Last Thursday night, I took a seat in a makeshift theater — the community room of the Unitarian Society of New Haven — awaiting the introduction of Act 6 of an annual talent show, “Mud Follies.”
Not that I wasn’t paying attention to Acts 1 through 5. Indeed, I was impressed by the performances.
There was the bluegrass band, the singers (reprising tunes of Joni Mitchell, Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Gilbert & Sullivan, and others), and a comic monologist who cleverly argued on behalf of the idea, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
Well, that was on my mind too. As Act 6 became imminent, I hoped that I — the scheduled performer of Act 6 — would acquit myself at the very top end of badly, a high bar for an amateur thespian.
Reviews, if there were to be any, could say, “Lary Bloom, acting out his ten-minute play, ‘A Wounded Bird,’ didn’t put any audience members to sleep though we did notice that six people got up to go the bathroom.”
Perhaps here I should back up a bit and explain origin of the show itself. “Mud Follies” is produced each spring by HomeHaven, the nonprofit that helps its members (including me and my wife Suzanne) age in place.
That is, its membership is composed of seniors seeking to stay in their homes for as long as possible. So, the organization provides services that help make that happen.
It also produces many programs intended to get its members out and about — we recently had private tours, for example, of the Yale Peabody Museum and of the Turner exhibit at the recently reopened Yale Center for British Art. We meet regularly to discuss prominent societal issues, and use any excuse to participate in Happy Hours throughout the New Haven area.
I could have used a glass of cabernet sauvignon awaiting my turn in “Mud Follies.” When Act 5 was finished, I picked up my script (just there for support, as intended to be off book for the play), and was ready to go on stage. But it didn’t happen.
The congenial host for the evening, a sweet fellow who, like everyone else, was an advanced senior citizen, had misread the program, and introduced Act 7 instead. What was I to do? Of course, the first thing I thought of was this could be intentional. After all, I had a play about the legacy of Vietnam, and who would want to see a play about that?
But of course it wouldn’t be that. It was just an oversight. But what to do? I tried to quietly signal the show’s impresario, Louis Audette, but he was busy playing bass in The Unusuals. Finally, I caught his eye, and he recognized the error, and whispered to the emcee.
So, in this new math devised by necessity, Act 6 followed Acts 7 and 8.
I strutted and fretted my sixth of an hour upon the stage, telling the story of meeting a fellow passenger on the Metro-North who was also a veteran of the war I was in, but confided, “I left a lot of body parts in Vietnam.”
This would seem to bring down the general mood of the audience from a joyous state to one of, “It’s getting late. I know they’re serving refreshments at the end, but let’s go home.”
And yet, from my spot on stage behind the microphone, and wearing my Vietnam veterans hat, I experienced once again the rapt attention of an audience. In live theater, a performer can feel the connection, and it becomes part of the script.
And, here, after all, for the majority of the people in the seats, the Vietnam War wasn’t just a chapter in a history book; it affected each of their lives.
When Act 6 ended, I had a mixed feeling. I would have given my performance a B minus.
I had forgotten a few lines, and had to ad lib. But the audience didn’t know that; it wasn’t as if I was playing MacBeth and left out one of the tomorrows in his speech leading to the last syllable of recorded time.
So yes, there was much in the way of applause. And after the final act of the night, a duet of “Two Sleepy People,” that sneaky love song by Hoagy Carmichael, several audience members thanked me. One told me her brother had been killed in Vietnam.
I thought about that as I walked to the parking lot. She and I are members of the last generation who will think of that war as something deeply personal. As an act of political and military madness.
And, finally, thinking that it took just ten minutes to make an act of myself and to demonstrate if a thing is worth doing it’s worth doing badly, it was all worth it.
For information on the nonprofit HomeHaven, see www.homehavenvillages.org
