Back when I was a gawky, shy, orthodonture-wearing early teen, my mother did her best to make me into something I wasn't. Ballroom dance lessons--private, unlike the group classes I endured later on, visits to the beauty parlor that left me with hairstyles from the Forties, anything that would make me more attractive and socially acceptable.
I hated most of that but when I was signed up for Dramatics lessons, that was okay. A bunch of my friends were in the same class and it was within walking distance of our junior high. The walk was always punctuated with a stop at a grocery for snacks--my favorite being a sleeve of three chocolate cupcakes covered with a continuous strip of thick white icing.
Our classes were at the home of our teacher--Esther Simon Brown. A small, dumpy woman with an amazing voice, ESB had been, before she contracted polio, an actress. Now she taught Dramatics.
As beginners, we had little 'pieces' to learn and perform, with the appropriate movements. Like this:
What’s worse when you’re eating an apple (hands on hips)
Than to find a big fat worm? (hands open outspread)
Noe doesn’t it make you shiver? (Hug self)
And doesn’t it make you squirm? (Squirm)
Well, I’ll tell you something that’s worse than that (Hands on hips)
And I know you (point at audience) will think so too
It’s to find, when you’re eating an apple (Look at pretend apple in hand and make a face)
A worm, bitten in two (big face, toss pretend apple over shoulder.)
(I also remember the ten ballet positions from my brief experience with ballet class in the first or second grade. But I digress.)
So, not great art, but a beginning. We progressed, over the two or three years we 'took,' to monologues and recitals. (I did Vera Cheera's Purple Pills for Pink People--which had its moments as the speaker got increasingly tongue-tied. And I was the 'ghost in the green gown' in a very dull play of that name about a group of girls spending the night in a haunted house.
But my favorite memories of that self-improving time, were when ESB would send me and my best friend Lynn upstairs to 'practice.' (An embarrassing memory: we would slip into the kitchen and filch a couple of dill pickles from the big jar on the counter before heading upstairs.)
Our practice was perfunctory. What we did was to improvise silly skits. All that creativity is lost to memory, alas, except for the finale of one about the courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett:
RB: (passionately) Marry me, Elizabeth, and go to Italy!
EB: (wailing) But, Robert, I want to be with you!
We were very proud of the humor.
So did dramatics help me be more self-assured? Maybe. A little. I learned I could stand up in front of an audience and nothing terrible would happen. I learned to, as ESB taught us, to 'speak from the diaphragm,' with the result that my voice is sometimes so low I'm mistaken for a man on the phone.
And when I became an author and had to speak to audiences, I found I was pretty good at it. Thank you, Esther Simon Brown. And I apologize about the pickles.
