Chapter 4 - The Exercise

Oliver mounted his first play at age seventeen. He openly admitted that this was not a serious piece but an exercise, a way to find out how things worked before he began to make the play. “Because it is there” was already controversial before there had even been a rehearsal.

Oliver insisted in hiring only experienced sailors for his technical crew. Members of the local stagehands' union circulated rumors that Oliver was only interested in the sailor’s uniforms and as a consequence no one answered help wanted ad. But Oliver was not discouraged. He went down to the shipyard and recruited his stage hands personally. He talked to them about the revolutionary nature of the play in his mind. He openly criticized modern theatre as being in the hands of social misfits with nothing to say to real people. He said he wanted to start anew with true craftsmen. He told them about the history of sailors working in the theatre and showed them the complicated schematic of ropeworks he would need them to operate. Most effectively he emphasized how cool it was to hoist set pieces around the stage. It also helped that he paid the sailors more than the actors.

"Because it is there," has three acts but runs only forty three minutes. The action follows five acquaintances on a mountain climbing expedition. Early on, the characters get separated in such a way that each thinks he or she is the only one missing from the group. The characters spend most of the play climbing alone and philosophizing about whether to act as a group is better than acting individually until the end when they are all reunited at the mountain's summit and lament that they have no more mountains to climb.

The set consists entirely of twenty platforms of various dimensions, suspended from the fly space above the stage. Each of these platforms can be raised and lowered into different configurations by a complicated series of ropes, weights and pulleys. At least one platform is moving during any moment in the play and there are two occasions when all of them are moving at the same time. This precise choreography was achieved (after a lot of practice) in this manner: Each sailor was given a radio with headphones and a "script" for his particular platform. A series of ten ascending notes in equal time intervals was played over all of the headphones simultaneously and the script for each platform listed a level (indicated by a letter between A and J) for the platform at each interval.

For example, from the script for platform seven:
Platform 7
Start at I.
Wait six beats.
Move to H.
Wait sixteen beats.
Move to F.
Wait one hundred and sixteen beats.
And so On.

Being an actor in the play was slightly more complicated. To be in "Because it is there" one had to be able not only to act on a platform that moves up and down but to have such precise timing so that his or her movements coincided with the placement of the platforms.

It is probably not necessary to say that opening night was a disaster. The fault did not belong to any one person. Everyone involved was just a little bit nervous and the combination of twenty-six people being just slightly off with their timing led to quite a bit of falling. Luckily no one was hurt. Less luckily, though perhaps deservedly, the play received a reputation for being impossible to mount and only a small number of people were able to actually witness the stunning profundity of the work. Of course the play comes nowhere near the stunning profundity of Persephone but then nothing does.

Chapter 3 - Cassandra

Patti LuPone as Nancy in a 1984 Production of Oliver (age 35)

Cassandra Calo was a stage name. A little bit too obviously a stage name was the opinion of the other theatre students but Cassandra did not care. “Theatre is artifice,” she would say. “People don’t really want to see real people on the stage, they want to see actors--actors with pleasing alliterative names.” She was good enough at acting that she was allowed to call herself whatever she wanted.

Even at nineteen years old, Cassandra brought something to the stage that was different. The origins of her style were often debated and the opinions can be divided into two major schools, the first saying she had taken the naïve staginess of 17th century pantomime, added the gracefulness of the Balinese Topeng theatre and then toned everything down to where the style seemed almost natural. The other argued that she had copied the style from a maid in an obscure sit-com that ran for only three episodes in 1964. Cassandra herself always insisted that something just happened when people were watching her. Whatever it was, watching Cassandra act was like hearing that special effect that they do on that Cher song. The quality of the song is questionable but you listen in anticipation of that fascinating sound.

Although, just a freshman, Cassandra was given the role of Nancy in “Oliver!” The part fit her well, as she looked to be seventeen but had the voice of a woman much older. The mix of maturity and innocence in her presence meant that the production could forgo the usual practice of casting Nancy as woman in her early thirties, and there by sticking to the novel’s concept of the character, who was both less and more shocking than the one in the play.

The Character Nancy was brought up in an acting class discussion a few weeks before opening night. The girl who played Bette, a rather jealous senior, opined that Cassandra should be able to justify Nancy and her actions in a post-feminist world. Despite the professor’s suggestion that such a justification is really up to the author, Cassandra walked to the front of the classroom, proceeded to sit down on the professor’s table, crossed her legs, rested one elbow on her knee and propped her head up with her hand. She then established flippant eye contact with Bette and began to speak.

“Nancy has two tragedies. The first is that she is abused by Bill, the second is that she is abused by class-ism. Neither of these, in my mind have much to do with feminism at all. In fact, her song ‘as long as he needs me’ is really just a rehash of Julie’s “My Bill” from Showboat, or perhaps, a prelude to the song. The point is, is that in order to understand these songs, you must really understand acting.

“The song is essentially a soliloquy, a woman talking right to the audience, and in this case, Nancy is telling the audience a lie. She is saying that she will stay with Bill because he needs her. She is saying that staying with Bill is a selfless act. The real question is will the audience believe her. If they do, the actress has not done her job. This song should not be applauded, it should be booed.”

The audience did boo. People who witnessed the performance have said that they had to continually remind themselves that they were watching a play in order to keep from leaping on to the stage to set the poor brainwashed girl straight.

Chapter 2 - Maria - Part 2

That week Maria had to take the bus across town to get to church from the hospital. On the bus, she wrote a long letter to Sister Agnes, explaining the story and asking for prayer that her youngest son would survive the burns. He was the only child she had left, but she wanted God to help him and not her. She felt so sad and helpless but she knew that God could help her son.

She gave the letter to the Sister Agnes who read it immediately. Sister Agnes gasped then shook her head and looked sad. She told Maria that she would show the letter to Pastor Ralph and the elders immediately.

Pastor Ralph directed his entire sermon at Maria and her story. He said that faith in God and the Holy Spirit could save her son and that if Maria had any faith, even the size of a mustard seed, that her son would be completely healed. He asked Maria to come up to the front of the church and even though she was afraid she went. They had Maria kneel down and the elders put hands on her shoulders and they prayed loud and long that Maria would have enough faith to save her son. They said that fire happened because God was angry with Maria but that he spared her son as a chance for Maria to be saved.

Maria wept and chanted and sang. She begged for the Holy Spirit to give her faith. She begged earnestly and with all of the passion she could muster. She begged and shouted until her throat was soar and her voice was raspy. Then the whole church hugged her and prayed for her again.

After Maria had gone back on the bus, Sister Agnes said to the Pastor Ralph that it was wonderful to see someone so taken up in the spirit and that she just knew that God would save her son. Pastor Ralph made that serious eye contact that they must teach in seminary. He told the Sister Agnes that he sincerely hoped Maria had enough faith for God to save her son, but he was afraid that she might not have the spirit because she had not spoken in tongues.

Maria called Sister Agnes on Thursday to tell her about the final funeral arrangements. Sister Agnes told her she was sorry but the church was very offended that Maria had gone up to the front of the church and pretend to want the Holy Spirit. That she must have been faking or her son would have recovered and that she was no longer welcome at the church services.