Best of the Blog: Opening Night With Eleanor -- Nan Brooks

[Note: Today's post originally appeared on January 22 2020. During the months of September and October, the Consortium is using Mondays to re-visit some of our best work.] 

      Putting my Eleanor together, my mom's knitting contribution 

       in my lap  Photo by Cynthia Rumbaugh

First the disclaimer: This happened in 1985. I’ve forgotten some things, embroidered others, and probably made myself appear to be a better person than I am. But here is a story of community and feminist theater and more of my time with Eleanor Roosevelt.

     We were two weeks out from opening when a friend wrote to tell me that she’d seen the publicity for a woman who was touring a show about ER and had been for a while. I sat with the letter in my hands and everything around me became very quiet. I knew I couldn’t continue. I was intruding on someone else’s territory. In tears I called Jane Winslow, who was serving the troupe as director, stage manager, sound designer, and sanity preserver. I kind of knew I was over-reacting, but this was a blow. Jane wasn’t home, but her partner Nancy answered the phone. She said matter of factly, “You know, Nan, you always want to pull the plug at this stage, right before final rehearsals. You always think you can’t do it. But you can, so do it anyway.”  I value friends who know me well and can call me on my “stuff." Nancy was right. I took a breath.

     “Oh yeah,” I said, “follow Eleanor’s advice.”  In my best Eleanor voice, I quoted, “You gain courage, strength and confidence every time you are forced to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you cannot do.”  Nancy laughed, said, “You sound just like her.”  So I went back to work running lines.

     After rehearsing for less than two weeks, I was excited to move into the performance space.  The prop crew had gathered furniture and even their own family antiques to create Eleanor’s sitting room. There Eleanor would have a conversation with the invisible young reporter and tell the story of her life. My mother had knitted several rows onto needles so that I could knit while I talked, as Eleanor did, and I’d been practicing. I wasn’t speedy, but at least I didn’t have to constantly watch my hands. Well, sometimes I didn’t. My friend Rob had lent his expertise and created a terrific makeup so that I looked twenty years older. My friend Sid had given the play its title: Dear Mrs. Roosevelt because a letter to Eleanor was what set the play in motion. So we were almost ready; we just needed to rehearse on stage and get the details right: set the lighting in place, make sure I could be heard everywhere in the “house”, and check my makeup under the lights.  There was a hitch, however. It was theater, hitches were to be expected.

     The arts festival was using every available performance space in town and the cushier ones with air conditioning, good sound and lighting systems and real dressings rooms, were reserved for musical performances. That made sense because musical instruments need friendly climate. The two theater pieces in the festival were assigned to what had once been a high school auditorium and we were to perform in rotation. Dear Mrs. Roosevelt on one night, a community theater group in Harvey (I think it was) the next, then another rotation. Rehearsals would be in rotation as well. A band was also scheduled in there somewhere. That meant we would have to store our set and antiques someplace secure, but the only space was in a room high over the stage. The steadfast crew figured out how to pack and unpack it all efficiently and safely and we moved in for the three rehearsals.

     I dressed and made up in the corner of what had once been a cafeteria, not exactly private space, but I had a table and mirror and could duck into a restroom to change clothes. Jane had found the perfect music and I stood offstage waiting for my entrance as it played. I was awash in gratitude for all the wonderful women who had made the play happen, who had insisted I do my best work and been honest about where the play and I were lacking. I was all business, or thought I was. About five minutes into the play, I stopped and said to Jane, “Would you please mark the script here? I want to move this paragraph to the top of the next page.” She stood up from her seat in the theater and said, “OK, just stop this. You are sabotaging your own rehearsal. Go back to the top of the show, make your entrance and stay in character for God’s sake!”

     I was stunned. Jane never spoke that sharply to anyone and I knew she was right. It hit me then that I was about create an hour and a half in character, doing the best acting I could, to bring Eleanor to life so that she could inspire us all to heal the world. And do it all alone. I was overwhelmed, but there was no time to let myself feel it. The other group would arrive to rehearse, and we had to be out of the way. I took a breath, went offstage and started over.

     There is a kind of magic when it all goes well in rehearsal that feels like flying. This was not one of those times. There was a bit of magic, but not much. It was almost 100 degrees, there was a lot of noise from the hallway from the other theatre group, and my feet hurt like hell in those shoes. I quite literally could not fill Eleanor Roosevelt’s shoes and I felt like a fool even trying. And then there was the couple necking in the back row where they thought I couldn’t see them.

     I’d been dating a woman who had fallen in love with someone else and broken up with me that week.  She had been so gentle about it that I, already in the self-centered fog of production, had missed the point.  Both of them were on the crew, and now there they were, trying to be discreet, but I could see them clearly in the spill from the light booth. Rehearsal was not going well, to say the least. I almost laughed out loud – sometimes life becomes soap opera. I kept going through both acts anyway. 

     I had some good moments when I could tell everyone, or rather everyone except the lovebirds, sat up a little straighter and paid close attention. So I was getting there. We finished, cleared the stage, schlepped the furniture and props up the steep stairs to storage, and went home.  I was exhausted and discouraged. Tomorrow was our last tech rehearsal and in a stroke of luck, someone had appeared to videotape the play. That meant we would have a record, a way to reproduce the whole thing later. It wouldn’t be a true run-through in character; there would be stops and starts, but it could work.

     I had decided to let the play rest for about a year. That would give me time to finish my bachelor’s degree, research copyright law with an attorney, and seek permission from the Roosevelt family to continue if I could. We’d use the video a year down the road.

     I ran lines and ran lines and ran lines again, knowing that the cure for nervousness is preparation. I went over every move, made a map of where all the props were to be placed, and reviewed it all. There were various items placed in Eleanor’s sitting room that would prompt her to tell a particular story. One misplaced prop would mean that I’d be searching for it instead of just happening to see it and be reminded. It’s a good thing I like details, because they matter onstage.

     The next day I finished typing the programs on that trust IBM Selectric, pasted them up, and took them to the printer. I had gone to various merchants and organizations asking them to pay for ads, which paid the printing costs. I knew the seating capacity of the hall and tickets sales were going well, but I needed to be cautious about those printing costs. The money provided by the arts festival wouldn’t cover the costs of the production and I wasn’t being paid that summer. That afternoon I tried to rest but stopping to hold still meant that a host of memories presented themselves.

     Most people believe that actors are good liars, that we have a kind of loose relationship with the truth. But that is a misconception: actors are constantly working to uncover the truth in every line, every moment of a script. The intensely personal is universal. We’ve all witnessed performances on file or live when the character’s personal suffering touches on our own and we weep in recognition. We weep because we know that suffering to be true for us. Whole theaters full of people weep at a moment of truth, each feeling their own personal and different experiences and all feeling it at once. That can happen only when the actor works from her own truth. To portray Eleanor meant that I had to be open to my own sorrows that matched hers in some way. There are techniques that help actors do that, but there is no escaping it – the actor must feel deeply, feel it all in every moment, and do it again on command while remembering to speak loudly, be in the right place, use the props, etc. It is hard work in the easiest of circumstances.

     So instead of napping, I curled up in a fetal position, sobbing and saying repeatedly, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” I had taken on too much responsibility, I was hanging myself out to dry in front of my hometown friends, we were almost sold out. I was in big trouble. The alarm clock went off. I got up and went to rehearsal. One more to go to put it all into place.

     When I arrived, there was music blasting so loud I could hear it from the parking lot. The band sound check was going overtime. The band, it turned out, had left. But the technician, a friend of mine, was struggling to make it all work.  While she worked, our crew carried the furniture and props down those infernal steps and began setting everything up. One woman walked in front of a huge speaker and immediately had a migraine from the blast of sound. She was crying and wanted me to make the noise stop right now. We were now fifteen minutes into our rehearsal time with one hour to go and a 90-minute play to rehearse. I figured I could eliminate the intermission break and just run both acts back to back if we started right away. The videographer was setting up her camera but couldn’t check the audio because of the loud music.

     The sound tech was furious. She refused to turn the volume down, refused to stop the sound check, and came to find me in my makeshift dressing room. She screamed at me about what a diva I was, how spoiled I was, reminded me that I had no business doing this play, and that no one liked working with me. The crew stood staring; mouths open. I began to shake and willed myself not to cry. And then I went cold. I became very calm. 

     I remember saying something like, I hear you, I know you are angry. But we have been patient and now we don’t have time for a full rehearsal. If this crew doesn’t want to work with me, they can tell me themselves.”  

     We now had fifteen minutes left of our two-hour rehearsal time and I asked the crew to put everything away again and meet me outside. Some of the women were very angry, some were crying, but for some reason, I was fairly calm. I believe that leaders are in service to the group they lead, and I knew that if I gave in to any emotion, I would fail the women who had worked so hard to support the play and me. Where my calm came from was a mystery, I am not that noble, and I am in touch with my emotions. It’s a major requirement of my profession. I packed up the dressing space and went to help schlep props.

     We sat outside under a tree and I asked that we all hold hands and breathe together. We let our anger sink into the earth like the 1980s lesbians we were. The videographer told me she could not come to the next day’s rehearsal and thanked her for her patience. There went our chance for a marketing tool, but I had more important things to think about at that moment. 

     I had been struck by the sound tech’s statement that no one wanted to work with me.  So I asked the crew to be as honest with me as they could, told them I needed to hear their true feelings, and said that anyone who wanted to leave the project could do so. I said I would not blame them or talk with anyone about their decision. I wasn’t always crazy about working with me either. The floodgates opened, as I remember, and the crew began to vent their anger at the sound tech. I asked again that they tell me if they’d rather leave the production. But no one want to jump ship; they wanted to know how we were going to make up for the lost rehearsal time. Then I cried. 

     We had one more time in the hall before opening and we still needed to set light cues and more. I said I would rehearse in another space so we could use the time in the hall for tech and reminded them that “stuff happens” in theater productions all the time. I had been acting for almost 40 years; I could do this. I didn’t tell them I’d been curled up in a fetal position that afternoon.

     Jane and I rehearsed in her living room. We hatched a plan – what is called a “circumstance” in the Meissner acting technique. We would pretend that we were a well-known, professional producers who had come from out of town to show how real professionals work. We would stay calm, we would be completely prepared, we would be gracious, we would have fun, we would be a hit. The tech rehearsal went well, but I wasn’t convinced I could pull off a good performance because I’d never had a final dress rehearsal. Well, I wouldn’t have been convinced in any circumstances.

     Right before the opening performance, I had a call from Pam Dunlap, one of my favorite teen-aged daughters of Pat, who was helping on crew. Pam was a musical comedy performer and she had called to tell me to “break a leg.”  I lamented the heat in the 90s and the huge noisy fans in the hall instead of quiet air conditioning. “Oh that’s no problem,” she said, “Just pretend the audience is in their underwear!” That helped my nerves, oddly enough.

     I don’t remember much of that performance all those 35 years ago. I do remember the standing ovation and how I had to almost drag the crew onstage for curtain call. They had argued about doing it—the first time anyone had refused a chore. But I insisted. They grumbled, but they did it. I reminded the audience that it takes a lot of people to produce a one-woman show.