Dispatches from Home! My Last Performance.

Dispatches from Home! My Last Performance.

Forty-nine years ago this month, it all began. There was a phone call. A request to audition. Some cajoling to do so. Then there were the rehearsals. Learning music. Memorizing lines. Getting fitted for a costume. There was a silly wig. And silly shoes.

Opening Night rolled around. The musical’s Overture was played. I stood in the wings, waiting to go on. Butterflies jostled for space in my stomach. And then it was time. I walked out on stage, my back to the audience. I turned around, made a ridiculous face, and contorted my body. The audience howled. And I was bitten—badly bitten by the Theater Bug.

The musical was “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” The theater was Gulfport Little Theater. And the rest, as they say, is history—my theatrical history, intricately entwined with that dear, old theater. It was there that I discovered my passion for the stage, made lifelong friends, and found a sense of belonging that I had never experienced before.

I’ve forgotten the number of plays I was in at GLT and, likewise, the musicals. But their memories linger. Their talented casts linger. The stage crews, the lighting people, those who designed costumes, and the set builders are all acid-etched in my memory. I remember when we had to improvise a scene because a prop went missing. I recall the laughter and camaraderie during our backstage foolishness. I see their smiling faces and twirling dances. I hear the lines they spoke and the music they sang.

I remember Board Meetings where elderly Gulfport Blue Bloods held sway. I remember the play reading committee; their discussions were heated at times, but they were always polite in that old-fashioned, southern way. The heat was usually cooled with sweet tea and homemade sugar cookies.

I remember the friends I made at GLT. Many I still count as dear friends. I’ve not seen some in years, decades, a lifetime ago. But I wish them well. Some have been called Home. I miss them.

But all of that was then, and this is now. Gone are the plays, musicals, casts and crews, and the Board. The theater still stands but is a broken shell of its former self. The once vibrant walls are now marred with holes, letting in vermin. The air is heavy with the smell of mold.

The stage, once a bustling hub of activity, is now littered with the scattered remnants of flashy costumes, bits and pieces of old sets, broken props, and a dash of glitter. A shattered mirror stands in the corner, its shards casting dancing shadows of light across the darkened theater, illuminating the faded memories of past theatrical glories.

I stood on that stage today, where I had taken a myriad of curtain calls. In the whispering silence of the room, the memories of cheering crowds came rushing back to me. I could feel the warmth of their adulation. I felt the warmth in my heart for them, and I was happy that I’d made them laugh. And, perhaps, for a brief moment in time, I made them forget the cares of this world and escape into one of fantasy and make-believe.

I looked out across the dark, empty theater today. But the seats were not empty. They were filled with misty apparitions. Ghosts of the past that had come back to haunt my memory and remind me of that which was and will never be again. I smiled at my last audience, as I had forty-nine years ago, when I’d made a funny face and made that audience laugh.

I hummed a few bars of music. Tapped a step or two. And I remembered. A tear ran down my wrinkled face. I knew if much-needed repairs weren’t started soon, the old theater would be nothing more than a sepia-toned memory. 

So I bowed to my diaphanous audience out there in the dark, grateful for the memories of plays and musicals at GLT and the dear people I’d met along the way.

Just before shutting the stage door behind me, I turned and looked at the old stage one last time. And I knew I’d just performed my last show on it, taking a bow with a dear, old friend, the Gulfport Little Theater.