scenic design

the eighth letter

Slowly finding my sea-legs on substack. Here is how the rest of my Year-in-Letters will go: Seven letters each to seven different penpals. Each penpal with his or her own speciality. However, one penpal’s letters will be spread out in a playful pattern across the months, coming once after each seventh letter. Seven letters to Jaclyn, one to Elizabeth, seven, one, and so on. At the risk of overstatement, this is all a big expiriment, subject to change, but having fun keeps me going.

15 Dec 2024

Dear Elizabeth,

Once upon a time, in college, I took Scenic Design. I was a junior transfer student in a tiny Iowa town at a Lutheran institution situated in a former hotel (hence the name: Waldorf), which I had applied to for its location, size, cost, and Creative Writing program, in that order. My schedule was jam packed with classes and scholarship hours. Choir, theatre, journalism, and academic achievement each contributed a discount to my education, and I in turn contributed 4-5 hours per week to each program, on top of studying and sleeping. I had not come to college to socialize. I lived in the dorms but also spent a significant amount of time at the coffee shop in the campus library. That very first semester, when an Art elective ended up conflicting with an English requirement, I reluctantly switched from Drawing I to Acting I. Reluctantly, because I had already endured Speech at my old school. But I had no other choice; nothing else fit in my schedule.

The instructor’s name was Damian. No one called him professor except at the top of papers. He was youngish (maybe 40?) and unmarried. There were 8-10 students in the class, a typical size for a school with a student body under a thousand. Most of my classmates were freshman, as upperclassmen would already be taking Acting II. The class consisted of warm-ups, a few improv exercises, and three “scenes” to be practiced and performed with an assigned partner.

I’ve forgotten all but one of those scenes, the final scene. It was memorable for a few reasons. One reason was my partner, who struggled with memorization and staying in character. That is to say, she struggled with acting. Another reason was the scene we chose. It was a scene from The Miracle Worker which depicted Helen Keller and her tutor Annie Sullivan, and quite notably had zero lines. I had to fight for this scene, but Damian eventually allowed us to do it, although he cautioned that the lack of speaking parts would count against our grade. I understood that his permission wasn’t really fair to our classmates, but I could vividly imagine this scene and felt equal to the challenge of bringing a silent drama to life. Excited, even.

In the scene, I (Annie) tried to teach my partner (Helen) sign language by setting out a meal and spelling hand signs into her palms. Helen resisted, threw tantrums, stomped and wailed and knocked over furniture. Annie patiently, persistently, dragged her pupil back to the table, calmed her down, and repeated the signals—until the final moment when understanding dawns on the blind and deaf child and her demeanor is transformed.

We prepared real food to be spewn around the stage. A pitcher of water and plate of peas. A table and two chairs. The props were my favorite part. It was like playing house. We both got an A on that scene.

Holiday break came and went, and spring semester began. Only six students comprised Scenic Design. This time no freshmen. Damian’s first assignment was to read the play Equus and make a collage on posterboard. I’ll never forget the day we presented our collages nor the high praise I received on my accompanying paper. As a complete newbie to technical theatre, I hadn’t expected to do well. I couldn’t tell who was more surprised, me or the rest of the theatre department I, a conservative homeschooled Californian, had unintentionally inserted myself into.

For my second and third projects I chose plays by Aeschylus and Shakespeare. My classmates and I spent hours late at night down in the basement design lab amid a mess of foamcore scraps and modeling clay, sketching and mixing paint and poring over scripts. Brett doesn’t remember it at all—unbeknownst to me his diabetes was erratic that year—but he once pulled his chair up to my desk and told me stories about high school productions when he probably should have been working on his own design. He and his roommate Andrew were both theatre majors, and they’d take breaks to walk down the block for caffeine and cigarettes and would bring me back a gas station cappuccino, while I kept scoring away with my craft knife, while visions of Agamemnon and Puck danced in my head.

our basement classroom

Acing my second theatre class gave me the gumption to do something crazy: add a double major in theatre arts and take a senior practicum, where Brett and I would design and build two sets together. But this story isn’t about our relationship. I would take one class from Damian each of my four semesters at Waldorf. He left the school when we graduated and didn’t attend our wedding the following January, but visited us a couple days before we got married to give us two cards. One said “Congratulations.” The other said “Happy 50th Anniversary, Early.” He had no doubt our love would last, and neither did we.

What was the most surprising class you ever took, Elizabeth? Was there something you learned about yourself that turned the tide of your entire life? That you are still unraveling to this day? That seeps out in your every act of love since?