Summer Stock

In the late Seventies I spent several summers in a lovely tourist town on the East coast doing summer stock. It was an artist'’s colony that was surrounded almost entirely by a farm community. So on one hand we had all these highly intelligent, feeling, emotional artists of all sexes and genders running around going, "Oh, I can feel the cosmic life forces touching my genitalia! Let'’s do the hustle!!" And at the same time we had a bunch of guys in John Deere hats going, "“Hey, Dwayne, let's throw some faggots in the river."

I find life a curious thing. I find small town life even curiouser. And I find small town summer stock theatre life is...well...as close to a life analogy as you can get. It’s all there. The pleasure and the stress. All the little cliques. The hierarchy and the ...er...lowerarchy. Pecking orders are adhered to strictly. We have the intelligentsia and the stupidly vain. The workers and the privileged few. The leaders in the form of directors and producers and the followers who remain in the chorus the entire season. Once in a while a particular person, an actor or a director, might shoot far past the throng and shine, like Camelot, for one brief shining moment, far surpassing anyone that has come before. Pure genius unleashed. Reaching out to the audience and fellow thespians and catching their souls or sharing his or her own soul with the watching crowd. Magic. But mostly it'’s a mundane existence that the rest of humanity experiences daily.

There was a young man who was on the bottom of that summer stock pecking order one season. He was named Mark and he was an apprentice, which meant that he did all the menial work for no pay and no glory. Just for the opportunity to learn and perfect his chosen trade. In other words he was being taken advantage of by the producer. He seemed to be a carefree fellow. He'd never complain and always did his job with much vigor. One sunny summer day Mark forgot to put on his underwear before leaving his apartment. As a matter of fact he forgot to put on his pants, his shirt, his shoes and his socks as well. In this unclad and highly unMark-like state he danced down the center of Main Street. Like some crazed Pied Piper trying to enthrall the local populace with his bouncing skin flute. He made his happy, flippy-floppy way to the local general store where, in one great whoop of joy, he crouched down and deposited a big old stinking, steaming, corn-encrusted Mark muffin in the middle of the floor. The customers in the store were transfixed. Half thinking that this was the most beautiful, artistic statement made that decade and the other half wondering where they had left their shotguns. Mark, having finished his masterwork, stood and with a little grin and, I imagine, laying a finger aside of his nose, went back down through the streets of town; laughing, bouncing, dancing - never to be seen again.

I suppose what scares me the most is that as we make our way through our existence, we're all just this close to dropping our trousers, squatting and leaving our mark in the middle of general store of our life.