regard? What did she tell me about the hunting of witches, about the activities of the court? I’m sure she said some thing like, “Mr. Hale, there is great danger in the seeking of loose spirits” which is exactly what she says in the first scene to Parris. Except at home, with me visiting and her husband by her side, I’m sure she expands upon that idea a bit more. So I arrive at the Proctors’ having just been schooled by my version of Mother Teresa. My confidence in what I’ve initiated in Salem has been shaken - not defeated, but shaken. Hale arrives at the Proctors’ wrestling with a doubt he doesn’t know how to express. The Proctors are at war with each other; Hale arrives at war with himself.

I stand in their house, aware that I have inserted myself into a painfully intimate moment. “You are Goodwife Proctor” I say to Elizabeth, and I say hello to my wife on stage. For the next five minutes or so, Sooz, Chris and I share one of the most subtle and nuanced scenes I have ever had the pleasure and challenge of performing. The scene with the Proctors around their table never got old, even in the haze of the busiest morning after a sleepless night in front of a restless crown of teenagers. But they were seldom restless here. Miller’s language and Sooz and Chris’s skill sucked me and them in every single time. It’s when acting seems too easy for words, and I’m almost embarrassed to be paid for it. Almost. Add to that the privilege of sharing the stage with a dear friend and the love of my life (who never felt like my love on stage, but his), and it was really a peak experience; a treasure I will always have now.

1.2 memories: Sooz telling me there is no mark of blame upon her life; my moment with Chris downstage right about what’s he’s said about witches; the sequence leading up to the rifle, one of many beautiful escalations in the play that – when we played them well – ended in that exquisite combined capture of company and audience, all breathing the same taut breath; my exit, having tried and failed bring Proctor comfort, and my admission that the world has gone mad and I haven’t a clue why: “I shall pray, God open up our eyes.”

Which might as well be my prayer.