Elmhurst Community Theatre

By Carl Perrin

A washed-up, bit-part Hollywood actor, Curtis Booth, is hired to direct an amateur play in a small NH town. He doesn't want to work with the amateurs, but he is desperate for the small stipend he will be paid. The play is awful, and the characters are worse. On opening night the set falls onto the stage. Viewers think this is part of the play and see all kinds of symbolic significance in the collapsed scenery. The play is so bad that everyone loves it.
Between rehearsals Booth has been fighting off the advances of Leila, a woman with a jealous husband. At the cast party after the play is over, the husband shows up at the party with a gun, looking for the man who had been fooling around with his wife.
The theatre wants Booth to direct another play. He still needs money badly. He thinks that the new play can't be any worse than the one he just directed.
He is wrong about that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl Perrin
• Release date: Dec 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465965691

Carl Perrin

Carl Perrin has acted in plays in college and community theatre. He even directed a few plays. But he was never in a production as bad as those described in Elmhurst Community Theatre.

Book preview

ELMHURST COMMUNITY

THEATRE

By Carl Perrin

Published by Carl Perrin

at Smashwords

Copyright © 2012 by Carl Perrin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical , including photocopying, recording , or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder.

The play’s the thing…

Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue.

Hamlet

Acknowledgements

My thanks and appreciation to the wonderful people at the West Palm Beach Writers Group and the great folks at the Manchester, NJ, Writers’ Circle. Everyone in both groups encouraged me and helped me shape this story.

A special note of gratitude goes to Janet who is always there for me and who always cheers me on.

Part 1.

Flossie Finds Romance

One

I’m a prostitute. I don’t mean I sell my body for money. Nothing as interesting as that. I sold my soul for a goddamn theatre. I didn’t even do it for the sake of ART. God no! None of that artistic bullshit for me. I thought I could get an easy living out of the theatre. And what’s a little soul, especially a moth-eaten soul like mine in exchange for an easy living? But I was wrong about the easy living part. I had never been so wrong in a lifetime of wrong turns, wrong decisions, wrong choices, a lifetime strewn with disastrous mistakes of every sort. I never worked so hard in my life as I did for the Elmhurst Community Theatre.

I wouldn’t have gone as far as I did if it had not been for Lance Braddock. He was the Mephistopheles that tempted me and led me to ignore all reason and common sense when I smelled the chance of an easy living. But I shouldn’t have mentioned Braddock yet because I didn’t meet him until several months after this story begins.

My name is Curtis Booth. I know you don’t recognize the name. It doesn’t even ring a bell, does it? And yet you’ve seen me dozens of times, hundreds of times. If you’ve ever gone to the movies, you’ve seen me. I’ve lost track of the number of films I’ve been in, even a few pretty good ones. But I might have appeared in a scene or two, have half a dozen lines in each scene, and that was it. I never played a memorable role, was in a memorable scene, or spoke a memorable line.

I never graduated to meatier roles, but I spent a lot of years in Hollywood. I was in Song of the West. You saw that, didn’t you? Everyone saw it. It was very popular. Do you remember me now? I was one of the villain’s henchmen. I had a big bushy mustache in that film. You still don’t remember me? I’m not surprised. No one does. No one except the people in the hick town where I spent my summers, Elmhurst, New Hampshire. They all think I’m famous, the local boy who made good, who became a movie star.

Well, I may not be famous, but I know my way around Hollywood. I paid my dues. Yes sir, I paid my dues, and I deserve a goddamn break. I had gained a little weight. I was showing my age, and it got so I wasn’t even getting those crummy roles any more. I was even auditioning for radio commercials! And I wasn’t getting callbacks for those! I was becoming a career waiter in a rundown Italian restaurant. Then I got fired from that job.

I was suspicious when I got a call from a lawyer in Manchester, New Hampshire. He had the kind of voice that oozed false friendliness. But you knew he was just waiting for a chance to stab you in the back. I figured one of my ex-wives was trying to collect back alimony. I was ready to say, Hey, Buddy, you can’t get blood out of a turnip, although the two of them had sure as hell tried. But it turned out that the lawyer had good news for me—sort of.

He said his name was Grant Billings, and then he asked, Am I talking to Ishmael Schmidt?

I thought, Jesus Christ, no one had called me by that name for over twenty years. Can you imagine giving a kid a name like that in this day and age? I don’t know whether the name was from the Bible or from Melville’s classic work. I’ve never forgiven my parents for sticking me with that name. I had red hair when I was a kid, and everyone called me Red. I never liked that name either, but it was a hell of a lot better than Ishmael, or Ishy, the name some kids called me when they wanted to get me going.

Hesitantly I told the lawyer that I was Ishmael Schmidt.

Did you have an uncle named Frederick Schmidt? he asked.

Uncle Freddie had died almost a year before that. I hadn’t been able to go back East for the funeral. I always liked Uncle Freddy. When I was a kid, I used to spend summers on his farm in New Hampshire. I would have gone back, but I was involved in a film at the time. My role was so small that they would have been glad to let me go, but then I would have lost the part. Even so, I hadn’t had a role since then.

Billings said, Well, you are Frederick Schmidt’s sole heir.

I was surprised. I didn’t know that Uncle Freddy had anything to leave. As it turned out, all he had to leave was the farm itself. Oh Goodie, I thought. I can go back to the farm and shovel cow shit for the rest of my life. But the fact is, I was just about out of money, and the landlord was getting ready to evict me from my apartment. I had no place else to go.

I was not particularly interested in going back to a hick town in New Hampshire, but I had no other choice. I picked up the keys at Billings’ office in Manchester and drove to the farm I hadn’t seen since—god! Not since I had gone to Hollywood. As I drove my old Ford into the dusty driveway, I could see that the old place had gone to seed in the last twenty years. No one had lived there since Uncle Freddie died. Weeds had taken over the lawn and Aunt Bessie’s flower beds. The house, a small Cape, and the attached barn had been bright red when I spent my summers there. Now they were faded to a dull rust color. One of the front windows was missing a pane, and a loose clapboard was hanging near the corner of the house. I could see that I had some work to do before I tried to sell the place.

I found the front door unlocked. Some things haven’t changed in New Hampshire, I thought, as I walked into the front hallway. It seemed strange to be going into the place without Uncle Freddie and Aunt Bessie. I looked into the room that Bessie and Freddie used to call the parlor. It still had the same overstuffed furniture that I remembered from over twenty years ago, but it was faded and worn. Gray stuffing poked out of a rip on one of the cushions on the couch.

One of the kitchen chairs was lying on its side. I picked it up and put it next to the table. Aunt Bessie would have been horrified to see the thick layer of dust that covered everything.

It wasn’t much, but it could be cleaned up. I’d lived in a lot worse places. For a while it was going to be home. It was a place to live, and it was close enough to Manchester so I could find some kind of work in the city. I sure as hell wasn’t going to try to work the farm. I didn’t want to be a cow shit kicker. That’s what my father used to call Freddie, a cow shit kicker. Dad seemed to think that everyone should have a career in business.

I hadn’t been in the place more than three minutes before there was knock on the door. A gray-haired woman was standing there.

Hi, Curtis, she said, it’s me. I saw your car pull up.

Polly! I said. I hadn’t recognized her until I heard her speak. How she had aged! Then I realized it had been over twenty years since I had seen her. She must be about sixty now. But she still had that same pleasant smile and friendly voice. I had aged myself. My own hair was no longer red. I had been dyeing it when I was in Hollywood, but now I was going to let it go gray.

Polly was Fred and Bessie’s neighbor. She lived down the road just a little way. I remembered her as an attractive middle-aged woman who was always baking chocolate chip cookies for me when I was a teenager on Uncle Freddie’s farm.

So, here’s our Hollywood star in person, Polly said.

Yeah, sure. If I was a Hollywood star, Sean Connery was the king of Scotland.

Come on over, Polly said. I’ve got the coffee pot on, and I picked up some donuts at Dunkin’ Donuts this morning. We knew you would be here today. You still like jelly donuts?

We sat at Polly’s kitchen table, and she said, Curtis, it’s wonderful to see you after all these years. I looked around the kitchen. It still had that same cluttered, lived-in look that it always had. One corner of the table was piled high with old newspapers and mail.

Polly offered me another donut. I hesitated for only a moment. I was losing my battle against middle-age spread. I give in too easily to temptation.

It must be thrilling to be a big Hollywood star. Buddy and I have seen every movie you’ve made. What’s it like to be in movies with all those famous movie stars? Buddy was her husband.

You get to find out what assholes most of them are—but I didn’t say that to Polly. After a while it gets to be just a job, I said, trying to sound casual.

So, how long are you going to be here? Are you scheduled to be in any movies this summer?

No, I’m thinking of retiring from Hollywood.

She looked as though I had slapped her in the face. Retiring! Why you’re at the height of your career.

Sometimes you need to stand back and take a look at your life. Obviously, I had been in Hollywood too long. Bullshit like that slipped so effortlessly from my lips.

Polly brightened up. If you’re going to be here for several months, we can use you in the Elmhurst Community Theatre.

Yeah, sure, I thought, that’s just what I need, getting involved in an amateur theatre group.

As a matter of fact, Polly said, they’re looking for someone to direct the summer play. They pay the director. I think it’s two thousand dollars for the show, but they would probably pay more for a Hollywood star like you.

Now that got my attention. Two thousand dollars or more for a part-time job—that was more than I had made for a while. Rehearsals would be in the evening, so I could still look for a day job in Manchester.

Let me think about it, I said.

What bullshit! I had already thought about it and said. Yes! Yes! Yes! I didn’t want to sound too eager. But if I had known how incredibly bad the community theatre was and how much suffering I would go through trying to coax a mediocre performance from that no-talent group, I would have said forget it. I would have gone to Manchester to get some kind of job. Any job would have been better than working with the Elmhurst Community Theatre.

Two

The day after I met the theatre board of directors, Polly knocked on the door. You have a phone call, she smiled.

It was Burley Tuttle, president of the board.

Mr. Booth, he began, the Elmhurst Community Theatre would be thrilled and honored if you would agree to direct our summer production.

Well, I said, pretending to think it over.

We could pay you twenty-five hundred dollars.

Twenty-five hundred dollars! surprised.

"Well, for a famous Hollywood actor like you, the board has authorized me to go as