Last weekend I watched a DVD I had rented from the public library. From its back cover, I found out it was about a theatrical company. Slings & Arrows was the name. Turns out, it is a series in six parts, made in Canada with Canadian actors and the story takes place in Ontario. A very enjoyable six part series.
It revolves around Hamlet and those who have played it and will play it. The parallels of the story with the real life of the actors, is at times exhilarating, and at other times dramatic or funny. It is a script rich in pathos that honors the artistry of authenticityand of personal truth. It does not let go until the final applause, which made watching these episodes a real treat. Just like in good theater.
Watching the episodes took me back to when I came very close to being integrated into the Lebanese theater. Actors from different theater companies were chosen to be in a movie about a theater company in Beirut that was going to tour all over Lebanon by way of its mountain villages. We did one day of interior shooting and one day of exterior shooting when all hell broke loose outside, in the real world… We never continued the film.
I was extremely excited to be part of it because it was a first for me and also, all the famous Lebanese stage and screen actors (warning: names being dropped) like Nidal Ashkar, Roger Assaf, Sarah Salem, Mounir Maasri and Liz Sarkissian (end of name dropping here) were to be in the film.
Auditions were held in the same apartment where most of the interior scenes were to be shot. One of the improvisations I did with the director, who was imported from France to direct the film and whose name, sadly, I cannot drop for having forgotten it, was, I found out later, from the Costa-Gavras film “Z”. It was the scene when Irene Papas, having lost her husband, played by Yves Montand, walks into their bedroom and goes through his pillow, closet and even cologne as we see every emotionplaying on her face in close-up.
Mr. Assaf, who was one of the producers and the lead actor of the film, knocked on the door of our room which seemed to be someone's bedroom. He asked if everything was alright. He said he was wondering why it was taking so long. The director told him about my audition being so interesting that he did not want to stop me.
He said this in French, and I speak and understand French very well thank you, whereas the film was to be in Arabic. More about that later.
I got the part. Secretary of the theater company. I did not have to do any character studies and/or research for the part. I had already been playing that role in life for a good four years now.
On the first day of shooting, the director wanted to start with my scene. "ACTION." Seated behind a desk, in front of a huge typewriter, I am typing, then I look at my watch and realize it is late and continue typing. "CUT."
For Take 2, they ask me to cuss after looking at my watch. "Say something" they kept telling me. Although I had heard every unsavory Arabic expression, I had never used one. Someone gave me a moderate strength sentence to say.
"F... this job!" I said finally.
I looked at the director. He had a huge smile on his face and said "tu es une artiste", you are an artist.
What just happened? What? What?
Little triumphs like this one come to remind me that I am not a one hit wonder contrary to popular belief. I had not yet played Martha in “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and therefore, people had not yet started comparing everything I did afterwards to it. In fact, at the same time, I was preparing to play Elizabeth in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Quite the opposite.
It is one thing to be recognized in the community one grows up in, i.e. the Armenian community, it is another when, excuse me, a French director picks one person among so many from that same community despite that person's poor knowledge of the Arabic language.
So poor in fact that I had managed to turn this handicap into a stand-up act at shorthand class a few years earlier. Every time I was in class (we sometimes skipped shorthand class for a little "école buissonnière"), the teacher would ask me to get up and speak. My first performances as an actress took place on the stage of the shorthand class at Mouthany Institute. What a contrast between this class and any of the classes in high school. What an honor, what an opportunity, what a joy to have the shorthand class laugh out loud while I kept doing a monologue in Arabic with a Speedy Gonzales accent. What an honor. I did not know if the teacher was laughing at me or with me. But he would turn so red in the face with laughter that I thought he was going to turn blue and faint.
I had never practiced for this. It was new to me too. I had no idea where it was coming from except that I had spontaneously adopted a cartoon character's accent to make up for my lack of efficiency in the language of my place of birth.
In the next scene, Mounir Maasri approaching me from behind, looks at what I have typed and takes it upon himself and his method of acting to read out loud, during shooting, what I had typed. "Garble, garble, garble" he read and I burst out laughing half embarrassed and half surprised. That typing in Arabic thing should have been practiced before the shoot. How was I to know that they were going to give me an Arabic typewriter to type on? This was Lebanon. It was a miracle there was a French director here, filming a movie in Arabic, so don't push it, ok? We did this scene many times until I could contain myself and pretend that indeed, I had made a typo.
It was nerves too. I am sure I would not have laughed if I had known how to type in Arabic. My bursts of laughter would not have been from nervousness if I had had some practice so that I could have made the mistake on purpose and been right there when Mr. Maasri was reading it.
The next day, the first stills of the movie reached the newspapers with me behind the typewriter and Mr. Maasri standing behind me pointing to the page in the typewriter.
I don't know how, but this Arabic language newspaper reached my (God bless his soul) maternal aunt's husband's hands. As I was returning to work after lunch, I saw him walk towards me waiving the newspaper. He opened it and showed me the picture. He was furious. "What’s this?” he hollered. “Are you going to become an artist?"
There's that "artist" word again. What a coincidence. It was only yesterday when its positive version was bestowed upon me. Life is indeed too short.
"I am going to talk to your mother about this; this is disgraceful," he threatened.
Cut to only two years later, after I played in “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” This same man (God bless his soul), my maternal aunt's husband, hugged me and kissed me every time he saw me. "Here, here, take a picture of me with Arpie."
What just happened? What? What?
All the actors I mentioned above are still in Beirut where, somewhere, there is a reel interrupted while I am still typing here, in real Arizona.
