“Hardy Players
du nouveau monde
.” They were all assembled now. The boy who would play Alec was a fourteen-year-old with a head of thick dark hair named John Jacobs, older brother of brown-eyed Tula. “Goodbye, my four months’ cousin,” he rolled off his tongue, “I was born bad, and lived bad, and should die bad.”
Parley had also settled on who would play the parson’s son, the great love of Tess’s life, “educated, reserved, subtle, sad, differing” Angel Clare.
“You’re the type,” he said to Michael, interrupting his reading lesson with Connie. Having fled the invading thespians, she was now using Miss Fluelling’s classroom for after-school tutoring. “You’ll have no trouble learning the lines, not with that memory of yours. Here.” He put a grey fedora on Michael’s head.
“You can’t have the brother playing the husband,” Connie said.
“Come now. It’s just acting.”
“They
aren’t
actors.”
She stood up and Michael took off the fedora, and Stefan Fuchs got saddled with the weak and unconvincing character of Angel Clare.
It really wasn’t hard, she discovered, to hold her own against Parley, even if she felt shaken afterwards, more soiled than triumphant. She thought she had his measure: he was harmless so long as you didn’t let yourself be pushed around. Such miscalculations abound. Newsdrifted in about millionaires throwing themselves out of windows, but no one in 1929 had any idea that the world was entering the Great Depression. It took two years, Connie told me, for the truth to settle in.
To give the effect of oncoming disaster, Parley covered oil lamps with red tissue paper. “Make them a little uncomfortable,” he said of the future audience. “If they have to strain to see, they’ll pay more attention.”
He wooed the same way, if wooing it was. With extra energy he leaned forward and said to Connie, “Flirt comes from
fleur
. To give flowers.”
She had to smile as she looked away. He wasn’t like anyone else.
If Connie failed to understand him, what was a thirteen-year-old girl to make of this complicated man?
“Susan,” he said in his lordly way,
“Miss Graves
. Do me the kindness of remembering that Tess calls the letter ‘my life.’ You must handle it as if it is precious.”
He was referring to Tess’s written confession about her sinful past (the seduction by Alec; the infant who died) to Angel Clare, the pastor’s son she dotes on and hopes to marry.
“Susan, what is the most important thing in the world to you?”
Her lips moved.
“I can’t hear you.”
Her eyes sought the window and the window provided an answer, as it often does. “My dog.”
“Your dog. What’s the dog’s name?”
“Mabel.”
“Pretend the letter is Mabel.”
A stepladder served as the stairs leading up to Angel’s attic room. A carpeted board nailed to the top of the ladder was the threshold of the pretend doorway. Susan climbed the steps and slid the folded letter halfway under the threshold, then gave it a gentle caress before pushing it very slowly the rest of the way.
Connie watched, fascinated by the terrible moment when Tess’s life slides not across the floor into Angel’s view, but out of sight under the carpet. Susan had an extraordinarily sensitive face.
Parley kept lines to a minimum. The play was more like the re-enactment of a crime scene, a pantomimed version of an old, sad story. To convey the plot and the passage of time, he wrote big inter-titles on the blackboard, like the written frames in silent pictures.
TESS THINKS ANGEL HAS FORGIVEN HER .
THE WEDDING GOES FORWARD .
“Before the wedding,” he said to Susan, “you’ll brush your hair. Then after the murder, you’ll brush your hair again, and the contrast will speak volumes.”
Pre-wedding Susan ran her hands up through the hair on the back of her head, then brushed her hair slowly and thoughtfully. She put on a pair of white gloves. The stepladder on its side became
du nouveau monde
.” They were all assembled now. The boy who would play Alec was a fourteen-year-old with a head of thick dark hair named John Jacobs, older brother of brown-eyed Tula. “Goodbye, my four months’ cousin,” he rolled off his tongue, “I was born bad, and lived bad, and should die bad.”
Parley had also settled on who would play the parson’s son, the great love of Tess’s life, “educated, reserved, subtle, sad, differing” Angel Clare.
“You’re the type,” he said to Michael, interrupting his reading lesson with Connie. Having fled the invading thespians, she was now using Miss Fluelling’s classroom for after-school tutoring. “You’ll have no trouble learning the lines, not with that memory of yours. Here.” He put a grey fedora on Michael’s head.
“You can’t have the brother playing the husband,” Connie said.
“Come now. It’s just acting.”
“They
aren’t
actors.”
She stood up and Michael took off the fedora, and Stefan Fuchs got saddled with the weak and unconvincing character of Angel Clare.
It really wasn’t hard, she discovered, to hold her own against Parley, even if she felt shaken afterwards, more soiled than triumphant. She thought she had his measure: he was harmless so long as you didn’t let yourself be pushed around. Such miscalculations abound. Newsdrifted in about millionaires throwing themselves out of windows, but no one in 1929 had any idea that the world was entering the Great Depression. It took two years, Connie told me, for the truth to settle in.
To give the effect of oncoming disaster, Parley covered oil lamps with red tissue paper. “Make them a little uncomfortable,” he said of the future audience. “If they have to strain to see, they’ll pay more attention.”
He wooed the same way, if wooing it was. With extra energy he leaned forward and said to Connie, “Flirt comes from
fleur
. To give flowers.”
She had to smile as she looked away. He wasn’t like anyone else.
If Connie failed to understand him, what was a thirteen-year-old girl to make of this complicated man?
“Susan,” he said in his lordly way,
“Miss Graves
. Do me the kindness of remembering that Tess calls the letter ‘my life.’ You must handle it as if it is precious.”
He was referring to Tess’s written confession about her sinful past (the seduction by Alec; the infant who died) to Angel Clare, the pastor’s son she dotes on and hopes to marry.
“Susan, what is the most important thing in the world to you?”
Her lips moved.
“I can’t hear you.”
Her eyes sought the window and the window provided an answer, as it often does. “My dog.”
“Your dog. What’s the dog’s name?”
“Mabel.”
“Pretend the letter is Mabel.”
A stepladder served as the stairs leading up to Angel’s attic room. A carpeted board nailed to the top of the ladder was the threshold of the pretend doorway. Susan climbed the steps and slid the folded letter halfway under the threshold, then gave it a gentle caress before pushing it very slowly the rest of the way.
Connie watched, fascinated by the terrible moment when Tess’s life slides not across the floor into Angel’s view, but out of sight under the carpet. Susan had an extraordinarily sensitive face.
Parley kept lines to a minimum. The play was more like the re-enactment of a crime scene, a pantomimed version of an old, sad story. To convey the plot and the passage of time, he wrote big inter-titles on the blackboard, like the written frames in silent pictures.
TESS THINKS ANGEL HAS FORGIVEN HER .
THE WEDDING GOES FORWARD .
“Before the wedding,” he said to Susan, “you’ll brush your hair. Then after the murder, you’ll brush your hair again, and the contrast will speak volumes.”
Pre-wedding Susan ran her hands up through the hair on the back of her head, then brushed her hair slowly and thoughtfully. She put on a pair of white gloves. The stepladder on its side became
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