Theater, Murder, and the Laughter Problem

By Hazel Pearson

I stand up shakily, hand my index card to my teacher, and say my name as if he doesn’t already know.

You see a girl who’s proven herself reliable, but also reliably terrible at auditions.

She performs, making the piece a little too “choicey,” a little too loud, but volume is better than inaudibility and choices better than blandness, so she seems pretty perfect for the part.

I pretend to joke about being terrible at dancing as we’re all beckoned up to the auditorium stage, waiting for the crappy speaker to be kicked to life.

You see me dance.

She’s not getting the part.

I eagerly await the decision at home, knowing that it’s absolutely best not to get my hopes up because I completely flubbed the dance part of the audition, even for me.

You’ve already made the choice of lead, and are now trying to figure out who your killer is.

“She’s pretty good at acting, and this is a completely nondancing role, not even the ensemble, why don’t you make her the killer?”

I get the news in the form of an email, read the first name, realize it’s not mine, take a deep breath, and scan the list.

It’d take you a minute even to find the name.

She steps back from the computer like she’s been bitten by it, reads it again, starts typing on her computer, searches up the name and the name of the musical, realizes she’s playing the killer, bucks up a bit.

I walk into the first day of rehearsal feeling shaky—no singing or dancing at all?

You inform us that everyone will be singing in the background.

She smiles, realizing that it’s not her singing, but her dancing, that the judges didn’t like, which is not a blow—that was what she thought she did badly at, too.

I start my scene, figuring out the best way to jump off of the moving platform without changing its pattern of movement.

You see a girl appear out of nowhere, but you know that it’s because she half-fell in the opposite direction of the platform’s movement, thrusting with her foot at the end of the journey to ensure a safe landing.

She starts her lines.

I smile, my insides coated with warm, slippery theater magic.

You instruct the gangster-like character to grab the girl’s lapels and straighten them out, while the girl all the while moves backwards in a scared fashion.

She laughs a bit when it happens.

I get accused of murder—or, my character does.

You see her giggle repeatedly with just-been-accused-of-murder-jitters.

She can’t stop giggling.

I can’t stop giggling.

You move the cast past the scene, thanking the heavens that the girl who just left the stage didn’t break anyone else too badly—you’re all professionals here.

She hides behind the curtain and curses herself out.

I need to get it the fuck together.

Your mind doesn’t stay on that disaster scene for long—it’s the first day, and you have bigger fish to fry.

But for the next three rehearsals of Act 1, she can’t get through that scene without cracking up.

I’m getting actively intimidated, accused of murder, and then whipping around to see someone with handcuffs grinning at me, and I CAN’T break again.

You don’t realize that she’s not breaking because the scene is funny.

But she does realize, and she tries to justify it to herself when she gets home from school, because she doesn’t really know the actress playing the gangster-like character, doesn’t really know the actress accusing her of murder, and doesn’t really know the one she whips around to see holding the handcuffs.

I’ve realized I’m having a hard time separating the scene from reality.

You don’t know what to do.

She jokes to her family that she needs to either get fully comfortable on the stage to the point where she’s no longer real-life-nervous, or she needs to get fully uncomfortable on the stage to the point where she’s genuinely afraid of dying if she breaks again.

I apologize over and over again.

You don’t hear it, because it’s back stage, about unrelated things like blocking someone’s spot or someone else blocking the girl’s spot or the fact that the girl exists.

She puts on a smile and tries to not cry, thinking of different solutions to this laughter problem.

I try to act angry instead of nervous, because I already am nervous, might as well try to hold it together with rubber bands of acted-frustration.

You notice a slight improvement.

She doesn’t laugh until the very end of the scene now, when she turns around and notices the tall person standing behind her with handcuffs.

I know how close the show day is getting.

You notice a slightly different issue—line delivery.

She gets the instruction to try to be a friendly killer eel.

I think this might be working.

You’ve solved a problem you didn’t know was serious.

Because by trying to act friendly while she’s nervous, she’s tapping into what she’s been genuinely doing on this stage for the last two months.

Hazel Pearson is a young writer in Pittsburgh, PA. She enjoys petting her brindle pitbull, SuperNova Melody Willow Pearson, and making tasty baked goods that would probably be more delicious if she fully followed the recipe. If you can find her, she’s a bit creeped out by that fact