Felix opens the Friday class with a hook. “I’ve got some news about the actress,” he says. “The one I said would play Miranda.” He keeps his voice level, takes a few beats. Is it good news or bad news? they’ll be wondering.
They’re alert: not a mutter, not a grunt. “It was difficult,” he says. “Only an exceptional woman would take this on.” Imperceptible nodding. “She had quite a few reservations. I had to do a lot of convincing,” he goes on, spinning it out.
“I thought I’d failed. But finally…”
“Yeah!” says 8Handz. “You did it! F…I mean, scurvy awesome!”
“Yes. Finally, I succeeded!”
“Way to red plague go!” says PPod.
“Thank you,” says Felix. He allows himself a smile, gives a little bow. They expect him to be slightly formal. Courtly, as befits an old-school gentleman like the one he imitates. “Her name is Anne-Marie Greenland,” he continues, “and she’s not only an actress, she’s a dancer as well. A very athletic dancer,” he adds. “I’ve brought a clip to show you.”
He’s downloaded the YouTube video onto a memory stick, which he plugs into the class computer. “Lights out, please.”
There’s Anne-Marie in her dancing days, wearing a black halter top and green satin shorts. She throws her lithe male partner to the ground, then winds her arms and legs around him like an octopus and pulls his head back in a chokehold. He fights her off, flings her into the air, swirls her around in a circle, her head barely off the floor. Now she’s slithering between his legs, then she’s up on her feet, into the air again, feet akimbo. Now she’s got him in a vise grip and is twisting one of his elbows to a painful right angle. The muscles in her sinewy arms are clearly visible.
“Whoa,” says a voice. “That’s…what the pied ninny is this?”
“She could tear a whoreson strip off you!”
“She’s got a plaguey tattoo!”
“Poisonous poxy!”
“What’s it scurvy about?”
“Romantic love,” says Felix. “I suppose.” Immediately he’s ashamed of himself: such jaded cynicism has no place in the enchanted world he’ll soon be asking them to believe in.
Anne-Marie pirouettes, circling her partner, who is rolling across the floor.
She does a backflip, lands on her feet. A second male dancer bounces in, picks her up, and slings her over his shoulder, her feet flailing. She’s on the ground again; she takes, briefly, the stance of a boxer, but then she flees and there’s a chase, with both of the male dancers pursuing her. She stops, lifts a foot, flexes it, kicks with her heel. Down they go, in graceful tandem. Anne-Marie leaps into the air, higher than you’d think possible.
Blackout.
A roomful of men exhales.
“Lights, please,” says Felix. Illumination: he’s confronting a vista of wide- eyed faces. “That was a small sampling of our new Miranda’s many talents.
Anne-Marie will be joining us for a full readthrough week after next, once we’ve dealt with the casting process.”
“Is she, like, a black belt?” Leggs wants to know.
“Man, she’s…she’s malignant, man!” This from PPod.
“She kicks you in the nuts, they shoot right out your mouth,” says SnakeEye.
“I bet she’s a red plague dyke—one way to find out!” Nobody laughs.
“She’s poxy skin and bones,” says Phil the Pill. “Eating disorder.”
“I like the poxy wenches curvier myself,” says PPod.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” says Krampus the doleful Mennonite.
“Yeah, toad-face,” says Leggs. “She looks hot to me!”
“She’s a very talented performer,” says Felix. He’s pleased to note that they’re already practising their chosen curse words. “We’re lucky she’s agreed to work with us. But I wouldn’t cross her, if I were you. You can see why.”
“I bet she can kill with her scurvy thumbs,” says WonderBoy sadly.
—
“Now,” says Felix, “let’s talk about Ariel. Who thinks he might like the part?”
“No way, man,” says a voice from the back of the room. “Not playing a fairy, that’s final. Like I said.” SnakeEye, a man of definite opinions.
A universal sentiment: no hands go up, all faces close. He can hear what they’re thinking: as with Miranda, so with Ariel. Too weak. Too gay. Out of the question.
“You’re bringing in an actress for Miranda, right? So, bring in a fairy for the fairy,” says Shiv. Murmurs of “Yeah,” soft laughter.
Felix could ask them why they think Ariel is a fairy, but he knows why. Flies through the air, sleeps in flowers, delicate. Looks like a fairy, acts like a fairy, is a fairy. As for Ariel’s song that claims he sucks like a bee, forget it: who with any sense of self-preservation would sing that? Not only is Ariel a fairy, he’s a super-sucking fairy. You’d never live it down. You’d be reduced to a cipher.
You’d suck, in every possible way.
It would be useless for Felix to point out that Ariel isn’t a fairy, he’s an elemental air-spirit. Equally useless to tell them that that “suck” in Shakespeare’s time did not have the many derogatory meanings it has since acquired, because it has those meanings now, and now is when they’re putting on the play.
“Let’s talk about Ariel for a minute,” says Felix, which means that he will talk about Ariel, because no one else in the room is going to open his mouth on that risky subject. “Maybe we’re seeing this character as a fairy because we aren’t thinking widely enough.” He pauses to let this sink in. Wide thinking? What is that?
“So, before sticking on a label, let’s list his qualities. What sort of a creature is he? First, he can be invisible. Second, he can fly. Third, he has superpowers, especially when it comes to thunder, wind, and fire. Fourth, he’s musical. But fifth, and most important.” He pauses again. “Fifth: he’s not human.” He gazes around the room.
“What if he’s not even real?” says Red Coyote. “Like, if it’s Prospero talking to himself? Maybe he’s shaken hands with Mr. Peyote Button. Wasted out of his mind, or maybe he’s crazy?”
“Maybe it’s, like, a dream he’s having,” says Shiv.
“Maybe that boat sinks, the one they put him in. So the whole play happens right when he’s drowning.” One of the newbies: VaMoose.
TimEEz: “I saw a movie like that once.”
“Or he’s got an imaginary friend,” says PPod. “My kid had one of them.”
“Nobody else sees him,” says Leggs.
“They see him when he appears as the harpy,” says Bent Pencil.
“They hear him,” says HotWire.
“Well, yeah, okay,” says Red Coyote. “Though it could be that Prospero’s some kind of a ventriloquist.”
“Let’s suppose that Ariel is real in some way,” says Felix. He’s pleased: at least they’re talking. “Suppose you’d never heard of this play, and all you knew about this being called Ariel was what I told you about him. What kind of a creature have I just been describing?”
Mutterings. “Like, a superhero,” says Leggs. “Fantastic Four. Superman kind of thing. Except Prospero’s got the kryptonite or whatever, so he’s got the control.”
“Star Trek kind of thing,” says PPod. “He’s an alien, like, he’s had some kind of spaceship accident, he ended up on Earth. He’s trapped here. He wants to take off, go up to his home planet or whatever, like in E.T., remember that one? That could cover it, right?”
“Doing what Prospero says so Prospero will help him get back there.” 8Handz this time. “Earning his freedom.”
“Then he can be with his own people,” says Red Coyote.
Murmurings of agreement. This all makes sense! An alien! Way better than a fairy.
“How do you see the costume?” says Felix. “What does he look like?” He won’t mention any of the traditional ways of portraying Ariel: the bird feathers, the dragonfly outfit, the angel, the butterfly wings. He won’t mention, either, that for two centuries Ariel was always played by a woman.
“He’d be, like, green,” says PPod. “With those bug eyes, like aliens have those big eyes with no pupils.”
“Green is for trees. Blue’s better,” says Leggs. “Because of air. Ariel for air.
Air’s blue.”
“Can’t eat human food. Only flowers and stuff.” Red Coyote speaking.
“Natural. Like, he’s a vegan.”
General nodding: with this theory the bee-sucking activity is covered with no
loss of honor, because that’s the kind of thing you expect from aliens: weird eating habits.
“Fine,” says Felix. “Now: what function does he perform in the play?”
An undertone of mumbling. “What do you mean by ‘function’?” says Bent Pencil. “As you suggested in your notes, he’s the good servant. He does what he’s told. Caliban is the bad servant.”
“Yes, yes,” says Felix. “But where would the play be without the tasks Ariel carries out for Prospero? Without the thunder and lightning? Without, in fact, the tempest? Ariel performs the single most important act in the whole plot, because without that tempest there’s no play. So he’s crucial. But he acts behind the scenes—nobody but Prospero knows that it’s Ariel making the thunder and singing the songs and creating the illusions. If he were here with us now, he’d be called the special-effects guy.” Felix does another of his panoramic around-the- room scans, aiming for eye contact. “So, he’s like a digital expert. He’s doing 3- D virtual reality.”
Tentative grins. “Cool,” says 8Handz. “Scurvy cool.”
“In our play, then, Ariel is the character Ariel, but he’s also the special effects,” says Felix. “Lighting, sound, computer simulation. All of that. And Ariel needs a team, like the team of spirits he’s in charge of in the play.”
Light is dawning: they love fooling with computers, on the rare occasions
when it’s possible for them.
“Monster cool!” says Shiv.
“So who wants to be on Team Ariel?” says Felix. “Any takers?”
Every hand in the room goes up. Now that they grasp the possibilities, they all want to be on Team Ariel.
