tail hug
I was watching a play. Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey (or rather their characters from Beaches) had stepped in on the day of the show to replace the main actors who had just quit. It was very lucky because they really were perfect for the part. The director had wanted people who could seem “very intimately close friends.”
I was amazed at how fast they had learned the parts, and I noticed there was a mess of cue cards on the wall opposite the stage, but not cuing individual lines, just a bunch of scrawly charts and pictures indicating a mess of hints. Like the actors had made themselves a bunch of visual mnemonics.
I guess I was watching a movie of the whole situation because I saw the whole thing unfold. Before the play scene, I was watching the scene in which Bette and Barbara are about to show up to volunteer to save the play. I noticed a part of the set on the sidelines, which was was a larger-than-life paper mache hanger (like a paper mache of a fancy cloth hanger with a hang-down skirt hanger part and a gauzy scarf hanging on it, also made of paper mache). It was for a scene which was to take place in a walk-in closet.
It was a very small theater that had only about 30 folding chairs for the audience. In the first act there was a lot of flashy lighting, yelling/chanting and movement. It was, of course, a musical. A couple who were seated in the front row got up and swung over to sit on the side (where there were more chairs). Then a man who was in the play, who had grown a REAL CAT TAIL (as part of the play, but it was really part of his body, yet was temporary), hugged something, an animal or maybe an object, and his tail hugged it too. It had the colors of a Siamese cat’s tail, creamy tan with bits of brown at the very ends of the hairs. I yelped, “His tail hugged it!” You could tell he was excited when I said that. It was his first time with a temporary tail. In his lines had been talking about tears before. Like the secret tears that cover your body even though you don’t realize it. He actually even broke character to say, “Really?” But it was sort of a loose, audience-interactive play, so that was OK.
Then I realized I had a tail too. I got excited to see if it would also hug along when I hugged stuff.
