qos | Sir Ian and Me

poliphilo requested the details on all 10 of my "10 Things I've Done" list, starting with my "I Died Onstage with Ian McKellan" story. So here is part one of ten.

I was a theatre major at a small liberal arts college in southern California. During my senior year (1987-88), Ian McKellan was touring a one-man show called "Acting Shakespeare," and my department got tickets for a group of us. The performance was given in a relatively small theater at another college (UCLA, I believe), and my group sat in a row of seats along the back wall -- which wasn't all that far from the stage.

The show didn't start with the lights going down in the house and then up on the stage. Nothing changed, but gradually we became aware of an intensification of excitement -- and finally realized that Ian McKellan was strolling down the aisle just like anyone else. Applause started, which he acknowledged with a smile, and he walked to the front where two sets of stairs led up to the stage.

His show was very good. In addition to being very talented (of course) he was funny and gracious. At one point, he excused himself, went offstage, and came back with a cup of tea. "I apologize for drinking in front of you and not sharing," he said, "but I've been having some trouble with my throat, and I need to relieve it a bit if I want to finish the evening. If you ever have a sore throat, try some hot lemon juice and honey -- no water, just the juice and honey." He took a sip. "Actually, it's whiskey." Another sip. He looked up at us with a wicked little smile. "And the magic of theatre is -- you'll never know for sure."

At the end of the show, he said "I've been performing Shakespeare all evening, and you've all been watching. Now I want to give anyone wants to a chance to come up here and do a scene with me." At first, no one responded, then people began to get up. I looked down the row of my theatre colleagues. No one was standing up. I was a directing major, not a performer, but the absurdity of none of us accepting the invitation was too much. I stood up and started forward, pausing only to look back and say "Anyone coming with me?"

stucco33 was the first to follow me. We joined the parade going down the center aisle, which was then moving left to go up the stairs. But as I reached the stage, Sir Ian caught my eye and said, "Why don't you come around this way?" So I led the way to the other set of stairs, and he met me at the top and handed me up onto the stage.

He guided the group -- some thirty of us, perhaps more -- to the back of the stage, got us to make a tight bunch and then explained quietly what he wanted. He was going to do a speech from the end of Act IV of Henry V. We were to be the bodies on the field of Agincourt. "When we're done here, I want you to scatter all over the stage. I will do an introduction to the scene. At the end, I will snap my fingers behind my back. At that point, I want you to let out a cry and drop to the ground. Please make it a short cry, because I still have a speech to do." (He was serious, but said it with a Gandalf-like twinkle in his eyes.) "When I'm done. I will raise my hands, and then you all get up, and we will join hands in a line and take a curtain call."

So he said, so it was done. When he snapped his fingers, I shouted with the rest and fell to the floor. It was a bit dusty, and I was dressed all in white (it was springtime in southern California), but I didn't hesitate. I found myself with my head on some stranger's stomach, and someone else lying on my legs -- but we were all having so much fun no one seemed to mind. Sir Ian did his scene, raised us back to life, and then we joined hands for the curtain calls, with him in the center.

Then he dropped the hands of the people beside him, stepped forward, and instead of separating himself for more applause, he turned his back on the audience, faced us, and began to applaud us. He then backed down the stairs, still applauding, and proceeded to walk backward out of the theatre, applauding us all the way, leaving us on the stage to share his applause.

Patrick Stewart displayed the same combination of skill, humor, and graciousness when he was a guest at our department tea the year before that. He came to our tiny black box theater and did a one hour presentation about creating a character. He performed Shylock, and did a monologue from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and more.

Acting is about making choices. Almost any script can be interpreted in more than one way, and part of an actor's job is to choose between valid interpretations. Stewart told a story about his first time playing the lead with the Royal Shakespeare Company and realizing that he needed to be very clear in his choices, because everyone else's choices would cascade from the ones that he made.

He out at us -- none of us more than twenty feet away from him -- and smiled. "But, of course, that's part of the fun of playing the lead." The black & white quote might not convey it, but the way he said it, and the expression on his face, communicated the sense that he was not informing us, he was reminding us of an experience we all had shared. He was addressing us as peers.

Actors have such a reputation for being arrogant, and I've heard that both McKellan and Stewart can be tempermental, but when I think of either of them, the word that comes to mind is "graciousness." Perhaps what I experienced was more noblesse oblige, but in both cases it was very gracefully done.