How wonderful to report a stress-fracture of my left metatarsal bone while heroically saving an infant from a burning building, instead of admitting I slipped walking to the bathroom. Just one of life's many disappointments. This stylish new walking-boot and my non-heroic limp are both reminiscent of another slip-and-fall, twenty-plus years ago, before a performance in Memphis, Tennessee.
Excerpt from chapter:
“The Crimean Croup”
"... Performers hired to cover a part on Broadway but who don’t regularly appear in the show are referred to as standbys. Depending on their specific contract, many standbys are normally required to sign in and remain at the theater until being released by the production’s Stage Manager, once it’s confirmed the star is alive and well and ready to make his or her entrance.
A one-person show like mine is most times an exception to the understudy/standby tradition. Rarely, if ever, is there another player waiting in the wings to make an entrance when the production’s only cast member is incapacitated. The fear of having to cancel a solo performance and refund thousands of dollars to a house full of unhappy ticketholders is what makes many theatre executive directors look as if they would benefit from six weeks in rehab.
Twenty years ago I fell eight feet into an empty orchestra pit during a technical rehearsal in Memphis, Tennessee. It happened an hour before curtain as the lighting director was perched in the rafters, repositioning a bank of six-by-nine ellipsoidal spotlights. I was “walking the show” for the local stage manager when, while stepping forward to better hear a crew member’s question, the stage floor under my feet went missing and I dropped quicker than Tiger Woods on Thanksgiving night. Because the house lights were off for rehearsal, I never saw the edge of the stage or the fast approaching concrete floor. On impact I felt a powerful electrical shock throughout my body. Just before losing consciousness for a few seconds, a detail I would deny like Peter for fear of frightening the producer into canceling the performance, I witnessed a light show that made the aurora borealis look like a backyard Fourth of July celebration.
I refused a trip to the hospital, insisting the show must go on. Even though I’m proud of carrying on the tradition of having never missed a performance during my career, the refusal of medical attention had nothing to do with not wanting to disappoint the audience. My motivation was cash money. The signed personal services contract called for a two-act, two-hour performance (with one fifteen-minute intermission). No performance, no check, and I’d have to return the long-ago squandered fifty percent performance fee deposit. [It must have been a less litigious world back then, because it never would have dawned on me to sue the venue for my stupidity; nor did management freak out over the possible liability and have me medevaced to the nearest trauma center. Nowadays I could have ended up owning the theater, minus the 33.3 percent commission for the personal injury attorney.]
I was helped up to the dressing room while the apron was re-lit to better define the edge of the stage—like I was ever walking near the edge of that stage again—and I suggested to the producer it might be best to present a ninety minute one-act performance rather than the two-act show outlined in our contract. We agreed and, less than an hour later, I made a measured mid-stage-right entrance, leaning on a vintage walking stick found in a prop department closet.
The fall had taken its toll on my agility, so the long-practiced physical characterization of a seventy-year-old Mark Twain was convincing without effort. As long as I remembered not to sit down, for fear of not being able to stand up again, I was confident the audience would be none the wiser. Standing under the warm stage lights and hearing the laughter triggered an audience induced adrenaline rush that worked like a pain-blocking epidural.
After the performance I shuffled off stage and onto a stretcher. Before leaving the theater, I removed the custom-made wig, eyebrows, and mustache (the production’s most expensive inventory), and handed the set of hair to the stage-manager for safe keeping.
I arrived at the University of Tennessee Medical & Health Center’s Emergency Room in downtown Memphis and was attended to by a dizzying complement of nurses and medical interns. They wheeled me down a noisy fluorescent-lit hallway into a large open room with eight curtained cubicles populated, I assumed, with other sufferers of the night.
“Thirty-five-year-old male. Eight-foot fall onto concrete approximately three hours ago,” the EMT announced. The brief introduction was followed by a litany of test results (blood pressure, heart rate, etc.) presented in bewildering medical shorthand too difficult for the uninitiated to follow.
About then I heard a medical student, who had evidently missed the lecture on gurney-side etiquette, say under his breath, “Jesus.”
The paramedic had said “Thirty-five years old,” but with all that stage make-up, including dried spirit gum theatrical glue flaking on my upper lip and melting into my eyebrows I was presenting more like a victim of radiation exposure than a guy who attempted an inward twisting forward pike onto a concrete floor.
“I’m an actor!” I panicked. “It’s stage make-up!” Timing is everything, because looking the way I did, the emergency room chief resident couldn't have been more than ten seconds away from calling for the epinephrine, charging-up the defibrillator paddles, and yelling “clear.”
I was released the following afternoon with a minor concussion, three cracked ribs, a bruised coccyx, a healthy supply of pain-killers, and the performance paycheck for my troubles. Not bad for a day’s work ...”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984720499
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984720499
