Thaddeus Rutkowski

Technical Theater

During my freshman year of college, I signed up for a one-credit course in technical theater. To get the credit, I had to go into a wood shop, put together some breakaway furniture, and watch during play rehearsals while an actor smashed what I’d assembled.

Between run-throughs, I prepared a chair and a coffee table that had been snapped between a truck bumper and a brick wall. I carefully glued the pieces together. Then I painted over the joints.

On stage, the furniture looked solid. When the protagonist went into a rage and hit the wood surfaces with his fist and foot, the chair and table exploded in satisfying ways. There was the sound of wood splintering, then crashes as the loose parts hit the stage.

Between rehearsals, I mimicked the protagonist—a tall man who was supposed to be Russian. I looked nothing like him, but I used his accented English and his gestures as I hit things like my wall and desk with my foot and fist.

*

When my classmates called me a rube, I didn’t know what the word meant. I had to look up “rube” to learn that I was being insulted.

When I told a dorm neighbor I was from Pennsylvania, she said the state’s name with a backwoods twang: “So, you’re from PennsylVAYnia?”

She told me she was from Manhattan and had grown up with the children of celebrities. She had played with them in their apartments next to Central Park. She didn’t need another friend.

*

I answered an ad in the college paper for a free football ticket. I wanted to see the game, but I didn’t know I would have to go with a group of sorority sisters. The young women put me in a car and drove me to a bar. On the way, they sang school songs. One was about the rival team; it went: “To hell, to hell with Pennsylvania. To hell, to hell with Pennsylvania. To hell, to hell with Pennsylvania. To hell with the U. of P.—pee you!”

In the barroom, the sisters sat on stools at the counter. Gradually, they became drunk and careless. I didn’t pay much attention until one of them fell off her stool and onto the floor. I looked to see if she was injured, but she appeared to be fine, just a bit giddy.

The football game was played in a cold rain. I sat on a bleacher seat and got pelted with icy drops for about an hour until I left the stadium. To my knowledge, the sorority sisters stayed for the rest of the game.

Later, I heard our alma mater ringing out from the tower chimes in a minor mode. It was a signal that the home team had lost.

*

I took a shower, and when I came out of the stall I noticed that my clothes were missing. They were not where I’d hung them; the rack was empty.

I had to get from the shower area to my room to get dressed. I would have to walk naked down a long corridor past my neighbors’ doors.

I grabbed a shower curtain, detached it from its rod, wrapped it around my body, and ran. As I passed one open doorway, I heard someone say, “Go, man, go!”

*

I looked out my window and saw a stream of students on the sidewalk below. I understood they were from a neighboring college; they were going to a rock concert at the recreation hall.

When one of them saw me looking, he paused and asked, “Have you read any good books lately?”

*

After a few theater rehearsals, the joints of my breakaway furniture became worn. Glue wouldn’t hold the parts together anymore. I had to use electrical tape instead. I wrapped black strips around the arms and legs of the chair and table and hoped the bandages wouldn’t show.

On opening night, I sat in the audience and watched as my furniture sagged during the performance. The activity on stage—the pacing and stamping—made the chair and table droop. When the protagonist hit the wood with his foot and fist, the pieces sank to the floor with a sigh.

Afterward, the director said to me, “You might do better on South Pacific. There are Polynesians in it. Aren’t you from someplace like Bali Ha’i yourself?”

*

I signed up for a one-time class in hula dance. I wasn’t really interested in hula, but it was the only class that fit my schedule.

I was allowed to participate, but there were some prerequisites. For one, I had to wear a robe with a dragon sewn on the back, as if I were a Mandarin, a Han, or a member of a street gang. Luckily, I found the right attire and went to the first rehearsal, an enactment of the pomegranate myth. This was high drama, with Asian plantation workers rising to assassinate their employers. I had to learn the harvest movements, the machete work.

Another requirement was that I had to behave. If I didn’t, there would be consequences. I would feel the bamboo.

At least I was wearing a robe, not a grass skirt. At least I wasn’t topless, mimicking the motion of waves or the movements of oarsmen. At least I had my clothes.

But what I really wanted to see was a Hula-Hoopist, or Hula-Hoopster, with a flower in her hair. I wanted her to start slowly, with the hoop around her knees. I wanted to see her coax the hoop up to her waist—where it would spin faster—then to her chest and to her neck. I wanted to see her send the ring along her raised arms until it was a whirling blur around her wrists. I wanted her to move like a serpent in the twirling plastic circle.

*

I went back to my room and acted out a monologue I’d heard during rehearsals. I became angry—so angry my eyes blazed. I gestured wildly, with my arms extended and my fingers splayed. But I could remember only one word of dialogue: “crocodile.”

I stomped around, feeling furious, repeating, “Crocodile” in a low, threatening voice. I imagined I was a six-foot-tall Russian man who had been wronged. I reached into the air with empty hands, then brought my fists to my chest. I knew that what I was doing would be considered very rude in most circles, but I did it anyway.