Letters From Heather — A Night at the Theater — 2035

[The original short story, along with the amazing @AldoInHeaven giving me permission to use his Work In Progress to tell it. Personally, I'm adoring just how much Olga seems to be enjoying her time in the limelight. Silly girl.]

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Ah, the theater. Out front, pomp, and circumstance, and dim lighting, and red velvet seats that seem eerily empty before the audience starts to stream in. Backstage, the usual cast of audacious nerds, strutting back and forth before the curtain rises, getting into character while reciting lines just under their breath. The smell of the cut wood, drying paint, that distant tinge of tang in your nostrils from the wafting particles of dust as they’re incinerated by the bright, bright lights.

Back in another life, I was a theater geek. I acted from time to time, but I don’t pretend to fancy myself particularly good at it. Waaay back, in my teens, I was one of those gawky, goth-y, introverted chicks who was more than content don all black and help out with the gears and cogs that make the show happen: light booth, costuming, props, cooing out carefully choreographed orders from the stage manager’s desk — “Standby light cue 25… Go. Standby fly 14… Go.” It was fun. I was a weird kid, and it made me feel like I was a part of something larger than myself, which I think is a good thing for kids to feel.

So, when I got approached about this show, I was a little intrigued. Brought back some nostalgia.

An original work, set to run for only two weekends. A “think piece,” is I think the phrase that kept popping up. An absurdist drama about a family on the decline. I always enjoy a good read, so asked if a script could be sent: the writer definitely had a thing for Tennessee Williams, but there was no shortage of absurdity to it — that sort of high-octane monologuing and heavy-handed symbolism that can look a little cringy on the page, unless it’s treated with well-balanced care by the cast. But, decent enough.

“So… which part would I be playing, exactly?” I honestly never thought I would be in a play again. It’s not like dancing is in my repertoire (was it ever, though?), and I don’t necessarily “fit” the physical expectations when it comes to portraying Lady MacBeth.

The director was very straight-forward. Solid set, stays the same for the whole show. Centerstage, a large, round dinner table, with a notch taken out for my torso to fit. And, essentially, my breasts would be plopped (my word, not his) on the table for the entirety of the show, dominating the majority of the surface, save some room around the edge for plates, glasses, utensils…

“OK… So I would just kinda be… sitting there the whole time?”

This is part of the reason I have a chuckle when creatives get on a roll. Instead of a simple ‘yes,’ he begins to wax about how my breasts would represent fertility — the basis and origin of the family. The dinner table represents the space around which the family gathers, through good times and bad times, yada-yada.

“We wouldn’t be showing your face,” he made a point of saying. “Nor the rest of your body for that matter. A black scrim mounted to the table, so only your chest would be on display and visible to the audience. And you, yourself, don’t have any lines. So we actually wouldn’t need you until tech week.”

Nat and Olga, taking the limelight again… I had to think about it. Did the whole thing feel a bit too much of... a high-concept circus sideshow? Did I really want to exploit my body like that? Was I even gonna be in this play? Should the program not read “Heather Beck as The Giant Tits on the Table,” or should I save the paginator some confusion and just have it say, “Natalia and Olga as Themselves.” Isn’t that how dogs used to get credited in the opening reel of a ‘90s sitcom?

Then again… what the hell, right? It’s not like I even try to hide them anymore. What’s the difference between my day-to-day, or when I’m at a book signing or some other kind of appearance, and if I’m in a play? It’s not like any audience in their right mind would want to see my acting, so a lack of lines is probably for the best. And if the rest of me wasn’t, covered, what the hell would I do for two-and-a-half hours? Just sit there and stare at the audience like a derp, trying not to look bored? Maybe I could pass the time with a book while the actors do their things. Same as most nights; why not just do it on a stage?

“Oh, and I should mention,” the director continued. “Food is a very important element of this story. I know this might be a somewhat unusual question, but… would you be terribly opposed to the concept of serving dishes resting atop of you. And also, there are some tense moments, so I can’t promise that there’s a zero-chance of being caught in the crossfire of a thrown glassful of wine or a room temperature casserole. And, I hope you wouldn’t be offended by an occasional skin contact. Nothing inappropriate! But there’s just a lot of motion in this play, dishes being picked up, set down...” He chuckled a bit. This was a very egotistical fellow, confident in his ideas, but perfectly pleasant, overall. It seemed that he was experiencing that touch of awkward rambling we all tap into when we say a particularly strange thought out loud for the first time.

“I… drop food on them all the time, anyway,” I said. “It wouldn’t be a terribly unusual occurrence. And… I rest them on tables from time to time. They’re not easy to… wrangle without a little help. So… If peoples’ intentions are good, I really actually don’t mind.”

I could sense the relief over the phone. “So, you’re interested?”

“I think so… besides, where are you going to find another pair of fertility boobs?”

He chuckled. “Truth be told, I wouldn’t be above the idea of using extremely realistic… prosthetics? Which would work, but…”

“Authenticity.”

“And, I wouldn’t want to make it seem like I’m somehow undermining the nature of someone of your…”

“Condition?”

“If that’s the appropriate word?”

I ended up making appearances a little while before tech week. I had a pretty clear schedule, but what else was I gonna do? I was getting, honestly, a little excited about tripping the light fantastic.

Turns out, it was a good move. The cast was having a little trouble figuring out blocking and the like — the first night I arrived, there was the table, with a pair of giant half-football-shaped sections of foam. I had to stifle a laugh — from their perspective, it must have been hard to build a character, only to be blindsided once “The Tit Talent” arrived. But, they were just incredible. It took them a little while to get, well, used to me. But after a few days, we were all just hanging out, exchanging stories, having a couple of drinks on the stage after rehearsals wrapped, before we all went home — me completely naked from the waist up. They see me for hours topless every night, so what the hell do I have to gain by modesty once the clock runs out? Not that theater folk prize modesty that much in the first place, which is what I like about them.

It’s so funny… I just kinda stay in spot, and everyone just gathers around. Why go through the hassle of moving me around before my driver comes? At one point, we all sort of decided that the boobs, while big (duh), didn’t quite have the “mountaining/roundness” effect the director would have preferred. So we put a couple of soft mounds of foam under N&O, just to give them a little oomph. I never thought it would be necessary to make the girls look even bigger, but the crew brought a mirror around so I could have a look. Not bad. They look vivacious, especially with a little makeup on them. Sitting in that nook in the table, too, kinda makes them stick out more — even I’m honestly surprised with how big they look, and they’re freaking attached to me.

Speaking of which… I will say that the makeup artist was a little taken aback — she never skipped applying makeup to a face before. The girls require a fair bit of makeup, it seems, but we hit it off, the four of us, and she would always spend the extra 30 minutes helping me get cleaned up. (Not just from the makeup, but the food — once everyone got on a roll, and realized that I was actually OK with having bottles of wine shoved in my mile of cleavage, or globs of mashed potatoes and gravy flung about, everyone loosened up a little. A glass of iced tea spilled at one point and positively flooded Olga’s nipple… I let out an “EEP!” that definitely broke the fourth wall and killed the dramatic tension. Thank GOD it was just a dress rehearsal. Natalia and Olga, it seems, are beloved cast mates.

I’d better start wrapping up this note. I’m typing it on my phone, and there are only about 20 minutes until the house opens. Night 3 of 7. Seems to be going over well — maybe they’ll ask me to return for a reprisal at some point? I would do this again. It’s been a lot of fun, and definitely a change of climate — God knows how large I’d be by that point.

The stage is set, and the curtain is drawn, and the stage hand is going to be here in a minute to put that little black protector curtain in place. Up to my ribs, to my nose is practically touching. But, they left me a little space on the table, to each side of me, so I can rest my arms, and have a spot for a book and a bottle of water.

There’s this amazing deli we get the food from every night — plates of sandwiches, bowls of salad, casseroles, finger foods — a smorgasbord, laying out before me, precariously balanced, fixed in place, here and there, with some light adhesive on the bottoms if there’s too much of a chance one could topple. It takes everything I have not to nibble from the cornucopia before they put the covering in front of me. But, we all tend to eat our asses off after the curtain call, so I’ll just have to be patient — why let perfectly good food go to waste?

And then, I’ll sit back and let the girls have their time in the limelight, while mommy chills out with a trashy novel on the Kindle. It is a little surreal not being able to see my boobs, or any of the traffic on the stage, for the entire show. It’s an aural experience, punctuated by occasional sensations from some spot in Nat and Olga’s expanse — a spilled cup of warm soup, a plate being lifted and the gentle-but-apparent tack of the adhesive separating from my skin. Makes it hard to keep ever vigilant if something spontaneous happens, since balancing a coffee mug on a huge sack of Jell-O isn’t the most reliable thing in the world. But there’s this one line, in the start of act two, that I always grit my teeth for: “23 years, Margaret! 23 fucking years!” And then, an entire bottle of Champagne gets dumped all over. It’s not the temperature that gets me — it’s those fucking little bubbles, dude. They tickle.

Ah, well. The show must go on.