Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a good actress and a very good singer. She said she was going to go to New York right after college, to “try her luck.” Each time I kissed her good night, I’d say, “See you in New York!”

chapter 6

A YANK AT THE OLD VIC
     
     
    After I graduated from Iowa in 1955 I got accepted at the Old Vic Theatre School, in Bristol, England. I wanted to go there because I felt deficient in all the physical techniques and the Old Vic offered courses in singing, movement, voice and speech, ballet exercise, Swedish gymnastics, and fencing. I took my Stanislavsky and my compulsion with me. I’d been acting since I was thirteen and praying compulsively since I was eighteen. I started to wonder if the compulsion would be with me for the rest of my life. Pain, then pleasure; pleasure, then pain.
    On my way to England, on the
Queen Elizabeth
again, I met a young Indian girl named Romy who had been studying in New York and was returning to London. We hit it off very well, and I began questioning her about the philosophy of desirelessness.
    “Well,” she said, “in my religion we believe that life is full of suffering, and it’s all caused by desire. And the only way to stop this suffering is through enlightenment, so that we can end this sort of endless cycle of births and deaths.”
    “And do you really want to stop desiring?”
    “Well,” she said, “I wish I could, but—” and she started to giggle “—but I’m not strong enough to do that, because I’m enjoying myself too much.” And she giggled again.
     
    When I got to Bristol, I stayed at the YMCA for a few days and then found a very reasonable boardinghouse, run by a warm and friendly Austrian lady. She was divorced and had her three children living with her. The cost to me was £11 per week—breakfast, dinner, and lodging included—which came to $31.24 per week. If you were lucky enough to find such a place today, it would cost $324 per week. School was a fifteen-minute walk from the house.
    The Old Vic school was located in three Victorian houses, all stuck together, and offered a two-year course. I was one of two Americans at the school; the other students were English.
    Whenever I did a scene from Shakespeare in my acting class, the principal of the school, Duncan Ross, would say, “You’re breaking the back of the meter, dear boy.”
    “I’m what?”
    “Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter, and you’re not paying any attention to it.”
    “Mr. Ross, I want my acting to come from a real human being. . . . I don’t want to sound like a poetry professor.”
    “But you can’t break the back of the meter, dear boy. You’re acting some of the greatest lines every written, and they’re written in iambic pentameter . . . a long followed by a short, or a short followed by a long. . . . ‘If
music be
the
food
of
love,
play
on
.’ . . . Do you see, dear boy?”
    I liked Mr. Ross, but I wanted to punch him every time he said, “Dear boy.”
    Victor Shargai—the other American student—got tickets for the two of us to see Sir John Gielgud in
Much Ado About Nothing,
at Stratford-upon-Avon. Victor had written a note to Sir John, requesting a short meeting after the show, which Sir John graciously allowed. We went backstage when the play ended, and, after saying how wonderful we thought he was, I took a deep breath.
    “Sir John, my acting teacher at the Old Vic school keeps telling me that I’m breaking the back of the meter whenever I do a scene from Shakespeare. Do you think about meter and iambic pentameter when you’re on stage, acting those beautiful lines?”
    “No, I don’t think about such things when I’m acting. Shakespeare takes care of most of the work. . . . If you have a good ear, the poetry will come out. If you don’t have a good ear, it won’t much matter what you do.”
    When Victor and I got back to school the next day, the principal was waiting for me.
    “Well, what did the Master have to say?”
    I told him