And Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You done evil to Your servant, and why have I not found favor in Your eyes, to put the burden of all this people upon me?“

“There are those actors who are prophets, (for whom) something flows through them, and it’s not of their own construction.” – David Mamet

Beha'alotchka Numbers 8:1

When New York arts journalists asked “The Prophet”, Vic Fine, what dreams he had for his theater company, his stock answer was “My hope is that it flourishes and can touch as many hearts as possible.” Vic’s wife Hannah knew that what Vic really wanted was to shut the whole thing down.

Vic knew that statements of generosity and public spirit were what was expected of artists.  He hated having to pretend to be sincere. The act of “pretending” was a form a suicide by degrees. It was in direct opposition to everything he believed about acting.

Vic named his company the “Tent of Meeting” as a reference from the Torah. It was the priestly tabernacle where rituals were performed and sacrifices were made to God while the Israelites travelled through the Sinai desert. To Vic, the theater was a holy place and he wanted the audience, and especially the company’s actors, to treat it with a degree of reverence and awe that he imagined the Israelites had for their mystical tabernacle. But after twenty years of struggle, he chuckled at the pomposity of the concept.

It was too much responsibility. The actors in the repertory company relied on their positions in order to survive. They all had side gigs, often in restaurants, that paid more, but the Tent of Meeting gave them the few extra bucks to cover the rent, and more importantly, it gave them the ability to call themselves “actors” and not “waiters.” Self-definition is the most important element of survival. It was true for every character, and especially true for the people who work in the arts.

One night this week he came home nearly in tears. “Hannah, my theater is murdering me. I come home every day afraid to look at my arms, expecting them to be bleeding from all the little cuts. I’d burn the place down tomorrow. Let them put me in jail. I don’t care. Three squares, a cell, and nothing to worry about. But there are people who depend on me. And you know what’s worse? It’s the vision. It’s the voice. It’s what I’m trying to do with acting. It will die.”

“I depend on you too, Vic. You can slow down without stopping.”

“A theater company runs at a certain tempo. You skip a production. Where do the actors go in the meantime? Audiences move on. Anyway, this production is already under way. Some things are just greater than me.”

“Even when you created them, Vic?”

“Especially then.”

Vic’s vision for the Tent of Meeting was that it was a closed society. All the actors in the repertory company trained with him. There needed to be a single approach to acting for a production to be truly coherent. No other company was so rigorous.

The next morning, it was the third time that day since he’d been running the opening scene where Willy Loman makes his entrance. Vic had cast a relatively new actor with the company in the lead role because of a potential he saw, but which had not emerged yet in rehearsal. “I don’t believe that the spirit of Willy Loman has entirely taken over your body yet, Ethan. I see the trappings of fatigue and confusion, the hunched shoulders, the weak voice when you tell your wife why you drove home. Well, I see through it. It’s bullshit. It’s affectation. You’re trying too hard. Throw it all away. Just say the lines. Let Willy Loman possess you. I keep telling you, it’s a passive process. If you try at all, you’re trying too hard.”

Vic Fine’s mantra was “just say the lines,” but it often confused his early students. Some would attempt to serve their master by giving consciously lifeless line readings. They didn’t get it.

Vic was called “The Prophet” because he insisted that he had no technique, no method. Just say the lines and let the spirit possess you. It happened or it didn’t. Yet, for Vic, in his days on Broadway, there was never a question of whether the spirit would seep into his skin, his lungs, his throat, and his bowels. His first role on Broadway was in the same play he was now directing, “Death of A Salesman”. His performance as Biff, Willy Loman’s wayward son, was so complete that it infected other members of the cast. During the course of its run, Arthur Richards, the production’s Willy Loman, began to feel convinced that Vic really was his son. He’d invite the young actor to dinner with his family and offer career advice.  But eventually Vic’s portrayal served to remind the leading man of his own failures as a father. After three months into the run, Arthur Richards attempted his own suicide, just like the character he had been portraying. Unlike Willy Loman, he was saved, but he was so shaken that he asked to be replaced in the production. The production became unbalanced, and though it had been selling out, it closed down four weeks later as audiences waned.

“Let’s just keep going.” Vic gave Ethan, his Willy Loman, the cue.

“Take an aspirin. Should I get you an aspirin? It’ll soothe you.”

Ethan picked the text up.

“I was driving along, you understand? And I was fine. I was even observing the scenery. You can imagine, me looking at scenery, on the road every week of my life. But it’s so beautiful up there, Linda, the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm…”

Ethan stopped. “I’m not getting it, Mister Fine. I’m sorry. You tell me to just say the lines. I’m saying them. They have no meaning to me anymore. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Linda tells me to take an aspirin, and I’ll tell you, I think I could use one. Probably something stronger than an aspirin.”

Vic had to control himself. Ethan needed to step up. He had been with the company for nearly two years. He had been reasonably successful in Chicago, and moved to New York to study with Vic, to change his approach. Here he was, bestowed with the magnificent role of Willy Loman, and he was kvetching like a high school student.

“You have everything you need,” Vic told him. “You know what Yoda says. ‘Do or do not.’ Should we give it a rest and work on the scene with Biff and Happy?”

Ethan shrugged and looked down. “Maybe. Maybe we should try again later.”

“OK, then. You chose ‘Do not.’ Sit down, please, and we’ll move on.”

But as Ethan began walking to the side of the room, everyone heard the squeal of a chair and then an unexpected voice cracked the mood. It was incongruously clear and optimistic.

“Do you really want an aspirin?”  

Everyone except Vic turned to the voice. It was Charley Eldridge, the play’s “Howard”.

“You just said you don’t know what you’re doing here? You say you’re not getting it. But that means you are.”

Charley had studied with Vic for longer than anyone else, at least five or six years. Yet he had always lived in a limbo of good roles, but never leading roles. Most actors would have moved on by now. “Ethan, don’t you see, it’s happening? Work with the way you’re feeling now and just say the lines.”

Vic finally gave in to his irritation and swiveled to face Charley. “Are you suddenly the fuckin’ director? Ethan said he’s tired, and I’m tired too. He should sit down and you should shut up.”

The ensemble had never seen a showdown like this. It was unthinkable in any theater. At The Tent of Meeting, with The Prophet in the room, it could very well signal the Apocalypse.

Charley was the only person in the room besides Ethan standing up. They were at the same eye level, and Charley held onto Ethan’s gaze with muscular power. Charley continued, “Say the lines. Keep going.”

“I opened the windshield and just let the warm air bathe over me. And then all of a sudden, I’m goin’ off the road! I’m tellin’ ya, I absolutely forgot I was driving. If I’d’ve gone the other way over the white line I might’ve killed somebody. So I went on again—and five minutes later I’m dreamin’ again, and I nearly – I have such thoughts, I have such strange thoughts.”

The cast paused. Do they dare continue? Someone began to clap and Vic raised his right arm, ordering them to cease immediately. Then, with some hesitation, the character of Linda came in and continued the scene. She pleads with Willy to ask his boss, Howard, to take him off the road and work in New York. Eventually they argue about their son Biff, the deterioration of the neighborhood, and even the strangeness of whipped cheese, until Vic finally calls for the end of the scene.

“Great work, everyone. I feel it happening. Do you all feel it happening? Ethan, I know you feel it happening.”

Ethan was indeed nearly trembling. The rest of the cast appeared transfixed as though they had just seen a demon enter the room.

Vic called for a ten-minute break and then walked over to Charley. “In twenty years, no one has ever attempted a mutiny. I don’t need you. You got that? I can recast Howard. I can close this whole fuckin’ place down if I want. And believe me, I want. Do we understand each other?”

“But Mister Fine, you do need me. That’s the point. You saw what Ethan just delivered. He was there! I saw it!”

Charley waited, hoping that the moment would come when Vic acknowledged what seemed to be the self-evident truth, that Ethan had just ascended to a new level.

Vic said, “Just so long as we understand each other.”

“But that means we don’t!”

Vic returned to his seat and continued the rehearsal with no further mention of the uprising. When he dismissed the rehearsal, no one in the cast dared discuss it either.

On the subway ride back home to his apartment in Astoria, Vic found himself repeatedly being startled by his fellow straphangers. Each time he turned his head, he’d momentarily see the face of one of his students somewhere else in the car, and then he’d return to temporary sanity. It became an amusement. He imagined the individuals in the subway car were actors, and they were playing the roles of individual students. The middle-aged man seated across from him, staring blankly through the window at the tunnel lights became Ethan, eager and receptive for any direction in his part. A young woman standing nearby swayed with the subway’s rhythm as her long dusty brown hair swayed across her breast in the opposite direction. To Vic. she a had resemblance to Elaine, who played “The Woman” from Boston, Willy Loman’s occasional girlfriend and further source of humiliation. A man in his thirties, in a poorly matched suit, balanced and leaned against the rail. He was Charley, Howard in the play, and the source of Vic’s new personal humiliation. He remembered them all in class, working exercises, before the production began.

“We must avoid controlling our performance. The goal is to be passive. We are receptive to the spirit of the character. Only in this way can our work be true,” Vic explained to his class. Elaine raised her hand. “I think I got it. So, we’re like vessels for our character?” Vic realized that his expression foreshadowed his disappointment in this question because he saw Elaine’s excitement immediately turn into a look of concern. Vic looked around the room and saw a student swigging from a bottle of Coke. He took it from him and held it up for the class. “You’re a vessel? Then what becomes of the Coca Cola inside? It takes on the shape of the vessel, yes? And that’s what’s wrong. The character is the vessel. You’re the Coca Cola.” He pointed around the room. “And you’re the Sprite, and you’re the water, and you’re the Red Bull or whatever. Everyone: raise your hand if you believe that, as an actor, you are an artist.” The entire class looked around, uncertain as to what the right answer was, until finally one hand was raised and then another, and eventually the entire class became a union of artists. “Wrong. None of you are artists. But this is nothing to be ashamed of. You are the art itself. DaVinci was an artist. But the Mona Lisa… the paint in each color and shade, the texture of each brush stroke, the smile, the eyes, the hair. That’s the art. It has no voice in where it ends up, but it is what the viewer experiences directly. That is what we are. Even when I direct, I am simply… what?… the brush? I work at the command of the artist. This is what we strive for here. The prophet does not speak with his own voice. The prophet speaks with God’s.”

Vic had felt inspired after delivering that speech three months ago. He surprised himself with his own spontaneity expressed in his own words, and it seemed to perfectly capture the essence of what he wished to impart to his students. But could this wisdom be passed along, or was it just a personal gift? As the subway car began to emerge from the tunnel and into the light as the train track became elevated, he looked at his companions in the subway car for acknowledgement. They were of course all in their own personal worlds, and that seemed perfect. They were being themselves, as it should be. Then he looked at his Charley Eldridge substitute. His careless stance, supported by frame and muscle, seemed ominous. A single punch in the chin could send Vic flying through the train window and out onto the gutter. How was it that Charley managed to bring out the performance needed from Ethan when Vic had given up? Did it take an act of arrogance which, to Vic, bordered on violence?

The next day, Vic decided that the best defense was a good offense, and so he put Charley to work. “Let’s start with Act Two, when Willy comes in to Howard’s office.” Howard is the boss, and he has control of the scene. It’s the fifties, and he begins bragging about his new tape recorder which catches the brilliance of his children, whom he believes to be precocious and talented. Finally, Willy gets to talking about the good old days of working for Howard’s father, in an effort to gain control of the conversation and to change his sales territory from New England to New York. By the time the conversation is over, Howard has Jiu Jitsu’ed Willy. Howard sees that Willy has become a sick malfunctioning salesman and wants him to take a break without pay. Willy is now begging to keep his clients in Boston but Howard just shoos Willy out of the office.

The scene ended and both men stopped, waiting for comments from Vic, but Vic said nothing. He seemed momentarily hypnotized. Charlie tried breaking the spell. “Should we rerun that, or do you want to continue the scene with Ben and Linda?”

“No, that was incredible. Frightening. A horror movie where the monster is human. Ethan, any thoughts?”

“I’m shaking. I feel defeated down to my bones. I’m glad I had to remind myself that I’m just playing Willy Loman, because if this were real, and instead of Willy and Howard talking about selling stockings it was me and Charley talking about acting… I think I’d abandon my acting career and start selling stockings or something.”

The cast laughed. Ethan was truly funny, and they all needed the laugh after seeing Willy so coldly hollowed out by Charley’s portrayal of Willy’s boss.

“How about you, Charley?” Vic asked. “How are you feeling now?”

Charley shrugged and smiled. “Hey, it’s just business.”

“I bet that’s what Dracula said after sucking out someone’s blood. ‘Hey, it’s just brunch.’ Tremendous work, both of you. It’s in the chemistry.  We can work on the blocking a little later but I don’t want to touch this for now. Willy’s suicide comes at the end of the play, and I have a fear that if we ran through this again with the same intensity, we’ll end up losing Willy before opening night.”

Vic continued to work through Act Two for the rest of the day. He had come in this morning wanting to put Charley in his place. Ethan had delivered his best work, and it was Charley that brought out his greatness. The fire in Ethan continued through the rest of the work that day, extinguished only by Willy’s death at the end of the act.  Vic finally dismissed the cast and returned to his office, but felt sick over his inability to confront Charley.

There were new opportunities in the production that the day’s work forced Vic to see. Ethan’s performance as Willy drove Vic to discover a hidden conflict in his character and in the entire play. Sure, it was a tragedy. Sure, Willy was deluded. But Willy had a hope for himself that so few of us have.  The conflict is right there in the final disagreement between Willy’s sons. Biff says “I know who I am.” But for Happy “He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have—to come out number-one man.” The audience must be made to see at least a little of the truth in Happy’s reality. Ethan had just begun to capture it. The lighting, the staging, all of it, must also capture that ambiguity.

Then he heard a rap on his doorframe. Charley was standing there for him. There was no way to avoid the confrontation now. Vic was almost relieved at the inevitability, however painful, of having some of this burden lifted. He asked Charley to come in and close the door.

“Mister Fine, I have a couple of things to bring up. The first concerns yesterday.”

“You’re calling me ‘Mister Fine’, that can’t be a good thing.”

“I suppose I’m just trying to show respect. I’m really pleased with the way this production is starting to take shape. I hope you felt it too. I know you did. It’s unavoidable.”

“You did a great job coaching Ethan when I was stuck. You want some credit for it.”

“No. I’m here to apologize for taking over. You’re the director here. You’re the teacher. This is your theater and your company. I did good work in the scene today with Ethan, and I’ll take a tiny bit of credit for forcing him to have something threatening to respond to, but I had no business taking over the role of director yesterday, and I want to make it clear to you that I plan to step back for the rest of the rehearsal process.”

“I appreciate that, and I also think you’re too modest. I hated you stepping in yesterday, but you provided guidance that I was incapable of. And I want to talk to you about it. This theater is tiny, but it’s too much. I’m not the only man in the world with this voice. It needs to be shared. When this production is finished, I would like you to come and join me as a partner. More than anyone else here, I think ‘you get it’. This world is big enough for two prophets. Who knows, maybe more. But let’s start sitting down together and figure out what our next production is going to be, and what is your vision for directing. Let’s discover how you can take on some of the duties of teaching what it means to be not the artist, but the art. I know you understand me.  And then in a few years, if things go well, I want this all to be yours. There’s nothing here to sell. I don’t have to tell you that this is not a big money maker. But if you’re passionate about the theater and about acting, and I know you are, there is no better place in the world to be.”

“I’m flattered, Mr. Fine, but that leads me to the other thing I wanted to discuss. I agree with you. This world does need another voice. That’s why after this production is over, I’ll be leaving The Tent of Meeting. Roger, my husband, thinks he’s got a good job opportunity in Dallas, and while I may have the talent in art, but he’s got the talent in money. I’m going to be opening up a theater school and performance center out there. You’ve taught me more about acting than any other human being possibly can. It’s time to share and spread out.”

“You’re leaving me to go to Dallas? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding yourself? It’s a wasteland there. New York is theater town. It’s where talent comes from all over the country to thrive and grow. It’s where the audiences are. There’s nothing in all of Texas except heat and stupidity. You’ll wither on the vine. Your potential is in New York.”

“New York doesn’t need me.”

“Dallas sure as shit don’t. For you to teach acting in Dallas, teaching THIS acting in Dallas, putting on productions of plays that actually mean something… you’re throwing your pearls before swine. You deserve better and the theater community deserves better.”

“I didn’t come here to argue. Roger and I talked it over. The extra money he can make in Dallas can completely fund a new theater there. A new theater! I am paying you the greatest compliment imaginable, and I hope you see it that way. Not to replace your voice, but to multiply it. We will build the talent and with it we will build the audience.”

“I’ll tell you what you’ll build. I see what most of these regional theaters do. You’ll build a production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ every winter, a production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ every summer, and if you’re lucky, every other year, you’ll do a run of ‘Noises Off.’ And you’ll do that year after year after year until you kill yourself out of boredom.”

 “I’m so very flattered that you’re offering me this. I want to say that I don’t deserve it, but…”

“You deserve it.”

“…but, well, I respect you and know you gave it serious thought. I only hope that you’ll be equally… you know the saying: “imitation is the greatest form of flattery. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Vic could only say “This is a mistake!” but could only then start to imagine what a Charley-run theater might look like. In Dallas. He’d never been there, but he could only visualize something part-city, part-desert, with men wearing cowboy hats, women with long blonde hair, and all of them voting for unspeakable politicians and seeing a theater as some other-worldly novelty.

The plan for the next day was to work on the final Requiem – Willy’s funeral – which required only five members of the cast, but Vic texted all thirteen of them to join the work.

Vic was usually in the theater before everyone, but this morning he allowed the cast to assemble in advance. He showed up late so that he could make an entrance, walking along the side aisle, and up to the center of the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, today the plan was to work on the Requiem scene. I’m here to tell you that the only requiem we’ll be exploring is for the entire production. At least as it has existed up to this point. Yesterday’s work, I think you’ll agree, was a revelation, and it has forced me to see Willy Loman and the people around him in a new way. So, we’re going to start from the beginning. We’ll have some catching up to do, but I don’t see this jeopardizing opening night.

“This is also going to be a requiem for Charley, who I am both delighted and angry as hell to announce, will be leaving us after this production to form a new theater school and company in Dallas. You don’t have to tell him that he’s making a mistake and that Dallas is a shithole. I’ve already done that, and he wouldn’t listen. All we can do now is to congratulate him, wish him the best, and know that if there’s a way to bring our voice outside of New York, that Charley is the person to do it.

“Most important, there will be a requiem for ‘The Tent of Meeting’, at least as we know it. When we finish ‘Death of A Salesman’, when Willy has committed suicide for the sixteenth time, you’ll all be taking on new roles, a new ‘mission’, for those of you who should you decide to accept it. This is too much for me. I can’t go on, but I can’t let the voice of our theater die. So, I am asking you. I’m really begging you, to be the new teachers. I’m going to be putting ‘The Tent of Meeting’ into your hands, for you to take on a new generation of students and a new line up of productions, whether it’s ‘King Lear’ or ‘A Christmas Carol’, God help us. I’ll be sticking around to occasionally whisper things into your ears, but this will be your theater. I can’t shoulder it all, but I can’t let it die.”

Members of the company began applauding nervously, looking around to others as if to say “Should we be thanking him? Should be all give him a standing ovation? Is he even serious?”

“I’m sure you’ll have questions,” Vic continued. “Unfortunately, I don’t yet have the answers. I know, that’s not what you’re used to hearing, but get used to it.

“We have a lot of work to do in not much time. We’re taking it from the opening with a new approach. Willy, I know that to the audience this play is supposed to be a tragedy. To the playwright, it’s a tragedy. But in your eyes this is not a tragedy. If you go down, you go down fighting. If for one second you start to think it’s a tragedy, I want you to snap out of it and return to the moment. Got that?

“Linda, get up on stage. Willy, please make your entrance.”

Linda:

“Willy!”

Willy:

“It’s all right. I came back.”

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