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DRESSING THE ARK
Nude from the waist up, an irate ballerina in dark brown tights is screeching my name down the corridor without noticing me right beside her. She's much taller than I am and certainly lighter -- when I'm here at the theatre I sometimes feel heavy enough to be invisible: a gray metal filing cabinet, a lead doorstop. I should try to look busier, but instead I just lean against the corridor wall with my hands behind my back watching the dancers zip in and out of their dressing rooms. They're keyed up and bossy and so I avoid them, but more than this, I'm afraid I'll have some sort of mental breakdown if I do anything other than just stand here. I wish I could avoid myself tonight. The dancer is searching the hall for me with her chin tilted high as if trying to keep her face above water in a pool. My name in her voice sounds like myna-bird talk. Where is HA-vah? Can somebody find HA-vah? I know she has some costume problem: a snap that must be re-sewn, a cuff fastened, her left shoe feels wrong. I honestly don't give a damn, but it's my job to at least pretend to for the next eleven weeks. The dancers are getting nervous body odor already, and it's only six-thirty. This is full dress run, the first of three before previews and the opening. Noah's Ark, the world première of a brand-new work by the Ballet Nordesté. I've been hired on as a dresser from now until the end of January, plus any extension they might add. Somehow the dancers' smell will end up being my fault. Our wardrobe supervisor, a red-haired dynamo named Annika, instructed us at our first department meeting that all performers must wear deodorant, no exceptions, and that we were to wrestle their arms up and spray their pits ourselves if necessary. This is for the sake of the expensive costumes, not our noses, but I'd rather suffer with the odors than say anything. These dancers have no fat on their bodies and so their unfiltered sweat betrays everything they eat or drink: garlic, black coffee, Vicks lozenges, boiled broccoli. I pity them this unique lack of privacy and envy them absolutely everything else. Eventually the ballerina turns and spots me. Her name, I now remember, is Merickson. In her hand is the burlap headscarf she wears in the opening "wicked world" scene; on her head is a wig cap made out of pantyhose material. Her chickpea nipples embarrass me. "The bangs on my headscarf are coming loose," Merickson complains. "I need you to fix them as fast as you can." I don't remember Merickson's first name, though I have it on her costume sheet. Among ourselves, we dressers only refer to performers by their last names or their character names, since that's how we label all the costume parts. Merickson's costume pieces are all labeled Merickson/CROWD or Merickson/DEER. To their faces I usually don't call them anything, though Annika has a way of making their names sound like catty insults. Annika has a real chip on her shoulder about dancers. I examine the false bangs, hand-stitched to the inside front of the headscarf and tearing loose at one end. They are ash blond -- an unlikely color choice for what is supposed to be the ancient Middle East. "This is technically a wig,"I tell Merickson, " and I'm not allowed to make any modifications to it. You have to take it to the wig room. Take it to Paul." "Jesus Christ," Merickson snaps. "I don't have time for this. You take it." She thrusts the headscarf out, her other hand flapping in irritation. Only a dancer could execute a Gumby posture like this. When I don't reach for it she actually wads the headscarf under my elbow and huffs off to her dressing room down the hall. I'm stuck with it now. We are at the half-hour call. Our assistant stage manager comes on the intercom to tell us this. His name is Thane and we'll hear him again at the fifteen-minute call and then again when the company is called to places for the top of the show. I'm familiar with this routine because it's exactly the same at every professional theatre, and I've worked for almost a dozen. I know several of the crew from other runs, including Thane, who gave me some background on this production. Dressers aren't expected to care, which is why I do. Noah's Ark, he told me, is supposed to be Ballet Nordesté's holiday season answer to The Nutcracker; something to cross over on the holiday theatre market to include Chanukah and Kwaanza and all. They like to slap a post-modern look on everything they do -- no baroque sets around here -- and their stark Nutcracker productions were never glowingly received. Thane said Noah's Ark was commissioned by Ballet Nordesté from several well-known composers and choreographers, none of whom I'd heard of except for the one choreographer who's coming out of performance retirement to dance the lead role of Noah. They retire in their mid-forties, just like sports figures. They teach, and their bodies stay glorious while their hair thins and their faces shrivel. There was something else Thane said. He was an actor in college, just like me. I go to the wig room with Merickson's veil. I have to take each step as if I'd planned it out; I'm remarkably miserable tonight. I pass Noah's enormous dressing room with its bathtub and fax machine; the door is closed. I find the wig room door closed as well, and so I knock once before barging in anyway, which is the ridiculous protocol of theatre dressing rooms. Inside, Paul the wig man is gluing a short trimmed beard on Wilson/JAPHETH's smooth jaw line. I can smell the spirit gum he's using, like old rubbing alcohol. The rest of the room smells like hairspray. Wilson wiggles his mouth around, testing the seal. I stand around the doorway, not sure how best to interrupt Paul. He can get nasty. I wait until he looks up to give me his what now face. I hold up the veil with the unraveling bangs turned out so he can see. "Pin it or something," he says, going back to his work. Then he has an afterthought. "Let's get something straight, Havah, and you can tell the others, too. Please don't bring me little things like that until the end of the night, okay? There's just too much going on in here already." Paul's own goatee is real, a stretching O of hair around his mouth like some of the young male dancers have. He calls them all "Shirley." He looks at me again, probably wondering why I'm still here. I leave.
Some dressers keep track of all the shows they've worked. They'll tell you this is their twentieth run or their forty-fifth or their eightieth. They'll tell you which famous actors they've ironed slacks for and whether they were bastards or sweethearts. I only know that I've been doing this for three and a half years now, not because I love costumes but because at least it's theatre and not telemarketing or waitressing. I went to college for acting, where you can be an actress and still have a short lumpy body and poor cheekbones. I'm not the best, not even close, not even good in any distinctive way. At twenty-nine I'm already too old for many lead roles. On stage is where I'm happiest in the world, but the same goes for the three million other actors who are better than me or prettier or have connections I'll never have. After college I was in lots of community theatre productions with no pay, then had to start taking jobs like this to get by. The pay here is good: $15.75 an hour. I need to remember how much worse off I could be. I have to watch out for Annika tonight -- she's on the warpath. Her job is tough, I'll give her that, but she really does nurse a deep animosity toward all performers. She probably shouldn't be working in the theatre at all, if you ask me. It's going to make her insane. At wardrobe meetings she'll tell us which dancers are especially difficult, difficult meaning they've made some reasonable request that Annika didn't feel like honoring. It is drilled into us that we are in charge -- the dancers are void, incapable creatures who must be checked from jockstrap to eyelashes every night. I can hear her down the corridor, poking into one quad dressing room after another making sure no one is wearing any personal jewelry with their costume. She should give them more credit than that; these are seasoned pros who knew the rules long before she did. She's loud, savoring it. "Just a reminder about the tampon strings, ladies. Cut them short first. Nobody cares to see them under your sheers." Annika can't find out about my acting history. There's a sharp social divide between techies and actors, both sides feeling superior. Crew people who have had a foot in the acting field usually don't mention it to their coworkers, which is why I was so surprised when Thane told me about his past. I told him mine, and now we share what amounts to a dirty secret around here. Thane won't say anything. It's me I'm worried about. I'm not a good enough actor to act like a dresser much longer. Annika spots me in the corridor with the veil and whips over, asking, "Why do you have that? Bring it to Paul." "I just came from there," I explain. "He's too busy." "Let me have it," she says. She takes a tiny gold safety pin from the pocket of her black apron and pins it while I stand there doing nothing. The skin of her forehead is shiny from the pull of her long braid. Naked and loose-haired, she would look like a stocky Venus on a half-shell. "Tell Merickson if she rips these bangs apart again she'll get them stapled to her eyebrows for the rest of the run." Annika thinks I can't wait to say this, but after she's gone I slip into Merickson's quad and drape the veil over the back of her chair without a word. There are six dressers stationed downstairs in the dressing rooms, and four more upstairs in a large converted conference room which we refer to as the Brat Room. Noah's Ark has children in it, just like The Nutcracker; all handpicked from Ballet Nordesté's academy and youth ensemble. In this show the kids dance the small animals: rabbits, skunks, penguins and the like, plus a variety of bulky insects. I would have quit if I'd been assigned to the Brat Room. There are only a dozen child dancers, but the room is packed with parents and dance coaches and the four dressers who do nothing but run around all night picking things up off the floor. Annika somehow supervises both areas. It was her idea to stick the show's only child principal, an extraordinary twelve-year-old who plays Noah's Dove, upstairs in the miserable Brat Room instead of down here, but I have to admit it would be strange for a child with the way the adult dancers stroll around stark naked and arrogant about it. Annika is on her way to the Brat Room now with two of our downstairs crew in tow. Someone has vomited, maybe, or they're going up to boot all the parents out. They troop up the stairs in their three black turtlenecks, important and aggressive, their six chunky thighs in black leggings churning away. I'm dressed the same and look just like them -- probably worse because I've dyed my hair black and the effect is more morose than I ever intended. I thought I would look very film noir. I look ghastly. Thane comes on the intercom calling fifteen minutes. In the background I hear the orchestra tuning up. I hover under the speaker, listening and being invisible while the instruments throw their trills and bellows every which way. It's one of my favorite sounds in the entire world, chaotic and tasting of bright nervous energy, the wild song of preparation before the music lines up the sounds and makes them march together. I wish I had a whole album of famous orchestras tuning up. In my head the sound looks like pick-up sticks spilled in a place with zero gravity. It looks like a sea urchin. There aren't any sea urchins on Noah's ark. Tonight there is no drone of an audience settling into their seats, but there will be on Friday. The real work begins now and won't stop until very late tonight, probably one or one-thirty when there's no one left in the building but crew and we're released until ten tomorrow morning. By now I'm supposed to have visited each of my four assigned dressing rooms and checked that the occupants are ready in their "wicked world" costumes with nothing missing or unfastened, then report upstairs to wait outside the wing left door for my first change cue. In fifteen seconds I can change a beggar into a zebra, in twenty-five seconds, a monkey into to a blue jay. I do this in the dim blue light of the wing. My change sheet tells me exactly where to be at what cue and with what costume. It's a script for a show that no one sees from out there. On the last show I worked, which was The Merchant of Venice at the Huntington, the actors smoked on the fire escape and told us dirty jokes, but this cast wants as little to do with us as possible. They answer questions by raising their long penciled eyebrows and flipping their heads. In high school I played Frenchy in Grease and we didn't invite the crew to the cast party. In those old photos I have narrower hips and am wearing a bright pink wig. I could show this to Thane but I doubt I will. I go upstairs to auditorium level, passing Annika on the way. She has a foul-smelling plastic trash bag held far in front of her. It was vomit after all. She pulls the corners of her dry lips into a sarcastic smile, but it's all I can do to keep walking -- I don't offer to help dispose of it. While there's still full light in the wings I check that all my costumes are still where I set them. It is also the time when I can walk right across the center of the stage because the curtain is down, and I go ahead and do it because it feels powerful and shameful and I want a little of both. I have no real excuse for being there like the set crew does, so it's also a feeling of trespassing, like looking in someone's medicine chest. I pretend to be searching for some dropped item, but when I'm at stage center with Nordesté's post-modern scenery behind me and the amber lights above I allow myself a surreal microsecond to stand facing downstage on the very spot where dying swans are washed in applause, my pear-shaped self with wide black sneakers gripping the stage, only a curtain between me and eleven hundred velvet seats. I am obscene; it's the shortest moment and I'm moving again before anyone could ever notice, but I have stolen something. The other dressers are coming to their stations. I have to creep past them sideways behind the drop to get back to my spot. Maura, whose enormous waist and thighs make me feel ashamedly slimmer; Katie the intern. William, who is Annika's full-time assistant, and two sisters who are Turkish and say little. The children's dressers will stay where they are until the animal boarding sequence, when the kids are brought in for their brief number. This, Annika says, is when the audience will erupt with smuggled flash cameras that will throw the kids off their blocking, tee hee. I'm keeping clear of her. Thane is a black shape by the flyrail, talking on his headset and making notes. Seventy costumes are packed onto racks backstage and in the upstairs hall. The animal costumes in this show are truly brilliant, not at all like the lumpy two-man horse suits I'd imagined. Most just make a subtle suggestion of the animal by use of a headdress or gloves and a specially designed body suit, but the simplicity is perfect because the real essence of the animal comes out in the choreography. We got to watch a no-costume run-through on our first day here, and even in their rehearsal clothes I could tell just what animal each dancer was by their moves. The musical score adds a lot, too, so that when two lean dancers slide out on bowed bellies and bob droopy heads to the tuba, it's unmistakable that they're walruses. Most pairs have their own duet in the long boarding sequence -- wolves, lizards, camels -- though there's a big ensemble number with all the different kinds of monkeys, and another one for farm animals. The tigers are considered principals, the Tigress being roughly equivalent to the Sugar Plum Fairy. There's also an incredible sequence of flying birds done in black light: willowy birds appear to loop and spiral but are actually lifted through the air by strong, invisible dancers in black body stockings. They even do a lighting trick where Noah catches two fireflies in a jar. I do just as much, all of it invisible. I must have missed the call for places because dancers are collecting in the wings, rubbing their feet and bending every which way. Last night they waited twenty minutes because of a tech problem, whining and going for drinks of water, but tonight the wings darken and the prelude music begins on time. It is loud, crazy music, harps and tympanis and rattles making city sounds -- nothing like any ballet score I've ever heard. I have several minutes before my first change but I decide to stay in the wing anyway to watch. I don't know why I always do it; it hurts and it makes me miss acting more than anything else could. However much I'm being paid for crew work, I still feel like a crippled child watching soccer. The curtain glides up. There's the city, lit to look sinister as merchants and heathen start filling its streets. Out of sight in the orchestra pit is the God-voiced actor providing narration. And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters and sons were born unto them, that God saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every thought in man's heart was dark and evil. God grieved for what he had made, and said, "I will destroy all that I have created; both man and beast, and all creatures that creep and fly, and the herbs of the field -- all shall be banished from the face of the earth." I step softly, avoiding set pieces, to watch the corps de ballet writhing in pairs and trios to the sinewy orchestra movement. Some sell things. The percussionist jingles coins in a net. Far to stage left, I can see small, inconsequential Noah hauling lumber and blind-eyeing all the kicks and shimmies. It goes on for a long time, dancers peeling off one by one into the wings and the cyclorama sky darkening to starry night until there's no one left but poor Noah. But God found favor in one man, a man named Noah who was honest and righteous throughout all of his days. The voiceover booms into the wings. I can't watch Noah's solo because I'm stripping a beggar and turning him into a giraffe. Under his musk cologne I smell green chili salsa and recent sex. "My servant Noah, the end of all flesh is come, for the earth is filled with violence and is corrupted. Behold, I shall destroy it with flood waters upon the whole of the earth." I finish DiLauro/GIRAFFE and then need to tug Hess/BABOON into his unitard with the shiny red and blue rear end. The stage is now very quiet. I remember this scene from rehearsal -- Noah alone in a pale cylinder of light, talking so beautifully to God with his body, a dance of hands and face and head that only a master dancer could pull off. I have the urge to make some tiny noise, a cough or heel click, something to be a part of it. While I'm thinking about it I drop a hanger on the floor. And Noah listened, for he had faith. And God said, "Build up an ark made of gopher wood, and in this fashion shall you make it: build to the width of thirty cubits, and the length of fifty cubits, and the height of thirty cubits, and seal it within and without with pitch, that it shall hold back the waters I send. And into the ark shall enter with you the sons of Noah -- Shem, Ham and Japheth -- and the wife of Noah and the wives of the sons, and you shall gather together the living creatures, and two of each sort shall you bring upon the ark, a male and a female of every beast and fowl upon the earth." One big oversight I've noticed: Noah has a dog that barks at the jeering townsfolk and is probably only there to get the audience used to seeing human-shaped animals, but when the ark is loaded, there's no mate brought for it. Maybe it's assumed that the dog will try his luck with the she-wolf, but I think it's a script problem. It's sad and funny to imagine myself marching up to the famous director and pointing this out. My name is not in the program, which is no oversight. I used to keep programs in a scrapbook from every show I did, like any other actor: photos, ticket stubs, clips from the paper. I stopped three years ago. There are still some blank pages left in the back. Suddenly Annika is behind me, hissing, "Why aren't you doing the lion change?" I'd forgotten, and the lions are on first. I run to the hallway where the lioness is struggling with her giant mask. I just want to go home. Instead, I secure the mask to its harness and cover her shoulders with the ornate drape attached to it. Lycra doesn't show sweat stains, which is good because she's soaked in the armpits. I don't have another change until the bird scene. I'm supposed to use this time to re-set the costumes we're through with, but I can't. Crouched in the wing, I watch the stylized ark being built, the jeerers, then the animals as they board. The lions are first, entering to gongs and roaring brass. They saunter around each other and are almost scary with their huge Japanese masks. The walruses rock on their muscular bellies and make a full dance number of getting up the ramp. Foxes spin in midair like ice skaters, Merickson/DEER and her buck leap in tandem, wolves circle, giraffes on stilts sway to the cello, twenty minutes have passed and I'm paralyzed and sick with longing. I want to board the ark. The big tiger dance is next. My legs tremble from squatting. A few feet away big Maura packs Shaheen/NOAH'S WIFE into the show's only fat suit and they momentarily become twins. Maura must wonder what I'm doing, because she gives me our beeky hand sign to remind me that the six-dresser bird change is coming up. Still I squat here, waiting while the tigers enter from the other side. Their dance is savage and full of steamy tension; then the Tigress breaks off and dances alone for her prowling mate, powerful and confident. I have an overpowering urge to be out on the stage. The other animals already on the ark watch the Tigress from the deck or the portals, and I want nothing else than to dash across from stage right and scurry up the ramp that leads inside. This thought is pure blasphemy in the theatre. I find I'm crying silently, I'm leaning forward on my hands, craving so badly to be on the ark under two million watts of colored stage light with those chosen to live and not die in the dark. I'm dressed in all black; I could pass for an overfed panther, perhaps, or a jet black sheep. I could be a companion for Noah's lonely dog. I would find a way to be valid. Something pops in my head. My face prickles; I'm standing up, but it feels too fast, not like my own body. I'm buzzing with adrenaline until I can no longer hear, but somehow I'm feeling the upstage tape markers passing under my feet. My shoes and socks are off...impossible, I have no memory of removing them. The wood of the ark ramp is strong under my weight, sandpaper traction strips catching the calluses of my feet as I run up it, the texture of paint and the hot, hot red and yellow lights on my black back as I reach the deck. Faces then -- horrible, outraged faces in rainbow greasepaint staring while my body squeezes without breathing through the hatch behind the ark flat among them. More faces wait behind the flat, frantic animal-people and crew with headsets and pencils behind ears mouthing angry things at me under the tiger music: What are you doing on-stage? You're ruining everything, you can't be here, get out! Get off the stage... Someone steers me by the shoulders into the wing. I am running barefoot through the deep blackness of stage left; I knock a feathered headdress off its stand. A stage hand grabs the back of my shirt and shoves his headset at me. "Thane wants to talk to you!" I take the headset and put it on. I try to remember taking off my shoes and socks, and where. "Havah, why the fuck did you do that?" I stare at my feet, which are cold now. "I don't know." "We're videotaping tonight, Havah! You just ruined a two thousand dollar video!" "I'm sorry." "I saw you crying on the floor, Havah. What's your problem?" I wonder how Thane, the former actor, couldn't understand. "Do you miss acting, Thane?" The lights change, monkeys push past me and cartwheel onto stage. Thane is quiet for a moment and I'm sure he's watching them. "Jesus," he says. "What I would miss is this job if I lost it on account of you. I have a wife and a kid and I don't need this psychotic actor bullshit, Havah. Annika's looking all over for you. You're missing your changes." He pauses when the monkeys backspring in perfect tandem. "Yes, I miss it, Havah. But I'm not a complete goddamn idiot." I hand the headset back and walk, not knowing where. Once when I was eight years old I hyperventilated when a juice glass broke in my hand. Because of that, I'm able to recognize what's happening right now, my breath gone and my chest lurching as I run until I'm slamming out through the emergency exit and standing bent over on the loading dock. It must have rained. The crumbly cement is wet but the sky is clear and dark now and I realize I haven't been outside the building in ten hours. Slow in, slow out, small breaths. I'm crazy. I chant it to myself: crazy, crazy. The orchestra is muffled through the metal door and I want to get where I can't hear it. I turn and notice for the first time that the door has no handle on the outside. I'm locked out of the theatre. It isn't safe to be walking around back here at night, and banging on the door is out of the question. I can cut up the long alley to Winter Street -- maybe the main entrance is open even though there's no audience tonight. Ledges on both sides of the alley drip water but the smell of urine and dumpster aren't weakened. This is a terrible place to be barefoot. The bird change must be happening now without me, or maybe it's done, but I'm shaking and have to walk slowly. If I lose this job, I have no savings to fall back on and I'm one week from rent day. Around front, I tug several of the main entrance glass doors, all locked. A security guard inside looks up when I rattle the doors, sees I'm in crew uniform and lets me in. He's friendly and tells me I'm late. I have no idea why, but I tell him I'm in the show and keep walking. There are probably several ways to get from the lobby to backstage, but the only one I know is right through the house. I'm going to have to wait until intermission, regardless of what changes I'm missing. I know there are lots of directors and production people down front so I go quietly upstairs to a remote section of the balcony.
No one could possibly see me, but still I slink down in my seat. It's like television from up here, all the small flaws shrunken and blended away. Beautiful Noah's Ark in a proscenium shoebox, no unsightly crew visible. It looks like the bird change went well without me. The stage is in black light with the first pair of birds swooping in cloverleaf patterns around each other. Supported by their invisible partners, the birds are airborne and weightless. More pairs join: blue jays, cardinals, gulls. It becomes a flying cotillion that spirals and chases. Under the translucent orchestra pit scrim, the elbows of ten violinists pump madly. A dove -- Noah's principal dove -- makes an ethereal entrance with her mate. I have both hands on the velvet seat, crushing the nap. The dove is the most lovely thing I've ever seen when her arms are bowed high, twelve years old, oh Christ. All the other birds hover low around her while the flute plays her theme. The follow-spot operators high in the grid have probably noticed me sitting here, but why would they care? Like me, they're in black and therefore they don't exist. Ghosts are black in the theatre, not white. We see in the dark but are not seen ourselves. Two birds enter strutting and unseen hands fan open the nine-foot tail of the peacock. Lights from someplace shimmer on the peacock's tail and it throws the light back in a hundred directions. I'm aware I'm being looked for. Where is Havah? Somebody find Havah. I need to get back down there right now. I can tell Thane I was getting sick out back, even show him Annika's plastic bag of nervous-child vomit and say it's mine if I have to. Annika will scream. Her face will look like a red devil's. Thane would be wise to fire me. He knows what I have is catching. I could leave. I know this. I want to be home where my scrap book is, with pictures of me in costumes and sparkly dance heels. I want to be stretched lean and long. Noah beckons the birds inside with a graceful master's arm, the last creatures to be saved before the rest of us drown. Intermission is a minute away. I have this time to decide. The lights swell on the loaded ark, Noah's family huddles on the deck. Lights go to half, a thunder clap, full blackout and still I don't stand up.
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