THESPIAN MAIDEN(Charles E.J. Moulton) THESPIAN MAIDEN

The British drama scene is one highly savoured in theatrical bliss. For a young student to try to emulate legends like Judi Dench sometimes results in agony. This is a tale of one student that lives and breathes that air, who not only battles her own preconceptions of being a delightful crumpet with the heart of a grand dame. She also battles her amorous intentions.

This story was written in 2010.


Penelope Filletreene – Drinkwater wandered about her acting school, trying to find the right mood for the scene. She was a young student in her first year and madly trying to be the actress that she knew that she could be, but wasn’t. She had seen the likes of Emma Thompson at the movies and she wanted very much to be a thespian maiden charmed by the critics and lusted for by the men.

“What does Juliet want?”
Romeo.
“They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.”

It wasn’t as easy as that.
Romeo was not available.
How do you portray a deep yearning for something when you are but 19 years old?
Her acting professor had asked her to remember her first love.

To tell the truth, Penny had only been with him to see what sex was like. The first time she had been in love, it had been with the boy next door and he had been a pretty boy. His manners had been very rude. The second boy had been five years her senior and she had been really desperately in love with him, but they fought a lot and so she soon broke up with him.

She did not know what love was – really.

She knew what parental love was, but sexual and amorous love? Maybe. To a certain degree. But not – really. After her last boyfriend was caught kissing her best friend, love was a recluse hated by Cupid.

So, as she paced the room and tried to figure out who Juliet was she felt a certain sting of shallowness. She felt like a silly girl with very little experience and maybe not fit to be an actress. Her parents supported her enthusiasm. They hoped that she would be able to fulfil her dream. Did Penelope believe in Penelope? Penny believed in acting. Penelope believed in a good job.

“But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.”

Blonde and blue eyed, perky and five foot five Penny, a girl who had the boys following her derriere as she walked down the street tried with all of her might to feel what it was that Juliet might feel being a Capulet and loving a boy that was a rival.

How do you find a mood? By remembering the situation.
Just play the situation, Miss Rochester would say.

Imagine the fourth wall that separates you from the audience. She tried to imagine that she was on a balcony looking down at Romeo and that a pretty garden was down below. She was in an alternate reality. She spent ten minutes doing that.

Then she asked herself where Juliet’s centre of gravity was. How did Juliet walk? She was graceful, elegant, feminine. Probably, Juliet was a chest person, a person whose upper body moved first. She would sway through life. It wasn’t a tit thing. It was a soul thing.

Motivation? What was her motivation? She wanted to speak to Romeo, but without her father finding this out. She spoke to his most hated enemy’s most prominent son.

Penny spoke the monologue, she moved it, she thought it, but she didn’t feel it. Penny didn’t have a boyfriend at the time. She had broken up with him and hated his guts.

She looked at her watch. Hmm. Almost one o’clock. Still ten minutes left until her parents were here to pick her up.

She threw her script into her golden shoulder bag and walked out. Irritated at the entire thing, she ran down the stairs overseeing a few boys standing at the forth or fifth step. They followed her frame as she passed, one even whistled, so she turned around and watched one of them. A cute guy. Nice face. She smiled.

What was that feeling? Sex? Yes. Sex. She could use that, though. She ran onto the rehearsal stage again and threw her bag onto the chair. She spoke the monologue to the guy with cute face. It worked. It actually worked. The monologue became about sex, but it actually made sense.

She sighed a sigh of relief.

All she had to do now was speak the monologue with that emotion before the jury and maybe she would get the role of Juliet at this year’s production of Romeo and Juliet. She knew she was better than Emma Smythe. That black-haired bitch was as much Juliet at Bart Simpson. Penny ran down the stairs and felt good about herself, waited outside and thought about her aspirations to became the new Emma Thompson.

Her parents soon came in their BMW and they spent the afternoon eating pasta with Penny and sitting on the terrace speaking about Salvador Dali. Penny was preoccupied with her attempts to be a grand actress. She knew that she had to have the monologue down by next month when the auditions were held. Many older students were auditioning. Emma Smythe was already 24 and she was much more experienced. If Penny could beat Emma, she could achieve anything.

Penny’s father tutored her on learning to account. He wanted her at least to know what that was just in case she wanted something to fall back on. There was another course that Penny could fall back on: history. She visited a course at the university once a week and maybe that would turn into an actual education. Right now, however, her father was teaching her the basics of finance in case she wanted to enrol in the London School of Business and Economics.

Juliet was her main preoccupation that evening and it remained so for the rest of the weekend, finance or not.

When she had her next personal lesson with her teacher Miss Vanessa Rochester that Monday, she was eager to show her what she had learned and rehearsed on Saturday.

Miss Rochester, who also happened to be the boss of the school, was a typical Dramatic Prima Donna. She always wore red scarves and capes, even in the summer. Her long, wavy, red hair went down to her waist and her black dresses looked as if they should be worn on the Paris catwalk. She spoke in a very upper class accent and moved like a duchess.

She could afford to be aloof, though. She had performed at the Globe Theatre and made movies with the likes of Anthony Hopkins.

She also was a great fan of Penny’s talent and could give praise when necessary. She also told Penny when she was terrible and so Penny could count on hearing the truth from her teacher.

Anyway, Penny spoke her monologue and tried to act it feeling the fourth wall, embracing Juliet’s centre of gravity, using the motivation for Juliet not be caught by her Dad and then thinking of the cute guy she had seen as a catalyst for sensual emotion.

Miss Rochester nodded when Penny was finished with the speech and smiled. She walked up from the auditorium to the empty stage that they were using between two rehearsals, before Penny’s dance class and after her improvisational studies. The acting professor smiled. It was the smile of someone impressed enough to be nice, but not impressed enough to laugh.

Vanessa Rochester cocked her head and winced.

“Mmmh,” she groaned and searched for words. “Penny dear…”

Uh-ooh, Penny thought. Those were words Miss Rochester only used when she was not satisfied.

“No, no,” Miss Rochester said, “no fear. You were good.”

Penny sighed. “But?”

Miss Rochester smiled. “Your centre of gravity is correct, your actions are believable. I see the garden. I see Romeo. I feel your motivation. But somehow I feel that Romeo is Antonio Banderas and that you have him on your wall in a poster in your room at home. What are you thinking of when you speak to Romeo?”

Penny looked sideways.

“I …” she started and then looked into Miss Rochester’s eyes. Penny laughed, a little embarrassed. “I am thinking of the cute guy that works in the cantina here. He passed me the other day in the hallway and I used him as motivation for the scene.”

“Would you die for him, Penny?”

Penny was startled. “I …” She winced. “I beg your pardon?”

“Juliet is desperately in love, Penny,” Miss Rochester said and walked up on the stage. “The Capulets are the Bushes. They believe in traditional values and family morals. They are republicans and xenophobic purists. The Montagues are the Clintons and they believe in economic opportunities and change, they will challenge the ruling senate and they will use their money to back a regrouping of power. These people hate each other’s guts.”

It was very shocking to hear Miss Rochester speak in her upper ten accent words that actually belonged in Whitechapel and Queens.

“Juliet Reagan falls in love with Romeo Clinton and their families cannot stand that,” Miss Rochester continued. “They don’t care, because they would rather elope and live on bloody rice than give up each other.”

Miss Rochester gave Penny a wide grin.

“Sorry to be so blunt, love,” she said and this gave Penny a big smile upon her face. Miss Rochester ran up on stage and caressed Penny once across her right cheek. Penny smiled. The drama teacher raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “You told me that you don’t have a boyfriend?”

Penny shook her head. “I found him fondling my best friend Emma, so that gave me two enemies for the price of one, I guess.”

Miss Rochester looked down and smiled.

“Emma is up for Juliet, as well?”

Penny nodded.

Okay, so it wasn’t that she actually didn’t have any experience with love. She was having love trouble. As we all know, having love trouble and playing a scene where you are supposed to be madly in love is like eating a hamburger after having spent an hour at Burger King. A week ago, Penny’s best friend and now arch-rival Emma Smythe and her ex-boyfriend Peter Smith had been working on a mutual dialogue. It was not Romeo and Juliet. It was a play called Into the Clouds by an Aussie Author named Julia Britton and had been chosen by their acting professor. Peter was in the same year as Emma and the two had performed together before. The second monologue was Fernando and Miranda’s love scene from the third act of Shakespeare’s last play The Tempest.

This year’s anthology of scenes would include Penny as Juliet and Peter and Emma in their scene from Into the Clouds. The fact that Romeo and Juliet was being performed next year made it easier for Penny to get the part, but not evident.

Now it was doubtful that she would at all get the part, knowing that Emma and Peter had been fondling each other’s parts.
Peter had always been an inspiration for her Romeo.
Now he was an inspiration for her to play Medea.
Miss Rochester sighed and looked Penny deep in the eyes.

“Am I to blame?” Miss Rochester whispered.

Penny shook her head. “You made a clean decision. You had two senior students that worked well together. Peter and I have done enough scenes together. Emma would’ve come between us anyway.”

Miss Rochester tried to figure out if Penny actually had misunderstood something.

“Did Emma and Peter really sleep together?” Miss Rochester asked and waited for a long time while Penny looked down and thought very hard about Miss Rochester’s question.

Penny shrugged. “All I know is that the door was open and that I watched them rehearsing the scene as usual for about ten minutes. Neither of them knew I was there. I was standing up on the balcony there.” Penny pointed up toward the back door, where it was quite easy to go unnoticed. “Then they spoke for a couple of minutes and it seemed right for me to see what Peter was going to do with another woman in my absence. They paced the stage a couple of minutes and then they kissed. It was an intense kiss and lasted for a minute or two. Emma even fondled his parts and Peter fondled hers.”

“What happened then?”

Penny sniggered. “I ran down to the stage and grabbed Peter by the chemise. I threw him along the stage and said to him I would not be the right one for him in the first place. As I was leaving the auditorium, he told me that he and Emma were rehearsing the Act III, Scene I situation from The Tempest with Ferdinand and Miranda. Before I left the hall I screamed that they could go home to his place and try playing it in the nude. I told him that we were through and he hasn’t called me since. Emma said nothing. She was obviously embarrassed.”

Miss Rochester shook her head and paced the stage.
“Don’t shag the company,” she whispered.
Penny shook her head. “Excuse me?”
Miss Rochester looked up.
“I said that you never involve yourself amorously with anyone that you work with. That only brings on trouble. You are experiencing that. If you an actor and marry an actress, try to choose one that is a little bit more practical than yourself or, if all else fails, keep out of the cantina. That way you will avoid gossip. Obviously,” Miss Rochester continued, “Peter and Emma did not actually rehearse Shakespeare when they were kissing. Forget him.”
Penny laughed. “How can I forget him? We study together.”
“Think of yourself as a block of ice,” Miss Rochester said.
There was a long pause and Penny thought about what Miss Rochester had said. Ice. Penny felt like a hot stone.
She sighed.
Her acting professor smiled.
“You want to take a break from Juliet?”
Penny shrugged again.
“Penny dear,” Vanessa Rochester said, “we have a month before you actually have to audition this piece. The jury will be in favour of you anyway, because you will be performing the scene with another student. Emma is good, but if she backstabs you there is no way she is going to win their hearts.”

Vanessa went up to Penny and embraced Penny.
It was a long embrace and a very amiable one.
It felt like a defeat to actually give in to this love trouble. Wasn’t she an actress? No, not yet. In a few years she maybe could set aside these feelings. She would have to endure a few twists and turns before actually being able to be strong enough to click on a feeling without interfering with her own life or vice versa.
She stepped out of the drama school three hours later. Penny was tired and sweaty. Her feet felt like lead.
She walked down the steps and was just about to head for the underground, when she saw Peter standing leaning against a lamppost. Penny stopped dead in her tracks.
“Emma has left for the States,” Peter said.
Penny turned to Peter and just looked at him.
“Sunset Boulevard needs a few harlots.”
Penny turned away and walked a few steps.
“You hurt my feelings.”
Peter sighed again. “Emma is gone,” he repeated.
Penny laughed and walked away, faster this time, away from that lying creep. Peter followed her and caught up with her close to the subway. Hundreds of people were passing them and Penny was embarrassed by the attention they were attracting.
“I love you,” he yelled.
She took a deep swing with her leg and kicked him in the groin.
He fell forward onto the ground, someone laughed and Penny disappeared into the ground and took the tube away from crap.
She cried all the way home.

Then between classes one day, Peter approached her and asked her for ten minutes. In her mind, she wanted to kick him in the nuts again, but if he really was telling the truth and they did get back together she would want children. Maybe a slap across the face?
She just nodded.

Sitting down, Penny listened to a nervous boy speak about his love for her. He was rubbing his hands and shifting in his seat and seemed like a little lad caught with his hand in a cookie jar.
“As I said,” Peter began, “and let me finish my speech. I have rehearsed this over and over. Emma has left for New York. She had a possibility to study at the Actor’s Studio at 432 West 44th Street in New York City and she took it. She does not want to stand in our way.”
“What do you want, Peter?” Penny snapped.
“I was stupid, Penny,” he interrupted. “We really were rehearsing The Tempest and things got out of hand. We have not kissed before and we certainly won’t again. We knew that we felt some lust for one another, but we agreed that we wouldn’t fall for that. We were and are both very much in love with our partners. We certainly have not slept together. The love scene went really well and we had decided never to kiss on stage, because we knew where that could end. Emma broke up with her boyfriend because of this thing. She sent you her love.”
Penelope started laughing a cynical laughter. “You are full of shit,” she said and stood up, aiming to walk out of the room. Peter walked to the door and positioned himself in front of the entrance.
Penny imagined herself being a block of ice.
Peter then did the unthinkable.
He knelt down on his knees and took her hand.
Out of his coat pocket he took a small rose, which he handed to her. Penny didn’t know what to say. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he wasn’t as mean as she had thought. “Will you be girl again?”
Penny managed to smile and she shrugged.
“I know that I failed,” he said, “I know that what I did was despicable, but if I lost you I would not stand it.”
“If you ever do that again, then I will drop you in the Themes.”
Peter stood up and gave his newly won girl a kiss.
Penny nodded. “Give me some time, Peter,” she said, “I will be your girl again, but you’ll have to give me some time.”
“How much?”
Penny turned around and looked at Peter.
“As long as it takes for you to prove you mean it,” she said.
Penny walked out of the room and into her next class.
Penny and Peter avoided each other the next few days. However, small notes were positioned alongside places where Peter knew that Penelope would be passing. He wrote songs and poems, he gave her flowers and baked her cakes. He sent her mails with pictures that Emma had sent proving she was in America.
One Saturday, a while later, the two lovers accidentally met in the cantina after a class. They could actually speak freely with one another about their private lives.
That next Monday, Penny had her lesson with Miss Rochester. What had been missing from the monologue was now present in all its’ glory. Penny was a Juliet so extraordinary that Miss Rochester had tears in her eyes. Obviously, Penny had her boyfriend back. No questions asked. She just hoped that Penny had the strength to be just as good in a couple of years even when she had love problems.
Needless to say, Penny convinced the jury and got the role of Juliet. Peter was there and congratulated her and that evening he asked her to marry him. It was perfect bliss.
How love can fix the aspirations of a thespian maiden.
During the rehearsals of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet at the Drama School Public Auditorium Penny’s Romeo, a young man from the senior year by the name of George Jenkins, got sick in the flu. It was just a coincidence and never ever planned. Peter knew the part, because he had worked on it in Miss Rochester’s class.
Penny’s first thought was to tell the team that Peter knew the part. The next day, Peter was rehearsing the part with script in hand. The day of premiere came. Penny and Peter were very nervous, knowing that everyone knew they were a couple playing a couple. The London Drama School Journal was there and so were a couple of culture reporters from leading daily newspapers.
One magazine spoke of ‘a passionate masterpiece surprisingly professional for a student production’.
It was at the premiere party that she noticed Emma standing in a corner. At first, she didn’t want to recognize the fact that Emma was there. With a glass of Moet et Chandon 2010 in her hands, she strode up and asked her what she was doing in London.
She answered in a very calm voice that she was happy in New York City and unhappy in having lost a friend.
Penny said that she had been hurt by the last person she had believed could hurt her. Emma shrugged and simply stated that she had given in to her own lust. She wanted to say good bye and would not be returning to London shortly.
With those words Emma left and Penny felt it quite difficult in in spite of what that friend had done.
Emma was gone and Penny had won.
Penny was very sad, because it all had seemed so unfinished.
Three days after the premiere Penny was rehearsing a monologue in the auditorium. Miss Rochester had been so impressed by Penny’s rendition of Juliet that she had endeavoured to give her a little something a wee bit heavier: Kate’s final long monologue Fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow from the fifth act second scene of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
It wasn’t Miss Rochester’s ill intention to choose the monologue, but she knew in the back of her head that Penny looked for inspiration from real life. The monologue is a long, avid credo to early feminism: men are schmucks and bastards.
And so, the following occurred:
Penelope Filletreene – Drinkwater wandered about the rehearsal room in her acting school, trying to find the right mood for the scene that she was working on. She was madly trying to be the grand actress that she knew that she could be. She had seen the likes of Emma Thompson at the movies and she wanted very much to be a thespian maiden charmed by the critics and lusted for by the men.
“Katharina,” she kept on whispering. “What does Katharina want here?”
Obviously to kick Petruchio’s nuts.
Or not? She loves him and goes away with him after the monologue, but she does speak for women.
“A woman moved is like a fountain troubled.”

And how do you portray such a deep hatred for something when you are but 20 years old?
Her acting professor had given her this monologue and asked her to remember her first break-up and speak about that.

To tell the truth, Penny had only broken up twice.

So, as she paced the room and tried to figure out who Katharina was she felt a certain sting of shallowness. She felt like a silly girl with very little experience and maybe not fit to be an actress. Did Penelope believe in Penelope?
“Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.”
Blonde and blue eyed, perky and five foot five Penny, a girl who had the boys following her derriere as she walked down the street, tried with all of her might to feel what it was that Katharina might feel being a strong woman in a time when women were supposed to be weak. She had an hour left to try to find the mood.

How do you find a mood? What had her acting professor said?

Imagine the fourth wall. You are in a room and there is a fourth wall that separates you from the audience. She tried to imagine that. She tried to imagine that she in Padua looking at Petruchio and that she was in an alternate reality.

Then she asked herself where Katharina’s centre of gravity was. How did Katharina walk? She was bold, elegant, feminine. Probably, Katharina was a hip person, a person who was used to rushing out of rooms and telling men to go amuse themselves. She would push herself through life. Motivation? What was her motivation? She wanted Petruchio, but not on the expense of her pride. Penny spoke the monologue, she moved it, she thought it, but she didn’t feel it.

She looked at her watch. Hmm. Almost one o’clock. Still ten minutes left until her boyfriend picked her up. She threw her script into her golden shoulder bag and walked out. A few boys followed her bottom as she passed, one even whistled, so she turned around and watched one of them.

She stopped. What was that feeling? Hatred? Yes. Hatred. She could use that, though. She ran into the rehearsal room again and threw her bag onto the chair. She spoke the monologue to the guy with stupid face. It worked. It actually worked. The monologue became about anger, but it actually made sense.

She sighed a sigh of relief and walked out of the auditorium with a feeling of pride in actually having achieved something. Slowly, she strode off to a lunch break with her boyfriend.
Peter appeared behind her, grabbing her by the waist.
She shrieked.

“I see you have been working on Katharina,” he laughed.
Laughing at this just like kids, they ran off together to explore new horizons of amorous delivery, happy that Emma had not caught them this time.

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