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Show 89 Now the thing to do was shake hands to end it, Pat and Dom first (I felt that Dom had taken the lead away from me) and in the let down after all that furious tension, while shaking hands they began to cry. Then Dom and Darrel shook hands and Darrel cried too. Then Pat shook hands with me, sniffling, and then Darrel shook hands with me, sniffling, and went back to their car to drive off with Kate. As stupid as I felt, I sniffled too. I didn't talk to Kate again until the afternoon she stopped her car to talk to me on my horse Ace, and since I didn't ever ask her to go riding with me, or to go anywhere else, I didn't see much of her my senior year until the class play. The class sponsor, Nadine Carruth, broke with tradition and instead of an innocuous melodrama or a sentimental farce chose to do Our Town. Kate got the role of Emily Webb, Kate Bradley was Emily's mother. I was George Gibbs, Emily's youthful lover and future husband. A lot of other teachers scoffed at the idea of a bunch of kids doing a serious play but Miss Carruth, young and intense, took the play and us seriously, in turn expecting us to take the play and her and ourselves seriously, which we did, most of the time, and since there's always talent in a group of teenagers, the play was a surprising success. Ben Ferret as the Stage Manager was great. At the ending some ladies wept, and after the curtain everybody applauded wildly. I had never dreamed of Hollywood and had hardly heard of Broadway, never once had I thought it possible for anyone from a little place like Escalante even to be an actor, let alone think of myself as one, and yet when the try-outs came along something within me grew agitated, something pushed me into them. I read for both the Stage Manager and the George parts. The Stage Manager is the juiciest part and I was disappointed I didn't get it even though George jm the romantic hero. But how did I know to give myself to those roles? Somehow I did, by a mere reading of words becoming Stage Manager, becoming |