Naked

Acting, and Not

Photo by Daniel Curran on Unsplash

The last whisper Fernan heard before curtain was that people were scalping tickets to The Windowsill Wanderer.

It was New Year’s Eve, the last show of the run, the last show in the Navarro Theatre.

Camby had to sell the building to a law firm to get out of crushing debt.

If the rumor was true that they were scalping tickets outside, it was a combination of sympathy, nostalgia for the old building, and  maybe, just maybe a few reviews and tweets that said The Windowsill Wanderer was triumphant, that playwright Kimberly Warrilow was “a theatrical force we haven’t seen the last of”, and that Fernan Rohan’s performances were “blasphemously wonderful for independent theater and beyond, headed to Broadway.”

There were a few problems with the reviews in Fernan Rohan’s eyes, he thought, as Camby bent in and kissed him on the forehead for good luck seconds before the narrator began the play.

Fernan looked up at the catwalk.

He, and the rest of the world had seen the last of Kimberly Warrilow, at least in corporeal form.

She had succumbed to an asthma attack in the shower just days after the reviews had been published in theater blogs.

Most of the blogs had audiences in the dozens.

Fernan, knowing the theater was sold, took a job as a fly fishing guide in Ucluelet, British Columbia.

Tributes to Kim were scrawled in Sharpie all over the red brick backstage.

She had come into Fernan’s life as that life was getting dragged downhill in exhaust covered slush and facewashes of ill fortune and hardship.

She had written The Windowsill Wanderer before they met, but once she saw Fernan’s cold read… cold fucking read, she used to tell people, …owned it, embodied Kenneth on a cold fucking read…she demanded he play the role.

Camby agreed, but would not allow Fernan to perform completely naked in the third act.

He wore boxers, which made little sense in context, but Camby was adamant.

When Allie Walsh, narrating, said “thorns and sirens,” that was when Fernan locked into Kenneth;the point when he was immersed, unreachable as Fernan.

At “Mag light,” Fernan entered, the aforementioned light shining in his face.

He allowed the light to blind him, purposely, doing the rest of the scene with true difficulty seeing, and flash spots in his retinas.

When he turned to the audience, Kenneth thought he saw Fernan’s ex-wife in the second row.

It made no sense, she lived outside Chula Vista now, thousands of miles away.

Kenneth carried on, through Fernan, shedding Fernan, trying to lock out outside thoughts.

But a thin, thin sheen of Fernan remained on stage, a reality like clinging to a cliff by a broken pinkie nail.

He was Kenneth, the Kenneth Kimberly envisioned, with Fernan a single bead of extremely hot sweat.

It was that bead of sweat that rippled with the applause, more than polite, beyond enthusiastic.

Kenneth’s third act cue was the word “honor,” and mere words before it was spoken he shed the boxer shorts.

Camby almost said “No!” out loud, and his hand sprung forth like an out of control robot.

Honor was spoken and Kenneth entered, utterly naked, vulnerable, alone.

Fernan Rohan was the sweat on the entire form of Kenneth now, also naked, vulnerable, and alone with the exception of a memory. 

When Kenneth dies, his body crumples to the stage and the curtain falls.

Fernan Rohan found the place on the stage where the curtain would not separate Kenneth from the audience.

Naked and motionless, the curtain fell behind him. 

Camby’s arm, the same arm that tried to prohibit him from entering naked, now silently had back Fernan’s castmates that wished to rush to his aid.

The crowd was on their feet, the applause was a tsunami, Fernan was Kenneth and Kenneth was Fernan and neither of them moved. 

Kenneth was dead,and Fernan knew that as long as the audience cheered, Kimberly Warrilow was as alive as she would ever be again.

***

One day I may share with you a conversation I had on a set once. For a wonderful memory, it’s a very hard story to tell.

Thank You for being part of this adventure, and Happy New Year.