'Layers' by Maggie Schlundt

This is a multimedia posting that combines images with the written word to take the reader on a tour of Cornell's Armstrong Hall and Kimmel Theatre....

Layers

Listen to the never quiet. Sounds curl into the corners, slide across the marble floors, clean the cool glass, they make the air vibrate, echoing the operatic warm up, the screaming actors performing the end of act 2 scene 3, the trill of the sewing machines threading through olive brocade, the bang! hammers and buzz! saws, the directors’wise, frustrated voices. Frantic creation. Change.

Step outside where the noise is less passionate.We’ll begin where I began: homesick, desperate, gazing at the glaring glass walls, unable to see inside. My eyes were big, brimming with stupid tears that squirted out when I remembered how far away my red door was, how long it would be until I felt the short silky hairs behind my dog’s ears, how bad I was at phone calls.

My tear ducts calmed and evaporated when someone left that sleek door open a crack, a smile. I, shaking, timid, approached. Now Iyank the metal handle with the gentle confidence that accompanies belonging. It recognizes my grip.Slip inside and shiver. It’s always too cold.

I met two best friends on these slippery marble steps; I still talk to one of them.

Go down.

Enter the Black Box Theatre.

Oh! take off your shoes first.

The floor has been abused, pounded and scratched. Every year, someone pops open a paint can and spreads glossy black thickly over the damage, to start fresh. But the paint peels back no matter how many layers and we remember…

Here is where I let go. Here is where a bald man in a colorful sweater vest

transformed me. Here is where I ripped my favorite yoga pants. Here is where a good joke jiggled my stomach folds. Here is where a curtain was a cape, a stairwell was a prison, a yellow sheet was pure gold. Here is where I grew, in a thirty minute acting exercise, from a fetus to a 95 year old. And then I died.

Down the concrete hallway is the stage; the imposing, exposing stage.I was naked in my first production here. I slept with my cast mate. He was charming. He had a girlfriend.

I got better.

The dressing room is bright, but your eyes will adjust.

People will be changing, people are always

changing here: putting on corsets, taking off wigs, closing shows, opening them. The years start with parties , shots, beer, fights, misunderstandings, falling outs, giving up, with inside jokes, love that felt real, with all-nighters, death. And they end with graduations, with goodbyes and ‘I miss you’s, and ‘I can’t talk right now, I ‘m really busy'.

With emptiness.

Nothing’s the same. The thin lines around my mouth have deepened. A tired grayish purple cushions the pillows of skin beneath my eyes. When I smile my face folds and contorts in unexpected places. My hair hasn’t been this long since I was a virgin. My shoulders cave.

Peel back the black paint. Find me.