The brief life of our ensemble, like the incident which brought it to a definitive close, seemed to confirm our teachers’ warnings against attempting to emulate former pupils. Here was a tale strikingly like their reminiscences of the past, full of potential colour and spice, just waiting to be brought out in the telling; but the reality was flat, and then silly, and finally, after one moment of glory, when for an instant it sparkled and shone, abrupt and ignominious in its ending.
Yet I didn’t give up. The following year I tried again to forge some magic from the drab reality around me.
It was the time of my first fascination with the theatre. For several months I’d had no interest in anything else. I knew what was playing in every theatre in town; I even went to some plays twice. Like a professional drama critic, I never missed an opening night. I also read endless numbers of plays, devoured all the theatrical magazines I could lay my hands on, and studied the biographies of famous actors and directors.
I was captivated. The tragic and comic fates of dramatic heroes, the beauty and talent of the actors, the élan with which they threw themselves into their scenes and recited their soliloquies, the mysterious half-light and the dazzling glare, the darkness, the backstage secrets, the gong that rang before the act began, and then the joyful conclusion – the audience applauding, the actors, including those whose characters had just died, taking their bows – this whole world of illusion had me under its spell. In those days I could have stayed in the theatre forever.
I decided to see what I could achieve. I wanted to know what it felt like to be up there on the stage, captivating the audience, mesmerising them with eyes and voice and force of expression: what it was like to act, to put on a show. Heedless of the still recent fate of the Modern Jazz Quartet and the troubles it had entangled me in, I set about organising a school drama circle.
The path I was taking wasn’t strewn with roses. On the contrary, it bristled with difficulties and pitfalls far more treacherous than those I’d encountered playing jazz. Playing an instrument, at any level, presupposes certain well-defined and measurable skills; the very possession of them is a guarantee of results, however basic. But the art of theatre is deceptive. While ostensibly much more accessible, it requires, if it is to bear its magic fruit, enormous amounts of work and skills of a very particular kind; otherwise it becomes, insidiously, a source of ridicule. So I had to keep a tight hold on the reins if the spirit of disenchantment was not to paralyse me, for I was involving myself in something which, while diverging considerably from my hopes and dreams, exposed my love for the divine Melpomene to the harshest trials.
Anyone who has ever been in a play knows how rehearsals, particularly walk-throughs, can sap morale: how easily every shortcoming – lack of sets and costumes, absence of lights and props, lines imperfectly learnt and woodenly rendered, clumsy movements and artificial gestures – can breed discouragement. When one considers that in the present case these elements were supplemented by two further factors, namely the amateurishness of a school production and a lack of real motivation on the part of the participants, the full extent of my torment becomes apparent. On the one hand, the cast seemed to believe I knew what I was doing: I fed them the illusions they needed, and they appeared to trust in our ultimate success. On the other hand, when they saw what I saw, they would lose faith and relapse, which meant that standards fell and the temptation returned to give up then and there.
‘We’re wasting our time,’ they would say, ‘we’ll never get anywhere. We’ll only end up looking ridiculous. And even if we do get somewhere, how many performances will we have? One, maybe two. Is all this worth it for just one performance?’
‘Of course it’s worth it,’ I would reply. ‘If it works, it would be worth it just for one moment. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about . . .’ (I was thinking, of course, of the Quartet’s swan song.)
‘Oh, that’s just talk,’ they’d say, shaking their heads and dispersing in mute resignation.
Sometime near the end of April, after months of preparation, endless reassessments, substitutions and changes of mind, countless nervous breakdowns and moments of feverish exhilaration, the play assumed its final shape. It was an hour-long collage of selected scenes and monologues from famous plays – Aeschylus to Beckett. All the World’s a Stage was characterised throughout by the darkest pessimism. It began with the monologue of Prometheus chained to his rock and went on with the dialogue between Creon and Haemon from Antigone; then came a few bitter passages from Shakespeare, among them Jaques’s soliloquy from As You Like It about the seven ages of man, beginning with the words we had adopted as our title; then the concluding soliloquy of Molière’s Misanthrope, followed by Faust’s first soliloquy and a fragment of his dialogue with Mephistopheles. Lastly, there was a fragment of Hamm’s soliloquy from Endgame.
This script, submitted to the school authorities for inspection, was rejected.
‘Why is it so gloomy?’ the deputy headmaster wanted to know, eyeing it with disfavour. Tall, thin, with a sallow complexion and a slightly tubercular look, he was generally known as the Tapeworm. ‘You feel like killing yourself after reading this. We can’t tolerate defeatism in this school.’
‘But these are classics, sir,’ I ventured, trying to defend my creation. ‘They’re almost all in the syllabus. I’m not the one who drew up the syllabus.’
‘Don’t you try to hide behind the syllabus,’ he replied, frowning as he shuffled through the pages. ‘There’s a reason you’ve selected these particular passages: it’s a deliberate attempt to question every decent value and discourage people from study and work. Here, for instance,’ he said, pointing to the page with Faust’s monologue. He read out the first few lines:
The books I’ve read! Philosophy,
And Law, and Medicine besides;
Even (alas!) Theology.
I’ve searched for knowledge far and wide.
And here I am, poor fool, no more
Enlightened than I was before.
‘Well? How else should this be read, in your opinion? It says that studying is worthless and won’t get you anywhere. Doesn’t it? And you expect us to applaud such a message?!’
‘We had it in literature class,’ I retorted impatiently. ‘Are you saying that it’s all right in class or at home, but not on stage?’
‘It’s different in class,’ the Tapeworm replied, unruffled. ‘In class there’s a teacher to tell you what the author intended.’
‘Well, then, sir, what, in your opinion, did Goethe intend here?’ I asked.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he snorted. ‘He was talking about pride: excessive, overweening pride. And arrogance. Just like yours, in fact. Once you start thinking you know everything, you’re bound to come to a bad end. Here you are,’ he said, pointing to a passage further down, ‘it says so here.’
To Magic therefore have I turned
To try the spirits’ power and gain
The knowledge they alone bestow;
No longer will I have to strain
To speak of things I do not know.
