Recently seeing a production of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” conjured up a long-ago memory for me. Once upon a time I had the privilege of being cast as Mae (Sister Woman) in the show at a small local theatre. The venue was a pole barn, and staging was theatre-in-the-rectangle — essentially seating on all four sides of the stage area.
The final dress rehearsal was the night before the show opened, and we had a preview audience of senior citizens from local facilities who came equipped with umbrellas due to the heavy rain that evening.
This was our first show with an audience. The director had had fun with my character and that of Maggie and had us at each other throughout the play. The crescendo of this relationship culminated in the third act when I (Mae) backed Maggie down on the bed shrieking “How can you have a child by a man that won’t sleep with you? How can you? How can you?” … at which point, in surround sound, came a deep growling from the entire group of senior citizens who I feared were about to descend upon me and throttle me with their bumpershoots. Wow! What a way to discover you have been effective!
Another little memory has to do with the no-neck monsters, Mae’s children. One of the little boys had a penchant for unruliness, so, as we waited to go onstage, I would softly whisper to him a threat to cut his “tail” (a hairstyle popular in the 80s). No more problem with that kid!
And, to make it a bit more of a family-friendly production, the director changed Big Daddy’s outburst of “_ _ _ _ the #@!! preacher!” to “Rut the #@!! preacher!” … But the night we had the sign language interpreter, the deaf audience saw the original word.
Ah, memories…..