Up Till Now: The Autobiography

I had blown my line and was waiting to see if either one of us would break up in laughter. But for farce to work it has to be played earnestly. If the characters are in on the joke, if we were to start laughing, the entire suspension of disbelief would disappear, ruining the show. It’s an unforgiving moment, the audience had paid their hard-earned dollars to see a farce, the last thing they wanted was laughter.
    Walter and I understood that. We were both experienced stage actors. So we froze and we looked at each other. Someone in the audience had giggled at my faux pas. Then someone else tittered. We held it. Someone else laughed, and then another person laughed. Laughter is infectious and it was spreading. And Walter and I didn’t move; I barely breathed for fear I would start laughing. Gradually, the audience understood that we were trying desperately not to laugh, which of course is hysterical. The more obvious it became that we were fighting it, the funnier it was to the audience. The titters had become hysterics.
    Because I had more water in my cells than Walter, I began to sweat. At first I glistened. I merely shone. But the audience could see the change from the flat pancake makeup to the glisten. Then as I strained to hold it, almost like holding your bowels, the sweat began to come down my face in rivulets.
    The twenty-five hundred people in the audience and the actors on the stage were totally aware of what was happening. The challenge was not to laugh. Whatever Walter and I did, we could not laugh. The audience could laugh, Julie Harris turned away from the audience and was laughing, but we must not under any circumstances laugh.
    The longer the laughter continued the louder it got. The audience was laughing at the sound of its own laughing. I was meditating on the sound of my own breathing. I was focusing on the sound of my breath going in and out of my lungs, breathing into the knowledge that I could not break up. I was drenched in perspiration, sweat was rolling down my brow and my cheeks. The laughter would begin to die down, and then it would catch hold again. Walter and I didnot move. And finally, after at least five minutes, the audience got laugh fatigue, it literally got tired from laughing—and we were able to proceed with the play.
    I need to pause here. I’ve just had a very interesting idea. One of the projects I’ve been working on for quite some time is called Gonzo Ballet . In February 2007, the Milwaukee Ballet created an original ballet set to the music from my CD, Has Been, although they named the ballet Common People. Gonzo Ballet is a documentary about the making of the ballet Common People. But getting it done has been a long, laborious process that had numerous and unexpected complications. So while there have been numerous documentaries made about the making of a movie or an album or, in this case, a ballet, I don’t believe anyone has done a documentary about the making of a documentary about the making of something. And why not?
    Think about that while I go put on my makeup for the next chapter.

FOUR

    Saluton , a amik, câpitr/o kvar. Ni babilu. Vi? Vi odoras kiel krokodilo. Which in Esperanto means either: Welcome, my friend, to chapter four. I would like to express my gratitude for your support for so many years. Or: Welcome, my friend, to chapter four. Let’s chat. You? You smell like a crocodile.
    This is a true story. Even I could not make this one up: on a TV show called The Outer Limits I’d played an astronaut who returned from Venus having contracted a strange disease which made it impossible for me to get warm. The executive producer of that show was Leslie Stevens, a well-respected writer known primarily for his very strange imagination. Shortly after we’d done that show he called and told me he had a script he wanted me to read. It was called Incubus and it was very interesting. The story was compelling in its simplicity and starkness; it was an almost legendary tale of good confronting evil. It was going to be made with a small budget, but it was very powerful; it was so intriguing that after reading it I told him I would do it.
    Unfortunately, there was one piece of information I did not have at that time. Perhaps it was my mistake, but the script was written in English so I just assumed the movie would be made in English. When I met with Leslie Stevens he told me he had some very exciting news for me. “Guess what,” he said. “We’re going to do