Chiller Theater

FOR AS long as there have been people, people have thought about death. Less is known about the after death then, say, the afterbirth, but this has not discouraged universal speculation on the subject.

For example, the Ancient Egyptians thought death was like life, only more conceptual--so they wrapped their former pharoahs in ace bandages and secreted them in vast, angular postmodern structures built of stone. Moslems, on the other hand, have traditionally thought of the afterlife as a paradise of inlaid patios and plashing fountains, in which the True Believer could sit forever, dandling plump breasted houris and rosy bottomed boys upon his knees.

Having just returned from the dead, however, I must tell you that both theories are false, as is every other afterlife ever conceived by the mind of man. Death does not involve angels, or houris, or ace bandages (well, perhaps ace bandages--more on this later). Nor does it have anything to do with trumpets, balm of Gilead, Nirvana, or Kama Sutra. Death is lying on the unyielding floor of the Dunster House dining hall with an itchy nose, worrying about being stepped on.

DEATH CAME to me through the good offices of Tom Stoppard and the Dunster House Drama Society, which recently produced The Real Inspector Hound. A friend from the cast telephoned me one evening, soon before opening night. "We need a body for Hound," he said. Like the hotdog I am, I accepted the role with relish. After all, it sounded easy and fun--just lie on stage for an hour, then go to the cast party. While you only live once, I reasoned, here was an opportunity to die twice. Test driving the afterlife is a privilege granted to few.

In the days before the opening, I sprinkled every conversation with casual references to "this Stoppard show I'm opening in Thursday night." "Do come," I said to friend and total stranger alike; "the supporting cast is quite good, and I'm on stage the whole time." This line got me through many a dinner conversation in the week before my death.

At last the night came. I arrived on the set shortly before eight, and was greeted by my fellow actors. "It's the body!" "Hi body, you look dead!,"--yuk yuk. The director called the cast together and everyone did primal screams and things as a warmup. Everyone but me, that is. I figured that, for once, energy was the last thing my performance needed.

As the audience settled into their seats, I stood tensely offstage. My instructions were to wait for a signal, and then walk onstage in full view of everyone and lie down in front of a couch. After this, the action would begin and I was not to move until the curtain call.

After a small eternity the director nodded to me from the opposite wing--first encouragingly, and then, as I hesitated, peremptorily. There was nothing for it, and so I walked forth to die.

AT FIRST it wasn't so bad--restful, really, lying there in the dim light with people doing theatrical things all around me. Occasionally I'd open the eye on the opposite side of my face from the audience for a worm's eye view of Stoppard, which I enjoyed. The floor was hard and my nose itched, but I consoled myself with the reflection that art is, ultimately, sacrifice. Then I heard the couch behind me begin to move.

The actress playing Mrs. Drudge, the maid of all work, was moving the thing towards me, foot by foot, in order to dust behind it. I was supposed to be lying a foot or two in front of it as the action began, but in my nervousness I had miscalculated and arranged myself a good eight feet away. Accordingly, it took Betsy several minutes of heaving and dusting before she was in a position to lift the couch over my body. The suspense was unpleasant.

It was very close now. I heard a sinister scraping inches from my left ear, and then I felt one end of the couch settle over my feet and legs. Then Betsy lifted the near end over me and dropped it with sickening force on lower lip.

I was too shocked to react at first, as I tasted blood in my mouth and felt blood trickling down my chin. I heard a couple of sadistic chuckles from the audience, but repressed the urge to leap up, hurl the satanic sofa into the front row and run screaming from the theatre.

Betsy and the other actors luckily didn't notice my torment or it might have thrown them off, although they showered me with sympathy and apologies after the show. The rest of my death was pretty uneventful. The bleeding soon stopped, and I realized that what in my initial panic I had thought to be a shattered lower jaw was in fact only a superficial scrape. I was kicked once or twice and stepped on, and had my hair pulled three times before the curtain call, but I bore it all with equanimity. The worst was over.

Indeed, my biggest problem over the remainder of the performance was trying not to laugh, for the script was clever and the actors skilled. I managed somehow, and had my reward after the show. As I stood smoking a cigarette and watching the people file out, a friend from the audience came up and shook my hand. "You know," he said, "I've seen you do good work in other shows, but you were absolutely dead on stage tonight."