June Grows Up

Originally published on the Sandbox Theatre blog Last Friday and Saturday I had the chance to witness something wonderful, and I’d like to tell you about it. First, let me back up to 2009. I received a call from my friend Heather Stone asking if I’d be interested in doing a Minnesota Fringe show called June of Arc with her company, Sandbox Theatre. How this call came to me is a pretty fun story on its own, and I wrote about last year in my contribution to the June of Arc oral history, which you should totally read. Anyway, I accepted and we did the show. We did the show again as part of a short play festival the following winter, and in the fall of 2012, took the show to Duluth for a few dates. This brings us up to last weekend, when we brought June to company member Peter Heeringa’s alma mater, Eden Prairie High School, for a little sojourn to the ‘burbs. Before getting to the point, I’d like to mention that June sold out four of its five shows in 2009, and played to over 600 people in its run at the Dowling Studio the next winter. A Duluth tour fundraising preview performance aside, the last five performances of this show have been seen by 30 people. Total. Not all runs can be winners, and 30 people is 30 people. It just means you probably missed it, and that is why I’m writing this today. No, not the four person houses, man, that shit happens. And it’s all good, too. That’s the way love goes, you might say. No, I’m writing to tell you about something I witnessed, something I think is rare, something I leave June of Arc inspired by. (Last weekend is most likely the final time we’ll do June. If not, it will be the final time the four players will do it together.) June was written by Ryan Hill. Ryan’s a terrific writer. He has a subtlety that most do not, a way of crafting dialog so deliberately ambiguous as to allow for dozens, literally, dozens of interpretations to spring from a single turn of phrase. This allows Ryan’s truer love, gesture, to shape the words, to create meaning, to give enormous weight to something almost benign, like “Summer’s very busy. It’s pie season.” Enter Heather Stone. Some actors throw it all against a wall to see what sticks. Others need to be built up brick by brick. Heather is the former. For a director, she’ll give you everything, you just shave away the excess until it looks like a boat. Or something. She loves to perform. Her work is visible at all times, and her focus is laser-like. And for nearly four years, her June was as sharp and refined as it was back in August of ’09. The gestures she built with the show’s first director, Lisa Moreira, the precise steps, the vocal intonations that didn’t so much mimic June Cleaver as remind us so intensely of her essence as to be chilling. “Oh, listen to me. That’s so far off. And so…so many meals. So many socks.” It’s easy (easier anyhow) to get the lines down, record blocking to muscle memory, and do a show forever. Audience vibes, snow storms, head colds, broken ribs…shit like that will change a performance. A bit anyway. But the core is still there. Your work is still there. Built like a foundational brickhouse, mighty mighty. That bores the tar out of me. (I produce tar when bored.) But that’s why I’m no longer an actor. How the shit do people DO the same show over and over? Incredible to me. We haven’t done June for four years straight, though. We’ve done June four times over four years. It’s not exactly repetitive, but it relies on being so, what with the busy schedules and the day jobs. We have to fall back on the familiar lines and recorded muscle memory. Which is why last weekend was so remarkable. Something wonderful happened. June grew up. June Cleaver’s aspirations — her dream to pilot a plane, to have passionate non-Ward love affairs, and to travel the globe had, up until last Friday, shone through only in hints, subtle murmurs of hopes dashed, and with a resignation that very poignantly resonated so strongly with women of my grandmother’s (and mother’s) generation. If my grandmother, the woman married to a not-very-nice man who happened to be my grandfather, was weighed down by regret, defeated by horrible truths and haunted by his misdeeds, she never showed it. Her strength was not when visibly confronting her fears, but when coolly staring them down until they dare not show themselves. Like early June. Glints, a pervasive underlying sadness, a peek under the apron, as we’d say. But she’d never break. Friday night, nearly four years after her character had been brought from two-dimensional page to three-dimensional stage, June was pissed. Heather took June to new places, seedier places, darker places. Resignation and subtle regret were replaced by contempt and resentment. An embracing dive into June, THE JUNE, that was there all along, but was made up too thickly to crack. And here is where Heather really put on a show. I set this up like it was fire and brimstone, but no… It wasn’t Resentful June with a sledgehammer tearing down the life she’d let build up around her. It was a fucking masterclass of a beautifully nuanced, hurt, DEEP June. Real feelings, real emotions, a real woman. And it was glorious. That night with Carl Metzger — the one where she told her father the bus was late? — was a night with CARL METZGER now. A night where she was merely tempted, or a night where she’d let him kiss her? No… This was now a night where she let Carl do things she never thought she was capable of. And to hell with him kissing her… she kissed HIM. And it was goooood. Dig? It was a second on stage, but that memory was palpable, and it was real. And it was done by a fearless actor who allowed herself to live within a new-found moment. And it, too, was glorious. The moment that always stuck with me — has stuck with me for four years — is when June remembers the day Ward came home from the military in his Army dress. When he ran so fast up to her she rocked back on her heels a bit. Almost turned and ran the other way. Almost turned and ran as far and as fast as she could. Almost. But she might’ve fallen off that cliff. And then where would she be? Just… falling… high up. Watching the ground fly toward her. Four years ago that was affecting. Sad. A surely-you-jest memory of melancholy that suggested the apron was a facade. But Friday… it was a plea. A desire. A burning WANT to jump off the cliff, and the absolute fucking THRILL of watching, WELCOMING the ground FLY toward her. It was pure balls. And yes, it too, was glorious. The whole thing was. Moment after moment of a fully realized June. I never got to see Heather do much of this on stage. I’d grunt, fall over, lay still… and then I’d hear it. Feel it. I could tell by the tone, the crack, the life in her voice that the audience was seeing something wonderful. And though I’ve been doing this show with her and Ryan and Derek for four years, I felt envious of the people in the audience.