Authors: Richard Bowes
We are into an old routine, one I can almost watch myself do. “I saw him the first time sitting in that acting studio all legs and hostility,” I say. “Afterwards we talked and walked. It was late in the lunar cycle on a summer night with nothing in the sky but the Dog Star. Even without the moon, he was intense. His eyes never blinked. He ended up crashing in the same pad I was staying at.”
“I’d never met anyone like Josie,” says Ransom. “But I figured this must be how people were in the big city. Josie explained a few things about my life. I realized there was nobody else like Josie—except me in lots of ways.
“I don’t know if going to Central Park in the dead of night a couple of weeks later was his idea or her idea.”
Laughter follows. “It was yours,” I say. “For several reasons, I expected life to include some danger. And I thought anyone we encountered would find you as scary as I did. So I went along.”
Remembering that night, I begin to relive it. I can smell the grass, feel the night breeze. As I return to that night I can feel myself change on stage and see Ransom become young again.
“The wonder of that place at midnight is you can forget the city,” he says. “Our senses sharpened. We moved in shadows, dodged police patrols, and walked to the north end of the park. The Harlem Mere at 2 A.M. had the Harvest Moon shining on the water. There was a waterfall and lone cars with their lights on high-beam speeding along the drives: the only other sound was the wind rustling in the trees.”
“Our heads touched the sky—without acid,” I add. And I am there. “We recited Shakespeare ‘Oh, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon . . .’ We sang, “Oh Moon of Alabama.”
Acapella we sing a few choruses about finding the next whiskey bar, the next pretty boy. For us the Cherry Lane stage disappears.
Ransom says, “Our senses grew more accute. We realized that a certain rustling in the bushes was not the wind and that it was following us. There was a moment of silence like someone or something was going to attack.”
“I told him, ‘NOW WE HOWL!’” And just as on that night, our eyes narrow, our jaws jut forward. We move downstage screaming. Our company lining the back of the theater joins in.
I feel the audience gasp and pull back in their seats as we two come forward wild-eyed. I hope the cameras got every bit of it. I remember to hold my hand up. The noise stops.
“It was kids up to no good—like us,” Ransom says. “We chased them howling first, then laughing. Next day I remembered it like a dream and had to talk about it to keep the details from slipping away.
“But maybe a week later, this guy stopped me on Bleecker Street and said my eyes were insane. He was Sam Shepard, and his first play was going to be up that weekend at Caffe Chino on Cornelia Street. He wanted me in it. That was my first time in front of a paying audience.”
As Ransom speaks, his face relaxes, but not all the way.
“My initiation was a lot less dramatic than Thad’s,” I say. “You can grow up in a city and stay very unaware of nature. But when I was eight, we lived in a leafy part of Boston. There were hills and big old mansions that were now, many of them, divided up into apartments, into duplexes. But the yards were large and unfenced; the hills looked out on ocean and sky.
“Old Yankees in the neighborhood worked in their gardens by moonlight. They lived in houses they’d grown up in, planted vegetables and talked at night on their porches. They drove model A’s, had coal furnaces, and got ice delivered by a man with a horse and cart just as it had happened when they were young.
“They followed ritual: Memorial Day and Fourth of July and Harvest Moon and at Halloween they had pumpkins with candles inside them on their porches.
“Instinctively, I understood the power of a certain grain in the blood.”
That old neighborhood decades ago is where I am. I feel smaller. The face of the kid Joseph/Josie wide-eyed but guarded is my face as I speak.
“My parents often seemed very young. They had been actors, people of the theater who settled down, but not entirely. My mother wrote for a local TV show
Boston Common
. On five mornings a week it was songs, the news, dramatic pieces (her specialty) a segment for kids.
“Sometimes she took me with her when she brought scripts over to the station. Old friends she’d acted with worked on the show. They greeted each other with kisses. She’d be flushed with excitement. I never thought to see if it was the full moon.
“My parents always wanted me on the show and I always said no. Maybe some part of me understood where I was going and wanted to delay the trip as long as I could. When
Boston Common
got cancelled after a few years, my mother was devastated, lost.
“By then I had other concerns. At that time boys swam, showered, and took group physical exams naked. As a small child I’d just seemed undeveloped and got teased. With the onset of puberty it grew obvious that I had a cock and a cunt as well. I was taunted, kicked, taken to doctors.
“Drug treatment was suggested, surgery. I didn’t want to change and my parents, who knew a little about being different, didn’t insist. They moved to another part of the city, enrolled me at a school where I got excused from gym and swimming class.
The secret scared me, but left me feeling superior to others. Danger and lust got intertwined.
“My parents still dabbled, did readings, took small parts in plays. My father was in a production of Shaw’s
The Devil’s Disciple
done in late spring outdoors in the Public Gardens.
“I went with a couple of fellow outcasts from our high school drama department. The full Flower Moon rose over the trees. By then I knew all the names and phases and was aware of what was up with my parents. I felt my body grow fluid and knew what I was meant to do.
“The next year I was a page boy in
Henry the Fifth
, not a big stretch. Shortly afterwards I was Yum Yum in
The
Mikado
. We opened the night of Green Corn Moon and I was sensational.
“Sex was a tense game. I had so many ways of disappointing partners. My freshman year of college I got picked up at a party by one of the boys who’d tormented me back in the old neighborhood. He didn’t recognize me. I showed him what I had. His eyes widened in recognition.
“Then I showed him this,” and on the stage of the Cherry Lane my face is the Gorgon Medusa’s. It’s my way of telling the audience we’re past the pleasant introductions. They recoil but don’t turn to stone.
Ransom has disappeared from the stage. I stand motionless, getting back my face and body. Drums beat out in the lobby and then in the house. Ransom comes down the center aisle, his hair in golden ringlets; his face gleams. Behind him the chorus twirl, buck, roll their eyes back in their heads. They chant:
“Dance now
dance again
when Bacchus
mighty Bacchus
leads us”
They are the wild maenads, the women, some played here by guys, who have followed Dionysius all the way from Asia to ancient Thebes. Several have leather drums on which they maintain heartbeats that will go on as long as the performance does. Two others hold aloft on sticks a light-reflecting silver disk: the full moon.
Euripides’
the Bacchae
: maybe everyone sees herself in every great play. But those who follow the silver goddess are close to this one. Order-Pentheus the righteous young king of Thebes—confronts Chaos—Dionysius god of wine and frenzy.
The chorus sings and dances:
“With my drum that
the god made for me
dancing for him
with my leather drum”
All are supposed to be wild-eyed. But tonight some are barely under control. Intentionally, we are playing with fire. Tommy is the worst, twirling, smacking into others on the crowded stage. He’s the company pet. Ransom lets him get away with too much. I catch Tommy’s attention, stare right into him. He subsides.
At Lincoln Center many years ago there was the legendary production in which young Ransom played both Pentheus and Bacchus. Tonight he stands at the back of the stage and announces:
“I am Bacchus. I am Dionysius
I am a god the son of Zeus”
His eyes are wide and blazing as he goes on to speak of his anger at the city and its ruling family—relatives who have disowned him—and his plans for vengeance.
In Greek drama, actors take multiple roles. With my back to the audience I wear a crown and am Pentheus; young, arrogant, full of hubris, speaking to what he thinks is a lunatic, ordering him imprisoned.
“Lock him up in the stable
If you like to dance, dance there”
And all the time the chorus goes on chanting quietly, the drums beat. The silver disc shines on the stage.
Minutes later, Ransom, young and severe, wears the crown and is Pentheus, his face rigid and imperious. Tommy is a messenger describing the packs of maddened Bacchantes which include Pentheus’ own mother and aunts, destroying villages, tearing wild beasts and cattle apart:
“Ribs, hooves, flying asunder”
Pentheus demands to see this for himself. Now I am Dionysius all golden hair and glowing face. I dress him in woman’s robes and lead him up the mountain while the chorus around us snaps their teeth like mad dogs. The night, the drums begin to take me. My eyes loose focus.
“Make the drums roar
and the hounds of madness
bay at the moon”
Then we are all supposed to exit except for Mary Kowal, who remains onstage. Tomlinson passing by suddenly turns and bites her on the shoulder. She cries out, shoves him away. This is not acting and I hear the audience gasp. For a heartbeat everyone on stage stops. For a moment it seems that we might all start tearing at each other.
I know Ransom is being dead in the wings. He lies stretched out on the floor, mouth gaping, an expression of horror on his face. I’ve seen it many times.
It’s up to me. I grab Tomlinson, look right into his wild, staring eyes with all the authority of a priestess and the madness of an actor with forty-five years on the New York stage.
“Don’t waste this last chance, Tommy,” I whisper. His eyes focus and the troupe leads him off. Onstage Mary Kowal as a messenger describes how the Bacchae, maddened, fell upon Pentheus. Agave, his own mother, tore her son’s head from his body believing he was a lion.
In the wings we form up in a tight group, pick up dead Pentheus and emerge onto the stage. And now I am Agave marching back into Thebes. In triumph I hold my son Pentheus’ bloody head by his mane of hair, his jaw flapping open. Foaming at the mouth I sing:
“I caught him myself
This savage beast
Without weapons or net”
And the chorus chants:
“And the drums
Let the drums
Praise Bacchus
For this deed”
Slowly Agave understands what she’s done. I stare with a face like a mask of horror. The drums cease. Suddenly the lights go down. One spot remains, shining on the silver disc above us. I stand shaking, catching my breath.
The players who carried Ransom and blocked sight of his body while I held up his head put him down and escort him off silently.
My Moon Itch has begun to ebb. The lights come back up. I am alone on the stage.
There is applause. But I shake my head. This isn’t over.
“Euripides wrote,” I say, “when people had begun to forget the time when woman and god and man and beast weren’t as separated and distinct as they are now. But his was a time when all humans male and female were tied by nature to the cycle of the earth, were servants to the phases of the moon.
“They still understood what seems a terrible alien disease to us now and that sometimes it was best to let that beast run.”
Again there is applause. Ransom and company are behind me on the stage. It goes on for a while. We take our bows after which we’re supposed to make our exit up the center aisle. Instead, Ransom holds up his hands.
He looks drained, old. He puts his arm around Tomlinson’s shoulder and around Mary Kowal’s. “There’s a story theater people tell about a great actor playing a great part. He comes off stage to tumultuous applause and storms to his dressing room in a black mood. ‘You were stupendous,’ they say, ‘why are you so unhappy?’
“‘I was incandescent,’ is his answer, ‘AND I DON’T KNOW WHY.’”
Ransom shakes his head, says in rich actor tones, “Ah, the mystery of ART! But what if you do know why your performance is terrific and the reason why isn’t you? What if you’re the drum and not the drummer, the brush and not the painter? What if you’re a tool intended to give everyone a glimpse of ourselves as we are by nature?
“Descended from hunters of flesh, born to a hunter of souls, I’ve become a hunter of applause. I’m as surprised as you by some of what happened here. But each night the earth will take a small bite out of the silver goddess. In a week’s time it will be sliced away and Josie and I and young Mr Tomlinson and even Mary Robinette Kowal will be very ordinary actors indeed. Try to remember that when the moon is full,” he tells Tommy. “You’ll not get nearly as many second chances as I was given.”
I’ve heard him say much of this on many different occasions. But it’s one of the reason why, when he holds out his arm, I take it and walk with him up the aisle. A camera backs up before us.
People rise, applauding, and he smiles his way into the narrow lobby and out onto Commerce Street.
Outside all is quiet. By arrangement with the block association, the klieg lights are off. The crowd is largely dispersed. The moon has disappeared behind the houses. Cameras follow us to the curb, then stop.
A driver opens the back door of a limo. We kiss the kids goodbye, promise we’ll see them all tomorrow, make sure Mary will have the shoulder looked at, and escape before the fans can get to us. The cameras don’t follow any further. We’ll see them tomorrow also.
Ransom and I settle into the back seat and I give the directions home. Yes. We are roommates again—un folie aux deux.
The energy of the moon has flowed out of us. The wolf sleeps after it has fed. I sink into the seat. “I hope they got the footage they wanted,” I say.