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A View FROM THE AUDIENCE
by Dorthy-Belle Pollack

My first play-- Winterset

For a long time now we had been carefully saving up all our money for the great event.

It was the winter of 1935, and my cousin Judith and I, two high-school freshmen, had finally managed to scrounge up enough coins for our very first trip to the theatre.

We had each amassed 70 cents. Fifty-five cents for a theatre seat in the second-balcony, ten cents for the two long subway rides from the outer limits of the Bronx and five cents for an ice cream cone.

And so, on a crisp, cold Saturday afternoon, we embarked on our safari, to see Maxwell Anderson's play, Winterset. We had chosen this play because its title had entranced us. We knew little else about it.

This was an exciting experience for us, for in that Great Depression age, one's family barely scraped up enough money for rent and foo. The theatre was a luxury meant only for the upper classes.

All during our subway ride, we chatted about our school news, our friends, our families and our aspirations. We were "bosom friends" and always arranged our Saturday afternoons together.

As we trudged up the seemingly unending steps to the second balcony, we looked about in awe. Our seats were the last two in the last row. We did not mind at all. We were in the theatre now! We were going to see live performances by actors!

The curtain rose and all through the play we sat spellbound. We leaned forward tensely in order to hear every word. We had known the play was in poetic form, and Judith and I both adored poetry. We had just discovered Keats and had often read to each other Keat's immortal lines on love and death. Now here we were, seeing a poetic drama of love and death.

The play had not progressed very far before we both knew that we had a "crush" on the young actor who played Mio. Our PLAYBILL listed him as Burgess Meredith. We found his melancholy languor mesmerizing.

When the curtain came down upon the final act, we applauded so violently that our hands ached. We had come with one set of binoculars, which had constantly gone back and forth between us. Now both wanted a good view of Meredith, so we shared the binoculars reluctantly.

We left the theatre quoting the lines we could remember, in particular: "When we're young, we listen for a step; Every step has a name."

The father spoke these lines to his daughter, played by Margo. To this day I can remember exactly how they sounded.

Winterset opened up whole new vistas for us. Who were Sacco and Vanzetti? We had never heard of them in school. Were there really poor people (poorer than we were) who lived under the Brooklyn Bridge? Did people really shoot other people? Were all plays so sad? We would have to save up all the money we could, to see more plays.

Our ride back up to the Bronx on the subway was different from the ride down. We were silent and subdued, each of us thinking of Anderson, of Winterset, and mostly of Meredith!

All this happened 50 years ago. Judith had long since died, leaving a terrible emptiness in my life. The actors of Winterset are now much older; many of them have died. I too am older, and wiser.

But sometimes in a pensive mood I think back upon that Saturday afternoon with Judith and relive the beauty and wonder of an age that has vanished into the shadows of the past.
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Have you ever had and experience (funny, sad, enlightening) in the theatre, which which has had a special meaning for you? Submit your manuscript (700 words or less) to PLAYBILL, Dept. AV, 71 Vanderbilt Ave., NYC 10169. We will pay $100 for any manuscript we publish.

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