Away We Go

All right, Mr. Cole Porter—what’s next??

Yesterday, I ended the blog entry with the words from Porter’s anthem, “Another Op'nin, Another Show”:

Four weeks, you rehearse and rehearse
Three weeks, and it couldn't be worse
One week, will it ever be right?

The line immediately after that is:

Then out of the hat, it's that big first night!

So the “dues ex machina” in this saga of my actors showing up (oh, for those who don’t know that quirky phrase—a “deus ex machina” literally means a “god out of a machine,” and it refers back to the Greeks and how playwrights would sometimes use the strangest way to end a twisted story, and sometimes produce a god, literally out of a machine to end the action…now isn’t it fun to learn theater history??!) are the two adult actors who jumped on stage Thursday night to allow the cast a decent run-through. With no preparation Lucy and Tristan did a fine job, and in the 40 hours or so since they agreed to take on the two major roles vacated by my less-than-responsible boys, they have virtually learned the roles.

The final scene of Our Country’s Good had never really worked before in our rehearsals—it is a scene in which the convicts are backstage before their performance in front of the gaolers/officers and they express their fears and hopes of doing the play. It is a simple scene really, but it needs the energy, the adrenaline, and a genuine love of the theater to sell the scene. It had lacked a vibrancy and urgency, until Thursday night, when our very play was threatened, and my student actors nearly didn’t know if they would get to do this play at all. All of a sudden the motivation and the intensity were right there. They nailed the scene and captured that inexpressible passion of creating theatrical magic.

Last night most of the elements were in place. Convicts created some mud behind the courtyard/stage and rolled around to get some real dirt on their ragged costumes. The officers tried on their dapper new red-coat uniforms created by a tailor who works on campus. We crossed our fingers about the sound and light cues since we hadn’t had a proper technical rehearsal.

The next verse of Cole Porter’s anthem to the theater goes up a key, ramping up the suspense of the impending op’nin’:

The overture is about to start
You cross your fingers and hold your heart
It's curtain time and away we go -
Another op'nin
Just another op'nin of another show!


The line “away we go” made me think—that was actually the original title of the legendary musical Oklahoma! as it tried out its legs in New Haven, Connecticut back in the fall of 1943. Oklahoma! was a smashing success, in part because of its theatrical genius, but also because its homespun values and escapism allowed a war-weary public a chance to kick back and smile.

But then somehow the phrase “away we go” made me think of the historical anniversary today on June 6th. I turned on CNN this morning, and there they were—a bevy of WWII veterans, much older and stooped of back, but still impassioned for the work those survivors had helped accomplish on 65 years ago today.

Today is D-Day, and I look at the veterans every June who gather at the beaches in Normandy to commemorate that huge invasion. My grandfather went up on the beach on June 8, 1944—as he and his buddies called it, “D-Day+2.” I think about what these men did as they landed on that French beach to liberate Europe from Nazi control.

I remember when Saving Private Ryan came out, and we took the entire upper school to the movie theater from Hackley to watch the film. Just before the film we spoke to the audience of students about how the soldiers must have felt during that pre-dawn channel crossing, and we gave them a facsimile of the broadside that was distributed to those soldiers 65 years ago with the order from Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower, exhorting them to do their duty in this momentous landing:

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41.

The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeat in open battle man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground.

Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men.

The tide has turned.

The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle.

We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

I am not claiming that the preparation for this play is anything like the Normandy invasion, but in both endeavors we have beseeched “the blessings of Almighty God.”
I remember watching the television mini-series, Band of Brothers, when Lieutenant Richard Winters reflected on all he had seen and he said, “That night, I took time to thank God for seeing me through that day of days. . . .and if somehow I managed to get home again, I promise God and myself that I would find a quiet piece of land someplace, and spend the rest of my days in peace.” I thank those men, the men who fell that day 65 years ago, and the men who survived, for enduring the rigors of that battle.

As for me, I had little to do today. I helped those two actors go over their lines. I hoisted a British flag on the upstage side of the courtyard so all will know whose colony it is in the play. I set up the chairs in the courtyard for the 100 or so audience members who will sit and engage in this piece of theater, and I am humming that line again from Porter,

The overture is about to start
You cross your fingers and hold your heart
It's curtain time and away we go -
Another op'nin
Just another op'nin of another show!