qe2
in
c6d_universe
The Mirror, Crack'd (Slings & Arrows), for andeincascade
Title: The Mirror, Crack'd
For: andeincascade
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Rating: G (I know, I know...)
Pairings: Geoffrey/theatre, Geoffrey/Ellen (possibly Geoffrey/self)
Length: 1,182 words.
Warnings: Um. Iambic pentameter. Also, extremely improbable maturity rating for a Q!tale. Also also, prompt!fail. Ande, I've another story partly written, far more characteristically NC-17 and uncharacteristically but you-fittingly Canadian Actor RPS, that is yours and will be coming to you as soon as I have brain with which to get it done. In the meantime, I hope this at least amuses your deserving self.
The Mirror, Crack'd
The green room stinks of smoke.
So not a shock,
all things considered. God, the stupid shit
that actors do-and prob'ly always have:
it's fairly certain, Geoffrey thinks, that Willy
S and Global brethren trashed their cords
with some illicit substance, never mind
the damage deeper registers might do
to all their girlish attitudes and what
sad traces of youth's clarity they longed
to bring to bear on Marlowe's timeless lines.
So, yeah, okay: the stench of RJR
and B&H is pretty much to be
expected. What he never thought he'd see
in space so soaked with angst and vanity,
so papered with my-dues-are-paid veneer
glued up by fragile ego's queens (bad beer
disguising desperation's breath) is this:
that glass reflecting darkly, hit or miss,
Dame Tragedy's beloved wannabes
in all their backstage cue-awaiting glees
is shattered straight across.
It's shards.
It's knife-edged fragments.
Hell, let's call a spade a slice
of bread: it's toast.
And look: it's possible
that Geoffrey might have given tired assent
to lead where once he acted-have, perforce,
become belike that verray parfit gentil
knyght of old who dueled and fought for what
he thought was right and, not so very by
the way, wound up a slave to circumstance:
in short, flat broke and doing his own plumber's
work-that he, unbarbered, barb'rous, might
have, leaking badly through his unplumbed depths,
determined that he might be safer at
the helm of HMH Dramatic Task
than rowing, sweat-drenched, bench-bound, in its hold.
It's possible. It may, if Geoffrey's true
to his own self, be probable. But what
that doesn't mean is that he's lost the heart
of what it is to be a player on
the stage.
He knows: they need their mirrors.
More:
he knows the reasons why. He's been there, brushes
good to go, all clotted with the shade
that night's dark tale requires, never you mind
the breakups and the unpaid rent and all
the herky-jerky interrupted hell
of their so-called real life: what occupies
the dressing-room reality is far
more vital, venous, virile, vile-more them
than outside circumstances.
Nonetheless,
no actor worth their salt puts on their words,
their cues, their self, without the pitiless
compassion of their looking glass. They can't.
He can't. He needs-they need!-that outside validation
of their skill in trickery,
that proud reflection back of what the years
(already spent or still prospective) put
towards being someone other than they are
out there where parents and/or spouses and/
or God spend wasted time attempting to
persuade them to Just Have A Backup Plan,
like Teaching Kids, or Normal Office Work,
or even Tending Bar, For Chrissakes-anything
but “that dumb dream of acting, yeesh,
grow up already, get a real job,” yadda
yadda, white noise, leave me fucking be-
where was he? where were they? beset, besieged-
ah, yes: bedecked, bedizened, shown themselves
in all their trumped-up glory. Life be damned:
if they're to have their hour upon the stage,
they damn well want to hit said stage full sure
they look their best. Hey, sound and fury rock,
but leaving a good-looking corpse trumps all,
n'est-ce pas?
(And that goes double if your deadly
pallor comes from Stage White Number Two
and sheetly selvage edges of your shroud
evoke the Zellers white sale more than they
bespeak the horrors of the afterlife.)
...ahem. Line call. Where were we? Ah, of course:
the mirrors and the actors, codependency
incarnate, bless their hearts (he learned
to say that from an expat Southern belle;
he's never met a better way to cut
another down while seeming innocent
and kindly. Damned miraculous). And he
would just be one among them, trying hard
to see his face more clearly on one side
of faults (his own? the shattered glass's?) or
the other one-to grasp his slippery
and sharp identity du jour for long
enough to pin it to his face and hair
and clothes and, safely masked, enter stage left-
if Ellen hadn't drunk her way across
his path again and back into his life.
Thank God for Ellen.
See, because it's clear:
when all is said and done, she is the sum
of what he needs, his other half.
...the issue
there: he's more than one.
To channel Walt
(the poet laureate of autre temps
et moeurs): he's large; he fucking well contains
those multitudes, those many players, those
bipolar bodies feeding on his gifts
and genius. Not to put too fine a point
on it: he needs a troupe in order to
stay centred, to stand barely on the line
of sanity between what others would
call heaven and what he would call Olivier.
He needs a theatre.
He needs
these four walls-empty, echoing, scoured bare
of character and characters and soul-
to rouse, to rise, responding to his voice,
and, in so doing, wake that dream within
a dream that lies inside the worst of plays
(and, if he's honest-which he hates to be
but has to be, else not be-in the best
of musicals as well)-that godforsaken
spark of life that terraforms the boards
of every stage, no matter what it's made
of, notwithstanding Shakespeareville and Disneyworld
and soaps-and force it, shaking, bleeding
out, into the gobo-driven light
to glory in its artificial life
and, glorying, to be more than the sum
of all its parts: to be, at last, a real
and honest thing:
a story.
So.
He needs
a company. And, hey: the company
needs mirrors in their dressing rooms. And pot.
A few light bulbs. An ASM or three.
A budget. Makeup. Duct tape. Costumes. And
a well-stocked green-room liquor cab'net. Not
to mention psychic space for any ghost
that cares to wander past (excepting those
come refugee from Castle Dunsinane:
best not to invocate malfeasance right
up front by harboring the Scottish play
or any of its castoffs, thank you oh
so kindly).
But.
Also?
He needs his wife.
His Ellen.
Well. Okay: her Ellen, her
ownself-she's no big fan of ownership;
his Ellen only by agreement. Which
she made, amazingly. Thank all the pow'rs
that be, throw salt across one shoulder, spit
and turn against the clock, duck black cats, choose
your superstition, pick from indices
of luck, just count your bless- his blessings: she
said yes. Indeed, she's said it twice: once all
those years ago before his inner mirror
crack'd, and once a lot more recently.
Which shows she's just as bugfuck nuts as Geoffrey
is (like there was doubt there?). Still and all,
he's not about to question her support,
such as it is: great sex; high drama; that
intuitive and solid grasp of what
makes theatre the centre of the world;
appreciation of his hawkish self
and handsaw personality; but most,
the capability of showing him
himself, refracted back a hundred times
more accurately than the shiniest
of looking glasses.
Theatre and lights
and company comprise what Geoffrey needs.
Those things plus Ellen? Those are what he is.
(...still: note to self: fix mirrors. Just in case.)
For: andeincascade
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Rating: G (I know, I know...)
Pairings: Geoffrey/theatre, Geoffrey/Ellen (possibly Geoffrey/self)
Length: 1,182 words.
Warnings: Um. Iambic pentameter. Also, extremely improbable maturity rating for a Q!tale. Also also, prompt!fail. Ande, I've another story partly written, far more characteristically NC-17 and uncharacteristically but you-fittingly Canadian Actor RPS, that is yours and will be coming to you as soon as I have brain with which to get it done. In the meantime, I hope this at least amuses your deserving self.
The Mirror, Crack'd
The green room stinks of smoke.
So not a shock,
all things considered. God, the stupid shit
that actors do-and prob'ly always have:
it's fairly certain, Geoffrey thinks, that Willy
S and Global brethren trashed their cords
with some illicit substance, never mind
the damage deeper registers might do
to all their girlish attitudes and what
sad traces of youth's clarity they longed
to bring to bear on Marlowe's timeless lines.
So, yeah, okay: the stench of RJR
and B&H is pretty much to be
expected. What he never thought he'd see
in space so soaked with angst and vanity,
so papered with my-dues-are-paid veneer
glued up by fragile ego's queens (bad beer
disguising desperation's breath) is this:
that glass reflecting darkly, hit or miss,
Dame Tragedy's beloved wannabes
in all their backstage cue-awaiting glees
is shattered straight across.
It's shards.
It's knife-edged fragments.
Hell, let's call a spade a slice
of bread: it's toast.
And look: it's possible
that Geoffrey might have given tired assent
to lead where once he acted-have, perforce,
become belike that verray parfit gentil
knyght of old who dueled and fought for what
he thought was right and, not so very by
the way, wound up a slave to circumstance:
in short, flat broke and doing his own plumber's
work-that he, unbarbered, barb'rous, might
have, leaking badly through his unplumbed depths,
determined that he might be safer at
the helm of HMH Dramatic Task
than rowing, sweat-drenched, bench-bound, in its hold.
It's possible. It may, if Geoffrey's true
to his own self, be probable. But what
that doesn't mean is that he's lost the heart
of what it is to be a player on
the stage.
He knows: they need their mirrors.
More:
he knows the reasons why. He's been there, brushes
good to go, all clotted with the shade
that night's dark tale requires, never you mind
the breakups and the unpaid rent and all
the herky-jerky interrupted hell
of their so-called real life: what occupies
the dressing-room reality is far
more vital, venous, virile, vile-more them
than outside circumstances.
Nonetheless,
no actor worth their salt puts on their words,
their cues, their self, without the pitiless
compassion of their looking glass. They can't.
He can't. He needs-they need!-that outside validation
of their skill in trickery,
that proud reflection back of what the years
(already spent or still prospective) put
towards being someone other than they are
out there where parents and/or spouses and/
or God spend wasted time attempting to
persuade them to Just Have A Backup Plan,
like Teaching Kids, or Normal Office Work,
or even Tending Bar, For Chrissakes-anything
but “that dumb dream of acting, yeesh,
grow up already, get a real job,” yadda
yadda, white noise, leave me fucking be-
where was he? where were they? beset, besieged-
ah, yes: bedecked, bedizened, shown themselves
in all their trumped-up glory. Life be damned:
if they're to have their hour upon the stage,
they damn well want to hit said stage full sure
they look their best. Hey, sound and fury rock,
but leaving a good-looking corpse trumps all,
n'est-ce pas?
(And that goes double if your deadly
pallor comes from Stage White Number Two
and sheetly selvage edges of your shroud
evoke the Zellers white sale more than they
bespeak the horrors of the afterlife.)
...ahem. Line call. Where were we? Ah, of course:
the mirrors and the actors, codependency
incarnate, bless their hearts (he learned
to say that from an expat Southern belle;
he's never met a better way to cut
another down while seeming innocent
and kindly. Damned miraculous). And he
would just be one among them, trying hard
to see his face more clearly on one side
of faults (his own? the shattered glass's?) or
the other one-to grasp his slippery
and sharp identity du jour for long
enough to pin it to his face and hair
and clothes and, safely masked, enter stage left-
if Ellen hadn't drunk her way across
his path again and back into his life.
Thank God for Ellen.
See, because it's clear:
when all is said and done, she is the sum
of what he needs, his other half.
...the issue
there: he's more than one.
To channel Walt
(the poet laureate of autre temps
et moeurs): he's large; he fucking well contains
those multitudes, those many players, those
bipolar bodies feeding on his gifts
and genius. Not to put too fine a point
on it: he needs a troupe in order to
stay centred, to stand barely on the line
of sanity between what others would
call heaven and what he would call Olivier.
He needs a theatre.
He needs
these four walls-empty, echoing, scoured bare
of character and characters and soul-
to rouse, to rise, responding to his voice,
and, in so doing, wake that dream within
a dream that lies inside the worst of plays
(and, if he's honest-which he hates to be
but has to be, else not be-in the best
of musicals as well)-that godforsaken
spark of life that terraforms the boards
of every stage, no matter what it's made
of, notwithstanding Shakespeareville and Disneyworld
and soaps-and force it, shaking, bleeding
out, into the gobo-driven light
to glory in its artificial life
and, glorying, to be more than the sum
of all its parts: to be, at last, a real
and honest thing:
a story.
So.
He needs
a company. And, hey: the company
needs mirrors in their dressing rooms. And pot.
A few light bulbs. An ASM or three.
A budget. Makeup. Duct tape. Costumes. And
a well-stocked green-room liquor cab'net. Not
to mention psychic space for any ghost
that cares to wander past (excepting those
come refugee from Castle Dunsinane:
best not to invocate malfeasance right
up front by harboring the Scottish play
or any of its castoffs, thank you oh
so kindly).
But.
Also?
He needs his wife.
His Ellen.
Well. Okay: her Ellen, her
ownself-she's no big fan of ownership;
his Ellen only by agreement. Which
she made, amazingly. Thank all the pow'rs
that be, throw salt across one shoulder, spit
and turn against the clock, duck black cats, choose
your superstition, pick from indices
of luck, just count your bless- his blessings: she
said yes. Indeed, she's said it twice: once all
those years ago before his inner mirror
crack'd, and once a lot more recently.
Which shows she's just as bugfuck nuts as Geoffrey
is (like there was doubt there?). Still and all,
he's not about to question her support,
such as it is: great sex; high drama; that
intuitive and solid grasp of what
makes theatre the centre of the world;
appreciation of his hawkish self
and handsaw personality; but most,
the capability of showing him
himself, refracted back a hundred times
more accurately than the shiniest
of looking glasses.
Theatre and lights
and company comprise what Geoffrey needs.
Those things plus Ellen? Those are what he is.
(...still: note to self: fix mirrors. Just in case.)