You Can't Touch Me in David and Lisa

Way, way back in my junior year in high school, I played David in David and Lisa.  It was one of the rare times in theater that I played a young person.  Normally, I got whatever the oldest part in the play was.  Here David is being pleaded with by his mother, as played by Melody Chapman.

David was a freaky little teen, who was very fastidious, did everything by strict order, and didn't like to be touched.  Most of the play he was in an asylum for mentally disturbed young people.  It was like a form of Aspergers, although it wasn't called that - the term probably wasn't in vogue yet.  Here David is having a discussion with his psychiatrist, played ably by Bob Schultz.  Bob was an amazing radio voice, and was already a successful radio DJ.  He is the inspiration behind the character Bob Short in History of the Trap.

David in a scene with Lisa, a teen girl who has regressed to behaviors of a toddler. The play is how these two reach out to each other, despite the disability of their differing psychological problems.  Lisa is played by one of the best actresses I've ever had the pleasure to act with, Barb Bloomfield.  She was my next door neighbor, living right across the street. She had a younger brother named Randy, and although she and I dated once, she told me she could never get serious about me, because she saw me as her little brother's friend.  Barb starred in a number of plays and musicals, was in the band, and a straight A student.  I was a C student up though 9th grade, and I finally straightened out in 10th grade and got better grades to try and impress her.  It was not enough to get rid of the little brother's friend stink.  Barb is the inspiration behind the character Franny Cranfield in History of the Trap.

David and Lisa was a great challenge for me, playing somebody my own age and in a serious role.  The first time directors of the play, a husband and wife couple whose names have fled me, were very worried about the quality of the production, so they told everyone that a representative of PBS was going to come and select one production of David and Lisa, which apparently was being done by a number of schools across the country, and pick the best one to be televised.  This put a firecracker into our posterior region, and kids did step it up.  The story didn't make sense to me, so I asked the directors too many questions, until they took me aside and explained to me that it was not true, it was just a story they were telling  to motivate everybody.  They told me to keep it secret.  Barb Bloomfield (Lisa) also knew.

I was very uncomfortable with keeping this a secret, but I did.  I did, until after the play opened, and after curtain call, I met the girl who played Anne Frank.  It was a play that I was in the year before, and it was the closest, most gelled cast I'd ever been in (to this day, only 1940s Radio Musical Hour, Noises Off, and The Graduate could hold a candle to it).  I couldn't lie to Anne Frank, I just couldn't.  So I broke down and told her everything.  Barb and the Directors were very unhappy, but I just couldn't keep it up anymore.  I was ashamed I had done it as long as I did.

The play set was designed to be on a huge Lazy Susan device, that spun around to show different scenes.  You can see from the first picture that weaved wooden screens were used to separate scenes.  They were somewhat flimsy, particularly when spun around.  There was a scene where David and the psychiatrist were playing chess, him trying to delve into David's psyche, poor David not liking to be touched, when in one performance the background screen fell on us.  We were both very startled, the audience was a-gasp, and Bob and I just played through like nothing was going on.  So, yeah, I've literally had the set fall in on me.

Despite the difficulties, it was still a good theater experience, getting to play my own age in a serious role.

I didn't get the girl.  I participated in a lie.  I had the set fall on me.

But it was theater, man!

I wouldn't trade it for the world.