“This is an exercise in the Theater of Cruelty,” he said. “We are here to show you what it means to really feel something.” He gave an odd little bow and then the curtain fell, whistling swiftly down like a blade. The bottom folds hit the stage floor with a thump and then the first-years were alone in the gymnasium. They could hear the soft apologetic patter of the actors’ feet as on the other side of the curtain they dispersed and then finally disappeared.

May

“Come with me,” was all the Head of Movement said when Stanley found him, and Stanley followed his sloping barefoot tread all the way from the courtyard to the office upstairs, both of them silent, Stanley falling back as he tried to swallow and mask his tears. He was surprised at the violence of his feelings.

“I’ve come to complain,” was all he’d said, standing with his bony knees together and squeezing the blood from his hands. “I can’t find the Head of Acting. I want to complain.”

Through his distress Stanley found himself a little relieved that he had found the Head of Acting’s office locked and the staffroom empty. The Head of Movement was infinitely more approachable than the older man, who peered through his glasses at the students with a kind of impassive chill and wore short sleeves even in winter, as if he were cold-blooded and felt no difference.

Now, in the still of the office, the Head of Movement placed his palms together in an entreating way. “Stanley,” he said. “Stanley, what do you think you would do if you paid to go and see a play which included a rape scene, and during this rape scene the assailant began to really rape his victim?”

“I’d say something,” Stanley said. His voice quavered a little and he reached up to rub his cheek with the heel of his hand.

“You would not,” said the Head of Movement. He laced his fingers together. “You would shift in your chair and you would think that this was terribly avant-garde but still it really wasn’t your thing and you would marvel at how realistic everything was looking and maybe if you were very uncomfortable you would look around you to see what everyone else was making of it. And then if you really started to feel like something was amiss, maybe if the victim was obviously crying out for help, or if everybody in the audience was clearly feeling uncomfortable, then you might stand up and shout something out. But it would take you a very long time. Most likely by the time you got the courage to fight back, the scene would be over.”

Stanley was at a loss for what to say.

“I know it’s a horrible thing to have to imagine,” the Head of Movement said, “but I’m trying to make a point. I’m just trying to point out that if a person is standing onstage in front of an auditorium full of people then ‘real’ is a useless word. ‘Real’ describes nothing on stage. The stage only cares whether something looks real. If it looks real, then whether it is real or not is immaterial. It doesn’t matter. That’s the heart of it.”

“That’s not what you told us in Movement class,” Stanley said, with rising anger. “You said what was important was truth and not sincerity. All that stuff you said about mime. I believed all that.”

The Head of Movement sighed and pressed his fingers to his lips. “No,” he said, and paused for a moment, shaking his head and gathering his thoughts together. He drew a weary breath. “No. We’re talking about two different things now.

“Stanley,” he said, “think how you would feel if you acted in a play in which your character had to die, and after the performance everybody came up to you and said I really believed you, I really honestly believed that you had died. I saw you dead onstage and I felt myself thinking, Oh my God, he’s actually dead. You would be rapt. It would be the best possible compliment anybody could give you: that your pretence, your big game of let’s-pretend, looked so real that somebody actually thought it was real.”

“But I’m real,” Stanley said, realizing to his displeasure that he was again on the verge of tears. “My performance might be pretend, but I’m not.”

“That’s exactly it,” said the Head of Movement swiftly. “If you are a good actor, you will be using your emotions, displaying your laughter, your tears, your sexuality, your insecurities. There’s always this doubleness at play. You and the character you are playing both have to be transparent. You have to look through the one to see the other. That is why being an actor is such a difficult job. It really is you up there.”

“But there wasn’t any doubleness today,” Stanley cried out. His voice was high and tight and choked. “It was just him. It was his shirt they ruined. It was his breath. It was his hair. They were hurting him.”

“You’re angry because they betrayed you,” the Head of Movement said simply. “They lured you into feeling something truthful and real, and then they destroyed it in front of you.”

“They betrayed him!” Stanley shouted.

The Head of Movement sighed and looked down at his hands.

“Why is this not a problem for you?” Stanley said after a moment, still breathing quickly. “How can it be okay by you that something like this is able to happen?”

“I understand your anger,” the Head of Movement said. “Please believe that it wasn’t meant to happen in the way that it happened. In fact I don’t think the boys properly understood what they were doing. The manifesto of the Theater of Cruelty is really a lot more complicated and interesting and life-affirming than its name suggests.” He closed his eyes, recalling a loved passage to his mind, and said, “ ‘I have therefore said “cruelty” as I might have said “life” or “necessity” because I want to indicate that there is nothing congealed about it, that I turn it into a true act, hence living, hence magical.’ ” He opened his eyes and smiled sadly at Stanley. “Artaud,” he said, “in his own words.”

Stanley sat for a moment, breathing heavily and feeling stalemated. He tried to remember what they had been talking about a few minutes earlier, to renew his argument and try to force the Head of Movement out of this tired apologetic apathy.

“I like that you had the courage to talk to me,” the Head of Movement said now. “I’ll be speaking to each of those students very seriously so they really understand the emotional impact of what they did.” He blinked at Stanley and waited. The minute hand moved forward with a solemn thock.

When the Head of Movement was younger he acted for the Free Theater, a mothy ragged band of minstrels and failed gypsies who squatted in derelict houses and camped in parking lots and traveled around the country each year to perform at prisons and rural schools. On the wall above his head were a few snapshots from those days showing greasepaint and street-side juggling and oil-drum fires and scratched guitars. Now he sat bowed with age and a clinging fatigue, reaching up to stroke his thin hair with a dry wrinkled palm, crisp and graying and faded like a piece of parchment left too long in the light.

“Has it ever happened to you?” Stanley said suddenly. “Like the rape thing. Have you ever gone to see a play where something real happens and everyone just watches and thinks it’s part of the play?”

“Yes,” the Head of Movement said. “A long time ago. I saw a man die of a heart attack. He was old. The curtain came down, that’s all. They asked us to leave. Everyone left very quietly.”

“Who was he playing when he died?” Stanley asked.

“Oh, it was an obscure little play that didn’t do especially well, as I recall,” the Head of Movement said, leaning back in his chair and looking at the ceiling to better conjure up the memory. He was relieved not to have to look at Stanley anymore. “Everything was rather beautiful, in a funny kind of way. He died in the last scene of the play and on closing night. We didn’t know at the time that he was dead—we thought perhaps a stroke. It didn’t look fatal from where I was sitting. But we read about it the next day in the papers.”