Fraternity of the Footlights
by Dennis A. Blackledge
part 1
It damn near ended before it began.
“Keep movin’, knuckleheads. Less talk, more walk,” said Coach Albertazzi, Lyttleton High alum and one-time star running back for the Ottawa Rough Riders.
Coach busied himself helping Miss Mancini herd jocks into our school’s aging auditorium, where we exchanged time for A’s. Arts Appreciation or “Clapping for Credit,” was developed to keep our high school’s academically challenged athletes on the playing field. In return, we served as guinea pigs for Lyttleton High Drama Club shows, Warrior Band concerts, and other such nonsense.
Drama kids wearing usher badges handed out one-page mimeographed programs.
“Romeo and Juliet abridged,” I heard my best friend Biaggio say.
“Crap,” Murph the Surf said. “An hour and a half of my life wasted on freaks and pansies.”
We cut up before noticing an usher girl standing nearby, face flushed with hurt.
“Oops,” Biaggio said as we shambled along.
“Hey, Murph’s got a point,” lanky Ray said as we took our seats. “Every weirdo ends up in Drama Club.”
I glanced at my program. It listed a student cast and crew and featured an entire paragraph about Jonathan A. Mondello, Jr., Director, but the lights faded before I could read it. We unleashed the obligatory, “Ooooooooo.”
“Stifle it,” Coach said, sounding as if he meant it.
The curtain rose. Stage lights slowly brightened, like sunrise. I settled in for ninety minutes of suck.
A disembodied voice spoke. “Two households, both alike in dignity—”
“This blows,” Murph said, making a show of slinking low in his seat.
Houses divided by a lane grew from the morning rays, and a hillside rose beyond. Two groups of actors faced off across a narrow demilitarized zone.
“From ancient grudge —”
“Fight!” an anonymous provocateur shouted from somewhere behind me.
Hoots and laughter rained upon the actors, but they remained focused on matters at hand. I admired their pluck. A girl on stage took refuge within her cowl, strands of auburn hair framing an angel’s face. Juliet, I presumed.
“Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”
When the opposing camps made derogatory gestures at each other, I detected flirting, shy and sly, between Juliet and a young man across the way; Romeo, no doubt.
The costumes looked hip. Girls wore peasant dresses; some covered their heads with scarves. The boys wore jeans and hippie shirts with stringed front closures. No one wore tights. Everyone accessorized with something classically Bard: a sixteenth-century hat, a flowing robe, a walking stick. Swords and daggers were the weapons of choice.
I found it surprisingly easy to relate to Shakespeare’s story of “star-crossed lovers,” of feuding families and forbidden relationships. I wanted to wallow in boredom but instead found myself slipping beneath the surface of the story, a drowning man resigned to fate, but a fate unexpectedly pleasant. Ninety minutes vanished without a trace.
When the lovers died, hidden emotions rose within me, threatening to break into the open in clear violation of the social code of teenage boys. I pushed them down; failure to do so would have punched my one-way ticket out of cool town.
At the play’s conclusion, actors bowed to tepid applause interspersed with a few jeers and catcalls. But the cast looked satisfied, like teammates after winning a hard-fought game.
“Not half bad,” I said to my supersized pal Biaggio as we filed out.
“I guess. If you like that sort of thing.”
Romeo and Juliet haunted me long after the curtain fell. How could a collection of high school misfits put together something so moving? Could I do that? Would appearing in a play alienate me from the jocks? Did I care?
The next day, I observed a handful of cast members eating lunch. Overriding the strict rules of our caste system, I offered a casual “Good show” as I walked past, raising eyebrows on both sides of the cafeteria aisle, our narrow demilitarized zone.
A week later, a notice appeared on the school’s central bulletin board.
Drama Club auditions for The Diary of Anne Boleyn.
Wednesday, November 13, 1968 — 3:00 p.m.
School auditorium. Everyone’s welcome.
* * *
The air in the boys’ locker room hung humid and tangy as Lyttleton’s Warriors suited up for football practice. I decided to gamble and float my idea of trying out for a play. Word of my impending folly shot outward like balls breaking on a pool table.
“You wanna be in a play?” Biaggio asked over his shoulder, his giant naked ass occupying bench space in front of three lockers.
“I hear J.J. Newberry’s is having a sale on panties this week,” Murph said. “Maybe you should pick some up.”
The heel of my hand shot outward, making thudding contact with Murph’s chest.
“You little shit,” he said, retaliating with a haymaker breezing past my ducking head.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Biaggio said, jumping up and separating us. “Save it for the field.”
Mocking continued unabated throughout afternoon practice. That evening, I confided in my off-again, on-again and, as of late, far more “off” than “on” girlfriend. We were sitting on a bench at Town Beach, bundled against the damp chill from Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay.
“What do you think?” I asked the sweet face I’d known since sixth grade.
Sharon’s hazel eyes narrowed, telegraphing concern. “I didn’t realize your gate swung both ways,” she said. “But, as a friend, I’m glad you told me.”
I released a long, resigned sigh, disappointed that she took my question as an admission of a new sexual preference.
Sharon smiled, flipping her dirty blonde hair off her shoulders. She reached out and firmly squeezed my forearm.
“Relax, dork. I’m just busting your chops. You should go for it.”
* * *
We stood outside the auditorium, my shoes refusing to go any further.
“I still don’t understand why you want to be in a play,” Biaggio said.
I shrugged. “I’m not totally sure, either.”
“Hey, I gotta roll. But if you go in there, give ’em hell.” He flashed a broad smile, shot me a thumbs-up. He turned and lumbered down the hall. “If you tell anyone I said so, you’re a dead man.”
I forced myself to enter the auditorium’s foyer.
A girl holding a clipboard intercepted me. She wore dress slacks and a button-down man’s shirt, and her hair was pulled back like a young Katharine Hepburn. “Hi! Here to audition?”
“Yeah.”
“For what part?” She prepared to jot down information.
“What?”
“What role do you want to play?”
“I don’t know... nothing too big.”
“Okay... general interest.” She scribbled.
A second girl — call her Girl Two — arrived and cozied up to Girl One. She was armed with a Polaroid camera. Knock knees poked out below a Raggedy Ann hemline and above brightly colored knee socks sprouting from saddle shoes. She wore an expression of someone in perpetual need of peeing.
“Hi. I’m here to take your picture.”
I nodded and ran my fingers through my mop. She reached out and brushed stray strands off my forehead with impossibly soft fingertips.
“Smile,” she said and triggered a bright flash. “Beautiful.”
When a photo emerged, she fanned herself with it, like someone from Gone With the Wind. When fully dried, she handed it to Girl One, who attached it to the top page on her clipboard and gave it to me.
“Write your name here,” One said while pointing to a blank space next to my snapshot. “List all your stage experience below your photo.”
“And anything else you want our director to know,” said Two.
I later realized they were helping me create a resume:
A White Christmas, holiday pageant at Main Street Elementary School.
Played drums in a rock band lasting six weeks and one gig.
I watch lots of television.
Enjoyed Romeo and Juliet.
Junior, class of 1970.
Taking my paperwork and reading it, One reached out and touched my arm. “Oh, I loved that play too! Please take a seat in the house.”
My face conveyed cluelessness.
“Sit in the auditorium, silly.”
Those auditioning sat in the semi-dark, scattered in small groups beneath the high-vaulted ceiling of our aging auditorium. Seating descended toward a brightly lit stage framed in burgundy curtains.
Jonathan Mondello occupied a seat behind a long table wedged between rows three and four. Lyttleton’s school board had hired him two years ago to teach drama and organize theatre activities, part of their ongoing effort to increase arts education in our community.
A bevy of student assistants, including One and Two, surrounded him. They were lit by faint blue light from long, bendable gooseneck lamps atop the table. Between tryouts, I could hear Mondello joking and bantering with those tasked to do his bidding. Shockingly, several called him “Jon.”
Sitting by myself, I felt my nerves take hold, as if I were waiting for the dental assistant to summon me. With each name called, a prospective player bravely walked up the steps to the stage. An image of mounting the gallows possessed my brain.
Auditioners, some more nervous than others, read dialogue in pairs. I didn’t know any of them personally but recognized a handful. Drama Club kids encouraged one another, displaying grace and abundant kindness, especially to those who froze or blew it.
This was a long way from football’s world of hurt and domination. I felt a twinge of shame for having clumped them together as freaks, as somehow less than me.
Someone at the table called my name. I stood on wobbly legs. The Exit sign above the nearest door beckoned, but I did not run. My legs, I was surprised to discover, walked my body up the stairs.
Once on stage, I couldn’t see a thing. Bright lights in my face turned the auditorium into a gaping black hole from which an unseen Mondello fired questions. Someone chuckled at one of my answers; no idea why.
A girl appeared beside me dressed in bohemian chic, auburn hair framing her face. It was Juliet. “Hi, I’m Joan. We’re going to read a scene together.”
“Okay. Hi. I’m—”
“Oh, I know who you are, we all know. It’s not every day we have a football player audition.”
The air around Joan smelled of lilacs.
From the dark, Mondello said, “If you two are quite ready.”
“Sorry, Jon,” Joan said.
“Don’t be sorry. Be right.”
We read a handful of alternating lines, until a loud, “Thank you!” rang out.
“Are we done?” I asked Joan softly.
She nodded and escorted me offstage. We stood among old scenic pieces, a graveyard of plays past. The air smelled musty. Dust danced in shafts of light slicing through the high canyons created by the tall velour curtains.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, smiled, and extended a hand. We shook. “The cast list will be posted outside the office of administration at three p.m. on Friday. Break a leg!”
“What?”
“Good luck.”
* * *
Girl One, dressed smartly in a different buttoned-down man’s shirt, appeared at the appointed hour on the appointed day. From my vantage point behind everyone, I watched as she tacked a sheet of paper to Lyttleton High’s central bulletin board, beneath a hand-drawn sign heralding Drama Club News.
From behind me came a loud wolf whistle. I turned to see a handful of jocks smirking at me and striking exaggerated theatrical poses. I shot them the bird disguised as scratching an itch on my back.
Closer to the board, squeals of excitement shared the spotlight with groans of disappointment. I hung back, not wanting to appear overly anxious, maybe not wanting to know the results at all.
“Congratulations!” Joan said as she retreated from the board. “Welcome to the Fraternity of Freaks.”
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Dennis A. Blackledge
