robby

It’s summertime now and the property is more interesting from the outside. The dying Dutch elms given another season of life, crowned with yellow green leaves, a line of cypress acting privacy buffer between the house and the street, the white noise of crickets.

Perhaps in winter, the drama will move indoors, footlights in the front room, velvet curtains strung on ropes traversing the length and rugs rolled back to allow trodding on the hardwood floors. With hand-painted screens carried inside to block the windows and the fireplace. Better acoustics, but less space for the audience. Black box theater, intimate if you will, downstage actors just within an arm’s reach.

That’s a different story to share, different plays, muted costumes and dimmed lighting.

With warm nights and strung fairy lights and old banks of movie house seats, the backyard theater comes to repertory life behind the ageing three story house. Cement steps lead down from the French sleeping porch to two patches of lawn divided by a brick walkway meandering its herringboned way to the matching carriage house at the bottom of the deep lot. The old and leaning building with its hinged double doors that front the alley. All the alleys have recently been named by city elders, and this one has been mysteriously designated Pomegranate Alley. Tree fruited alleyways in this section of downtown referred to as Elysian Fields; Orange, Apple, Peach, Plum. All night shades in midtown are labeled Tartarus; Tomato, Eggplant, Blueberry. The housing market requires more bedsits. Garages, she-sheds, and accessory dwelling units are converted or built to oblige.

The carriage house has seen many incarnations since the decade it housed a horse and carriage, but its current state is to serve the stage. Costume shop, makeup and mirrors, dressing rooms, warm up barre, speakers and light bars are stacked in one corner, a desk with a copy machine and stacks of stapled scripts.

He names the troupe in honor of the bone theater of the bard - the Beoley Skull Players. The name comes before the players themselves are recruited. Seduced at poetry readings, a local theater in the round, an improv workshop, and amongst friends. In the springtime.

He has cajoled construction of the stage, converting anyone who owns a hammer, sketching continuously on bar napkins. He consigns a shop of bridal seamstresses to construct the grand drape. On a monumental afternoon, the sumptuous velvet is hung on tracks, inside a magnificent proscenium arch he himself has painted. Is any of the construction weatherproof? Or all a passing fancy.

Someone is giving away an old upright piano on Facebook Marketplace and he hauls it into the backyard but is told the stage hasn’t been built for that. It sits unevenly on a patch of ground. Anyone who admits to a single piano lesson is invited to play.

The sets begin to be built. The Beoley Skull Players are nothing if not artistic. Solo cups filled with poster paint, wire and paper mache. Cardboard and plywood and exclamations.

As the work commences, someone wonders aloud one evening, drinking port and using torn pieces of baguette to eat gobs of whipped cream cheese, if the play really is the thing. The preparation feels more alive and immediate and filled with symbolism. The doubter is shushed and told to wait just wait. Wait and see. We are creating worlds and if a tree falls in the forest can it be heard if its not perceived.

He wants to perform the quintessential summertime play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of course. He is told that the smallest cast is thirteen. This pleases him. He believes he can direct.

He will play Puck. He refuses her a part because he desperately needs her to be his audience, and she agrees. She can move along a catwalk but has no desire to take on a role, memorize lines, project her voice, and emote.

In a fit of inspiration, he claims it comes to him in a dream, he deems the troupe skeletal and from that proclamation forward the actors appear in skullface. White boned figures of death donned in fantastical garb. Bottom, Theseus, Hermia, Oberon, Titania, Lysander. Skeletons each one. Blackened eye sockets, cavernous nasal cavities, jaw-socket-wide grins. He is pleased to the point of joyful seizure each time he jumps from the stage during rehearsals and stands back to take it all in. He falls in love with his theater.

Dress rehearsal is a jubilant affair. Photos are leaked on Instagram and phones begin blowing up. How to procure tickets for the next evening.

He lays in bed with her until late afternoon. When they surface from their basement bower the house and yard is overrun with people. Everyone is sworn off liquor, but lines of coke are requisite. It is opening night. Grease paint and quick calisthenics. Operatic vocal warmups and meditative breathing exercises. Bottom decides he will strap a GoPro to his head and does. An industrious group concocts a signature cocktail and sells them from the porch.

They must wait for the sun to set, the twinkle lights come on, a beautiful woman in a top hat admonishes seats to be taken please. Gothic ballads have been playing through the sound system but stop. A spotlight travels the yard and stage, shadows and illuminates the drapery, the strung lights are extinguished, the murmurs quiet and quiet and quiet. Backstage, the players stand in a tight circle, holding hands and whisper an old old line to one another.