Somebody had spilled a Coke on the black boards of the stage and had tried to blot it up with those little napkins from the refreshment bar. A fourth of a cinnamon doughnut was stuck to the goo.
Nobody wanted to remind him that a band had been playing on the stage last night.
“I’ll get it,” said Nathan Somerville. Like the other boys, he had changed from his chapel clothes into jeans. You didn’t want to wear your good clothes backstage.
Thomas would have been crazy to skip rehearsal. He was learning to love it back here in this big empty space where you abandoned reality and became somebody else. He knew enough about theater to appreciate how big a stage it was for a high school theater, thirty feet from one end of the proscenium to the other, additional fifteen-foot wings on each side, and twenty-five feet deep. The place had two stories of fly space overhead, with ropes at the wings controlling flats for backdrops. There was an electric winch for raising and lowering the light bar, and there were more lights out front, in the ceiling over the heads of the audience. A light booth at the back of the auditorium held a big spotlight plus controls for all the other lights in the room. For rehearsals they used the full stage lights, not the smaller work lights lining the walls backstage. It was not economical, but Mr. Farnham said it helped you get used to the glare.
They were there to block the end of Act II, Scene I, when Othello and Desdemona arrive in Cyprus. Greg and Thomas had been there for fifteen minutes. Mrs. Warden was also there, sitting in a chair and looking as worn out as the bits of trash from the mixer scattered backstage. Nathan Somerville was the only other student there except for Landon Hopkins, who was up in the light booth. Everyone was waiting for Bud Gristina, the senior playing Cassio, to appear. The boys clowned around a little. Greg wound an old scarf around his head to look like a miniature turban, and Thomas found a wooden stick about a half-inch in diameter and three feet long he could use as a sword.
“Don’t play with that dowel,” said Farnham. “We’re using those for the banners.” Thomas put down the dowel and helped Nathan Somerville clean up the trash on the stage.
The telephone backstage rang. It was on the wall of the right wing. You couldn’t dial outside on it, but you could call the light booth or the prop room downstairs or even a dorm if you wanted.
“Maybe that’s Gristina now,” said Mr. Farnham. He walked over to pick up the receiver on the wall, and then he replaced it immediately. “They hung up,” he said.
Across the auditorium, high up in the light booth, Landon Hopkins shouted down.
“Did you just call me, Mr. Farnham? The telephone rang but nobody was there.”
The backstage telephone rang again. Again Farnham picked it up, again no answer. He shouted back up to Landon.
“Did you just call me?”
Landon shouted no.
“What the hell is going on with the telephones?” said Farnham. “Let’s set up the scene.”
Mr. Farnham had taped off places on the stage where the set would be. They would have two large columns flanking a set of three stairs across the back of the stage and a series of shorter columns projecting to the edge of the proscenium on either side. Desdemona’s bedroom was going to be trucked in from stage left, but the dolly had not yet been built. The columns were now just little squares of tape on the stage; the stairs were parallel strips of tape a foot apart.
Cassio still wasn’t here, so they decided to start at the end of the scene, where Othello first lands at Cyprus.
“Othello enters from up here,” said Farnham, indicating a place at upstage left. “Desdemona is already here with Michael Cassio”—he pointed to a spot downstage right—“and Iago and Roderigo are opposite them, there, downstage left.” The actors took their positions.
The telephone rang again. This time Greg, who was off stage and already in position, answered.
“Heavy breathing,” he said. “Then they hung up.”
“Just take it off the hook,” said Farnham. Greg obliged.
Farnham said to get started. He read Cassio’s line himself: “Lo, where he comes!”
“O, my fair warrior!” said Greg, striding into center stage.
“Not so breathless,” said Farnham immediately. “Try it stressing ‘fair’ rather than ‘warrior.’”
Greg did it again.
“My dear Othello,” said Mrs. Warden.
“Perfect,” said Mr. Farnham.
Othello and Desdemona had another exchange of pleasantries, and then Mr. Farnham interrupted again.
“Kiss her,” he said.
“I can’t,” said Greg.
“You have to kiss her,” said Mr. Farnham. “It’s in the text. You’ll kiss her again when you kill her.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” said Mr. Farnham. He was getting mad. After four months of learning to read the signs in his English class, Thomas could see that Farnham was on the verge of a tantrum.
“I am ill, Greg, but what I have is not catching,” said Mrs. Warden.
“It’s not that,” said Greg.
“Then stop· acting childish and start acting,” said Mr. Farnham.
Before Greg could answer, Landon Hopkins called down from the light booth.
“Mr. Farnham,” said Landon, “the switchboard just called and said we had a phone off the hook down here. It’s screwing up the other lines somehow.”
“Tell the switchboard to go to hell,” shouted Mr. Farnham. “I’m trying to run a rehearsal down here.” He looked cornered. “Put the phone back on the hook, Nathan.” Nathan replaced the telephone.
“Greg,” said Mr. Farnham, “what’s the problem here?”
“I’ve never kissed a white woman before,” said Greg.
Thomas was about to die from frustration. That was so damn typical of Greg. There were only about 350 boys in the school who dreamed all night about the chance to kiss Mrs. Warden, and the one who finally
