Dying is Easy, Theater is Hard

It's a Sunday.

ME:  How are you feeling?

THEM:  Other than the terminal illness?

This is how the interview is going to go.

ME:  Your husband says you had a good day yesterday.

THEM:  It was good.  I threw up though.

ME:  I'm sorry.  That's the worst.

THEM:  No, the worst is when you throw up beet juice.  It's bad enough drinking it.  You don't want to see it again.

ME:  Why were you drinking beet juice?

THEM:  I just do what they tell me, Kevin.

You've probably figured out that it's going to be a little different than the other ones.

ME:  Is beet juice good for you?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  I don't f***ing know.  I hope so, but even if it is, it didn't stay with me long.

I've never met this person, but we have a friend in common.

THEM:  Now, how did you meet [Name of Friend].

ME:  We met at karaoke.  He got me to sing Michael Bolton with him.

THEM:  Which song?

ME:  How Can We Be Lovers?

THEM:  I love that song.

ME:  You wouldn't have loved me singing it.

THEM:  You're not a good singer?

ME:  I'm not a singer--period.

THEM:  Haven't you been in musicals?

ME:  Yeah, you know, life is strange.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Yes, it is.

Them has been doing theater since she was a little girl.

THEM:  I was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.  I was a shy kid.  I didn't ever talk above a whisper.  But this teacher I had--Mrs. ******--she said to me, 'Get up on that stage!'  And if Mrs. ****** told you to get up on that stage, that's what you did.  I never got off it.

ME:  What do you remember about the first time you were onstage?

THEM:  I remember I could see my Daddy's face in the crowd.  He was sitting in the back near the hallway where the hallway lights were coming in, so I could see him, and he looked really proud of me, and I just thought that was it.  That was as good as it was going to get for me.  I come from a big family.  Six brothers and sisters.  We all wanted to make Daddy proud, so to see him cheering me on?  I felt like a queen.

When they got older, they studied theater in college, and after living in New York for a few years, returned to their hometown to start their own theater company and try to bring the arts to an area that was lacking in it.

THEM:  We got a lot of heat for it at first, because I like to shake things up.  I was doing some really out there kind of shows.  We're not far from the city, but you wouldn't know it.  People were not having it.  They came around though.

Then last year, they went to the doctor for a routine check-up, and everything changed.

THEM:  My doctor had that look on his face that you only see in tv shows.  I knew right off.  I knew what it was.  My mother had it and so did my sister.  I knew.

They've decided to keep their diagnosis private for many of the people they work with, but when they started reading these interviews, they saw an opportunity to discuss what their life has been like over the past year without revealing their identity.

THEM:  If people take a guess and get it, I don't mind, but I wasn't going to go on all the places and make a big deal of it.  I don't want people treating me different.  I still have a theater to run.

ME:  You're still running it?

THEM:  Hell yes.  I'm going to run it 'til I can't anymore.

ME:  How much longer do you think that'll be?

THEM:  You're getting dark on me, Kev.

ME:  Sorry.

THEM:  I'm busting your chops.  Come on now, I read these interviews.  You have a good sense of humor, right?  That's why I wanted to speak with you.

ME:  Okay, so in that spirit, how long until you're dead?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  It's looking like maybe I have another year, but, you know, miracles happen.

ME:  Are you religious?

THEM:  F*** no, I am not.

ME:  Me either.  I just wrote a column for a magazine here about a pizza delivery boy who asked me to pray with him.

THEM:  Did you do it?

ME:  I did, yeah.

THEM:  Good for you.  No harm in praying.  People are praying for me--the ones that know what's going on.

ME:  Is there anyone not invited to your funeral?

THEM:  My husband has the list.  I told him he can only have two of his girlfriends there, and the rest have to sit in the lobby.

ME:  Do you want anything special for it?

THEM:  I told everybody, your asses better be crying.  I don't want one of those happy funerals with music and dancing.  Y'all better be heartbroken I'm gone.  Somebody better throw themselves on the casket.  I want high drama.

ME:  Melodrama.

THEM:  That's right.

ME:  Well now I want to go.

THEM:  Let's see how the interview turns out and I'll see if I can get you an invite.

ME:  Obviously joking is a way for you to cope.

THEM:  My parents used to crack jokes all the time.  If you couldn't take a joke, go take out the trash instead.  We were not a very sensitive family.  Lots of love, lots of hugs--but if it was your turn to get your chops busted, then you better laugh along with everybody or you'd just get cracked on even worse.  That's how it was.

ME:  Is that how you direct too?  Are you a tough director?

THEM:  No, I'm a big Mama Bear.

ME:  You are?

THEM:  Yes, I am.  I'm a much different person when I'm directing.  I'm tough, but I'm squishy too.  Only time I ever cry is at the theater.

ME:  What makes you cry?

THEM:  Oh, I just love when somebody gets it, you know?  You see somebody trying and trying, and you're trying with them, trying to get them to get it, and they get it, and it's just--I love that.  That gets to me.  Because some people have to try really hard and it's rewarding--then to see them see their family and their friends come and cheer them on.

ME:  Like you with your Dad?

THEM:  Yes.  Everybody should get some of that in their life.

ME:  Has being ill made you more emotional?

THEM:  When I'm at work?  I try not to think about it.  Because I have a job to do.

ME:  Were you worried people wouldn't take you as seriously if they knew about your illness?

THEM:  My people--they respect me and I don't think that would've changed.  I just didn't want me being sick to be what we're about and what we do here.  I'm just one person.

ME:  It's your theater.

THEM:  I'm the boss, but it's not my theater.  I never felt that way about it.

ME:  You want it to continue after you're gone?

THEM:  Oh yes.  That's very important to me, and I've already put things in place for that to happen.

ME:  Like what?

THEM:  Now I can't tell you all the secrets, Kev.  I got to keep something to myself.

ME:  I'm a Succession fan so now--

THEM:  Isn't that show something?

ME:  I was talking with another Artistic Director about it recently--

THEM:  It's--I could watch those people all day.  So mean, but you just love 'em.  You love to hate 'em.

ME:  Knowing that you only have so much time left, has it--Has it affected the kinds of projects you want to do or what you want to spend your time on?

THEM:  The season we're in now was a season I chose right before I got sick, and it made me...It made me realize that you gotta pick everything you do like it's the last thing you're going to do.  Because I'll tell you a story.  There was a man who worked with us--many times--and he passed on after I got sick.  Very suddenly.  Nobody saw it coming.  You know, that taught me, nobody knows how much time they have left, so if you find yourself in some show you don't want to be in, because you think you just need something to pass the time, I would invite you to rethink that.

ME:  So are the shows you chose for this season shows you would have chosen--

THEM:  Yes, because--that's how I always was.  I wouldn't say I spent a lot of my life throwing time away.  I told you, I lost my mother and my sister, both very young.  So I don't take things for granted.

ME:  Has being sick given you any insight?

THEM:  No, I'm just as dumb as I was before.

ME:  (Laughs.)  Well, f*** my emotionally powerful interview then.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Oh s***,  I gotta give you some good quotes, don't I?

ME:  Why the f*** are we even talking then?

THEM:  (Laughs.)  You're going to make me puke up more of that beet juice, you son-of-a-bitch.  I knew you were gonna get me.

ME:  Barbara Walters makes people cry.  I make them puke.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Oh s***.

ME:  But it must make some stuff--You must look at some things differently.

THEM:  Oh sure.  I don't get--I used to get really worked up over what Tom and Joe and Harry were up to.  That doesn't bother me anymore.

ME:  Really?

THEM:  I--You know, I'd love to go out on top.  We did a show a few months ago that was just--it was the best thing we've done.  I think that's fair to say.  Everybody knew it.  People were really impressed.  The next month somebody else--somebody with a company who used to work with me, we had a falling out--they had a good show.  Nobody was talking about us anymore.  I got pissed off about it.  Then I said, 'Jesus, you're still getting mad about this s*** and half your body is cancer.  You got to snap out of that, sweetheart.'  So I went to go see the show.'

ME:  The show at the other theater?

THEM:  Yes.

ME:  How was it?

THEM:  It was all right.

ME:  (Laughs.)  I wish I could tell everybody what your tone sounded like just then.

THEM:  My Southern lady tone.

ME:  The pettiness just oozing--

THEM:  My husband says, 'You're really going to die petty, aren't you?'  Yes, I am, darling.  Yes, I am.

ME:  You're my hero.

THEM:  But no, I went to the show.  It was good.  I gave the guy--the one who I had the fight with--I gave him a big hug.  Said 'Congratulations.'  Thought he was going to fall over from shock.

ME:  Did you want closure with that whole thing?

THEM:  Yeah, I...When he left--You know, I don't do good with people leaving me.  That's a real point of hurt for me.

ME:  Me too.

THEM:  I just lashed out at him at the time.  That wasn't right.  He wanted his own thing.  Something he could have that was his the same way the theater was mine.  People need that.

ME:  You're saying everybody needs their own theater?

THEM:  Everybody needs to feel like they have some say in what goes on in their life and a way to say what they want to say how they want to say it.  You shouldn't deny somebody that.

ME:  Have you two talked more since you saw the show?

THEM:  He came to the theater to see one of our shows.  We got lunch.  I think we made some in-roads.

ME:  Does he know about your situation?

THEM:  I haven't told him yet, but I might.  I'm thinking on it.

ME:  How do you decide who to tell?

THEM:  It's been about who needs to know.  My Daddy used to say 'need-to-know' basis, and that's how I'm doing it.

ME:  Are there people you're never going to tell?

THEM:  There are people who are never going to need to know, yes.

ME:  I wanted to ask you what you're going to miss about doing theater when it gets to a point where you can't do it anymore.

THEM:  I loved building sets.

ME:  Really?

THEM:  Just because I'm a woman--

ME:  No, I just didn't know that you did that.

THEM:  I don't design them.  We have a great designer here.  I have no head for it.  But I like to build.  I like putting it all together and tearing it down when it's done.  It's like a ritual for me.  I really enjoy that.  We have great men and women here who work on all our shows, and I enjoy getting to know them.  They don't get the same recognition that me and the actors do, so I like to make them feel like they're special, because they are.  We wouldn't have a theater without them.  And you know, they know more about acting and directing than anybody else you're going to meet, because they've seen so much of it--good and bad.  When I'm having trouble with something like that, I'll go down to the scene shop and say, 'Hey y'all, what would you do if--'  They give me all my best ideas.  My lighting designer knows more about how to stage a play than people who work on Broadway, I can promise you that.

ME:  I have a great lighting designer.

THEM:  That's like having gold in your pocket.

ME:  Don't tell him though.  He's insufferable as it is.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Mine's this woman--she is a genius.  I said, 'How come you never directed?'  She said, 'I don't like talking to actors.'  Can't argue with that.

ME:  So you'll miss working in the scene shop--

THEM:  I'll miss that last moment of final dress when it's really time to turn the whole thing over to the audience.  I'll miss reading plays and thinking about--I could do this one like this.  I'll miss the people a lot.  I met a lot of nice people over the years.  We don't all still talk, but I miss 'em all the same.

ME:  So help me god, if you make me cry--

THEM:  Now you're going to cry?  You want to puke instead?

ME:  No, I hate puking.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  I'm going to miss giving notes.  I like that a lot.

ME:  All that talking.

THEM:  My actors won't miss it.

ME:  They might.

THEM:  (Laughs.)  Maybe the next lady'll talk less.

ME:  Is a woman going to replace you?

THEM:  That's very important to me.  I hope that's what'll happen.

ME:  See, I'm learning more about your plans.

THEM:  You little bastard.

ME:  (Laughs.)  Is there something you always wanted to do that you never got to do?

THEM:  That's hard to say.  I wanted to do The Sound of Music for a long time.

ME:  You're kidding.

THEM:  No!  What's wrong with The Sound of Music?

ME:  You wanted to direct it?

THEM:  No, I wanted to be Maria.

ME:  Wow.

THEM:  I'm too old now, but--

ME:  You could still do it.

THEM:  Honey, I can't sing it.  I sing like a bullfrog.

ME:  I would love to hear a bullfrog sing 'My Favorite Things.'

THEM:  You do it, I'll come up and be in it for you.  I'll probably be bald by then.  My old, bald ass up on a hill.

ME:  Old, bald Maria.

THEM:  I got a wig for it and everything.  It was my Halloween costume this year.

ME:  Okay, so technically, you've played the part.

THEM:  But I want the whole deal--I want the big sets--

ME:  Gurl, you're going to have to go somewhere else then.  I'll call Trinity for you.

THEM:  I don't know what that is.

ME:  It's the big theater up here.

THEM:  Would they do The Sound of Music with an old bald Maria?

ME:  It would certainly make it more interesting.

THEM:  That show is very interesting--right now.  Think about it.  It would be very interesting to do that show right now.

ME:  What's your best memory?

THEM:  You switched that around fast--

ME:  Listen, I have to wrap this up.

THEM:  F*** you.  This is because I won't give you an inspirational quote.

ME:  (Laughs.)  That's right.

THEM:  My favorite memory is--aside from that first show that I ever did--it was three or four years ago.  We were doing 33 Variations--you know that play?

ME:  Yeah, Moisés Kaufman.

THEM:  I hadn't acted in a long time and I didn't know if I still had it in me.  Opening night--it was one of those nights everybody was there.  I just hit the right notes.  I knew I did.  Landed right where I needed to.  That felt good.  I came backstage, and...

(Pause.)

I came backstage when the show was done, and everybody had a cake for me.  They were all standing there.  I just had all these people out in the house standing up and clapping for me, and then I go backstage, and there's all these people I've worked with for years and years, just howling because they were so proud of me.  I think that's it.  I don't think it'll get any better than that even if I had a hundred more years.

Them will be running a theater until they can't.