“So you want me to be the herald?”  I asked my friend Lou when he called.

“It’s a messenger, Kat!  A messenger!”

“How many lines does this messenger have?”

“Off the top of my head, not many.”

“But exactly?”

“Well, there’s another thing.”

“I’m not doing the chorus,” I said, shuddering.  The chorus has a million lines, so DO NOT AGREE TO BE THE CHORUS.  I had already looked over my copy of The Medea.  The chorus has the kind of lines that make me very nervous.  I heard a shriek that is laden with sorrow/ Shrilling out her hard grief she cries out/ Upon him who betrayed both her bed and her marriage. 

“Well, if you read a few pages of the chorus, someone else will finish it,” said Lou.

“Is that Griselda?”

This whole play-reading thing was fun until Griselda got involved. I never aspired to go on the stage, but I did not expect to read plays with a homeless prima donna.  That being understood, I agreed to read aloud bit parts of plays at Lou’s monthly reading club.  Reading aloud, mind you, is not acting.  And you know, I’m usually the herald, so I don’t need talent.  But this time it was a PUBLIC reading.  I was doing it for Lou; I have a soft spot for him.

He sighed when I mentioned Griselda.  “That was an accident last time, you know.”

Needless to say, I was not a fan of someone who threw a vase at my head. “Sorry, I’m not reading with Griselda.”

“How about Creon?” he wheedled.

“Oh, no. That’s a starring role as far as I’m concerned. Sorry.”

The Medea is a great tragedy, and Griselda, too, had a tragic story, in that she was mad, cuckoo, out of her mind, and kicked out of the group home for drug addicts. She’d majored in theater, played Puck in a college production of A Midsummer’s Dream, and was afterwards very, very, very, very disappointed with life.

At the moment she sewed costumes for a small local Shakespeare summer theater, which happened to be run by  my friend, D, who happened to live by the river, and who happened to save Griselda from the homeless camp on the riverbank.  He allowed her to live in his basement, but she was not allowed in the rest of his house. D was a saint, but Griselda broke things and stole things. He made a deal with the owner of the consignment store, that if Griselda brought in anything at all, one of them would call him up, and he’d “buy” it back.

In the end, of course, I agreed to everything Lou wanted. He was fun, he was a great organizer, and everybody loved him. So I agreed to be the messenger!  I was the tutor! I was Creon!  And I was the chorus for a few pages, and then would be relieved by someone (probably Lou himself).

“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he said.

“Namaste, ” I said cheerfully and inappropriately.

Well, I was a bit sick to my stomach because I was more a cozy reader than a public reader. Why had I agreed to read so many parts? Lou is persuasive… and charming. But it’s the kind of thing that puts me off theater – reading so many bit parts that you end up the star.