A Meeting of Witches

iPad coloring of  pencil drawing from 1962

                                                             Ancient manuscript of Scary Halloween, Meeting of the Witches 

Look at all those witches! I drew this story in fourth grade. It’s about a little witch who wants to go flying with the big witches. At that point, I had never been a witch. The only person I ever knew who’d turned into one, (and I didn’t know her personally) was Grimhalde the Gloria-Swanson-like queen in Walt Disney’s 1937 masterpiece, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. “Mirror Mirror on the Wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” The answer was Snowhite, so Grimhalde concocted and threw back a bubbling potion that turned her into an ugly old crone, replete with hooked nose, wart on chin, and rogue hair sprouting out of it. (Turns out if you live long you’ll be sprouting chin-hairs too, but that’s another story.) Meanwhile, the old hag offers Snowhite a poisoned apple. “Don’t eat it! I tried to warn Snow not take that shiny red apple in the witches bony claw.

Snow falls into a deep sleep in a glass coffin and I end up in my bed with nightmares; two of them playing at once. I’m sleeping on my side dreaming the Grimhalde is descending a stone castle staircase, coming to get me. but I sort of know I’m dreaming, so I turned on my side with my face now on the cool side of the pillow, where two big brown bears in yellow and red satin boxing shorts are pummelling each other in the ring, of a smoke-filled dream full of cigar-chomping bald-headed men urging the bears to beat each other to death.  So I turn back to the other side only now the witch has gotten even closer! So I scream, but nothing comes out! I wake myself up. Then there’s The Wizard of Oz Wicked Witch scaring Dorothy and “Your little dog too”. Toto took her in stride. It’s not like was haunted by witches.  I actually inhabited a few as an actor when I grew up.

Mid 20th Century kids aka my brother, sister, cousins and me in homemade Halloween costumes. I’m the Gypsy.

As a freshman at SUNY Fredonia I was cast as one of seven princesses  in a children’s theatre tour of  “Pegora the Witch, but Pegora was the role I wanted!  When I transferred to the State University of New York in Cortland I had better luck.  I was cast in a play about a coven entitled “Dark of the Moon. I  played Conjuror Woman. Supernatural powers! This was more like it!  No actual covens existed on campus. I joined a sorrority-Nu Sigma Chi.  For a charity event known as  Beta Frolic’s, we did a send-up  of“The Wizard Oz”.  The fun role of the Wicked Witch was snatched up by a senior sister. I played Glinda, the Good Witch.

I dropped out of college and moved into New York City enchant the larger world with my magical talents. I was twenty years old and determined to turn myself into a star overnight. My fourth grade friend and fellow actor, Faljian (fortune teller in Armenian) enticed me to join her at the Metropolitan Opera where they were hiring supernumeraries. Aka “spear holders”, the opera version of an extra—What enticed me to join the ranks of human scenery gracing the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House aside from the fact that I would be on stage at the Met, was Faljian dangling Tony Randall, a witty actor famous as Felix Unger in the television adaptation of the 1965 play The Odd Couple by Neil Simon. Mr. Randall was a huge opera buff, who according to Lynne Faljian Taylor occasionally joined the ranks as a supernumerary. We might meet him in person! “Making it” was about “who you know”, and just think! We might get to know Tony Randall! On our first call Faljian and gathered on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House with the other supernumeraries to be cast as Nobles, Knights, Guards, Monks, Priests and Penitents, Warriors, Virgins, Children, Spirits,Courtiers, Populace; when to my utter thrill, the Director selected me out  to play a non-singing role!

     I was to portray the Princess Bathilde, who would elegantly saunter across the expansive stage, sung on by the Metropolitan Opera chorus in a procession of courtiers, ladies in waiting and footmen. I was being presented as a gift in marriage to the leading man, Roland, who would reject me because he was under the spell of Esclaremonde. At which point I was to fall into a dramatic swoon. Lifting my hand to my forehead without allowing my enormous damask sleeves to block my face, or toppling the two ton two foot wig crowning my head like the leaning Tower of Piza. 

     Heartbroken by rejection, I’d  collapse into the arms of the chorus. Imagine, being rejected on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House! Rejected in a temple where the voices of the world’s greatest singers, composers, musicians, scenic, lighting and costume designers resonate in the seasoned woodwork. What an honor! No rejection could ever top this! Perhaps it was an omen, that from now on I would be cast in everything I auditioned for and never be rejected again! Of course only an  astonishing  Sorceress could secure a spell of such good luck. Alas, Dame Sutherland had already granted one wish for me. She had autographed my libretto so I would just have to cross my fingers and count my  lucky stars.

    The next opera was Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”, with its renowned 1967 Chagall sets and costumes. Alas, The Queen of the Night, like Esclaremonde, ruled supreme in this magical opera. I was demoted from a Princess to a goat. My role was to wave my hoofs on the mountain where The Queen of the Night sang her aria. The mountain was tall, steep, and populated by supernumeraries costumed as Chagall creatures.

The gigantic rubber mask I had to wear over my head smelled like the bottom of our backyard swimming pool liner. It was rank and suffocating in there. As the mountain moved forward, the floor of the stage beneath it, dropped away and you could see many feet down to a lower level under the stage. If you fell off the mountain it could be curtains! Broken legs, hoofs, snout, and who knows what! As the orchestra played and the gorgeous voice of the queen rang out, my contaclense inhaled particles looming. Suddenly a sharp pain like a knife stab pierced my eye. I squeezed my eyes shut in agony. Reflexively raising my hand to my face, I let go of the handle. I felt myself falling off the mountain.

I tried to grab something to hold onto, but the mountainside was a molded form. A silhouette of my goat body splayed in the bowels of the stage flashed in purple blotches under my squeezing eyelids when a mysterious power guided my hand back to the handle in the split of second! I saw the blur of the Queen of the Night’s feet through my the nostril holes of my rubber goat head.  Saved!  But still, in the grip of an eye-clenching agony, seconds passed as hours in hell. Mercifully the aria ended in applause that sent the mountain receding upstage.  Behind the site lines, we removed our animal heads; like one chimera dismounting the mountain.

     The adventure was a dramatic come down from my heights of swooning glory as Princess Bathilde only an opera ago! When the production of “The Magic Flute” ended,  I put my supernumerary days behind me. Faljian and I never did see Tony Randall, but the sepia figure of my twenty one year self luxuriously robed and balancing a very tall wig on my head,  as I fell into the arms of the Metropolitan Opera chorus, imprinted my soul. She rises over my memory like the golden scrim on that historic stage. 

In the years since, I’ve played a variety of witchy villains and even voiced a couple of bears—wearing boxing shorts and beating each other to death—not. I’ve inhabited to role of a Grandmother Bear and her grandson Archie, sending the little bear gently off to dreamland, with a bedtime story that was not scary.

Good Night Sleep Tight. Audio book narrated by Jane Gennaro

AFTERTHOUGHT

March 14, 2020

Life is in the details of the everyday. That diamond of sunlight sparkling on my shiny long tweezers, as I  extract a brain from the skull of a chipmunk my cat Faccia killed. Visions of Disney chipmunks, sweeping dirt under the rug of the Seven Dwarf’s cottage, with their fluffy tails, to help Snow White tidy up the place. Animals are sentient persons, just as dwarfs, witches, princes, and paupers, and trees are persons. As auditions and bookings have dwindled, my art inspires the expired and like nature itself invites humans to accept and understand that each of us and all of us are Mother Nature’s creatures. 

I honor the big lives in small bodies as art. When my feral cat Faccia drops a mouse or vole at my feet, as if to say “This is what you should be eating” I drop the rodent into a  jar of  CVS 99% rubbing alcohol. In this state of suspended animation, the individuality of the specimen, be it chipmunk, mole, frog or vole is affirmed and celebrated. Each creature contributes. Each critter is a sacred link in the chain of life on our planet.