Читать книгу Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art - Gene Wilder - Страница 10

When I was still fifteen, I auditioned for the Milwaukee Players, which was a very good community theater that put on big productions of classics and also gave lessons in makeup. I passed my audition, and the first play I acted in – in front of a paying audience – was Romeo and Juliet. I played Balthasar, Romeo’s manservant, and I had only two lines, but I also had a fencing scene, which I loved. It wasn’t real fencing, of course; it was just sort of “try to make it look real” fencing.

My next part was the Messenger in Much Ado About Nothing. One evening, while we were in production, I got to the theater early and had just started putting on my makeup when one of the male dancers came in, very bouncy and cheerful. He had always been very friendly, but when he saw that we were alone, he started behaving strangely. I had never met a homosexual before – I had only heard Corinne talk about what were then called fairies – but this handsome dancer, who must have been at least ten years older than I was – started chasing me around the children’s classroom that we used as a makeup room. I dodged in and out of the rows of little desks, trying my best to make the dancer believe that I believed that he was just playing a game. Just as I was getting frightened, two other actors came in, said, “Hi,” and started putting on their makeup. I sat down at my desk and started putting on makeup again. I didn’t look at the dancer until he knelt down next to me.

“You know I was just joking around, don’t you?” he whispered.

“Of course! Are you kidding?”

I wish I had acted in Much Ado About Nothing as well as I did for the dancer.