Note: This was a school assignment, but I liked it so much I thought I’d put it up here. We were supposed to do a personal narrative, and one of the options was to use an object as a focal point. I had a hard time choosing an object, but after casting around for a while I finally hit on one of the wooden swords used by my theater group. I wish I could properly describe what YSP means to me, but there really aren’t words. Hopefully this will give you an idea of why I love the place so much.

All people mentioned in here are real, though the story is fictional. I have Meg’s permission to post stories about her. Everyone else is mentioned by first name only.

At the Heart of the Wooden Sword

The playhouse of the Young Shakespeare Players is brick, containing only two stories and a basement. But it has so many extra levels crammed into its deceptively small exterior you would think someone had installed a couple of extra dimensions just to hold it all. The door is heavy, and if the wind is blowing the wrong way, as it is now, one can barely open it.

Fortunately I’ve gotten stronger over the years, and I manage to open the door enough to slip inside to the grey-carpeted entry hall. The lights are on in the hall, but dark in the upstairs theater and in the downstairs backstage area. Obviously I am the first to arrive for this day’s dress rehearsal of G. B. Shaw’s Saint Joan.

I head downstairs, pausing briefly to get a drink from the fountain by the wheelchair ramp. The water is cool today, which it isn’t always, and I drink my fill. Grinning at the silly picture Joan has put up above the fountain (a boy clutching his throat and looking positively parched), I continue down to the lower level.

The first thing I see when I come through the doorway is the rack of costumes, made by Anne, the director’s wife. I haven’t seen the costumes for this production yet, and they look absolutely beautiful. I’m so caught up in them that I don’t watch where I’m going.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” I say, tripping over a neglected prop. Standing on one foot with my injured toes pressed tightly against my leg, I bend to pick it up. It’s a sword, the kind we use in every production. “And how did you get here, hm?” I ask, half expecting it to respond.

Shaking my head at the mess that is constantly threatening to consume YSP, I hop over to the downstairs stage and sit down. “I wonder how many battles you’ve seen,” I muse aloud, turning the sword in my hand. It isn’t anything special, just your standard issue YSP sword. Wood, of course—who would give metal to an eight year old?—and rather blocky. The hilt and blade are all one piece, painted black and silver respectively. Another piece, also black, is attached as a cross-guard. As with many of YSP’s swords, the cross-guard has not been glued, and comes loose in my hands. Shaking my head, I pop it back in place. The paint is chipped and worn away at the swords edges, battle scars from twenty-five years of YSP productions. Where the paint has worn away the edges are tinted slightly pink, stained from Rebecca’s stage blood (corn syrup, chocolate sauce, and food coloring). At least the blade is still whole, unlike some—I have practiced with others that had snapped in the middle, leaving a bristle of fearsome splinters instead of the gently tapered blade.

It really is amazing, I think, tracing the line of the hilt. Such a fearsome weapon, and yet when I see you I don’t think of any of that. How many grade school students have wielded you in battle, how many teens died upon your blade? How many times have you been swung in jest, to threaten a friend or chastise an unruly crowd? As I wonder this, my mind wanders to my history with YSP’s swords.

There are very few productions that do not have a duel or even a war, and fewer still that do not have a sword present in some way. In my first production I was asked to swear an oath of truth upon a sword. In my second, King Lear, I never touched one onstage—what need has a Fool of a blade?—but as props master I was kept running supplying the nobles with their swords. In Romeo and Juliet I had a short duel, not even choreographed. Nick and I just did a series of clocks (he attacking, I defending, three hits repeated over and over: top, right, left; top, right, left; top, right, left…) until the Prince came in and yelled at us. It wasn’t until my fifth production that I really became attached to YSP’s blades.

Cymbeline was definitely the play for swords—after all, it has an entire war! And I had many choreographed fights, both as Posthumus (the male lead) and as Roman Soldier #3. How many nights did I spend drilling with Nick, Ben, Lucas, Riley, Maddie, Michael, and Michelle, practicing the same movements over and over until my hands were blistered and my arms sore? It was some of the most fun I’ve had in my life. The Posthumus-Iachimo fight left much to be desired, but there were some fun parts—stab, parry, duck and SLASH!! And my fight with Michelle, where Alex had me practice punching her so many times I thought for sure I’d dream of a punching bag wearing her face. And the double fight with Guiderius and Roman Soldier #5—double hit on top, I slash from the right, Lucas from the left, a low sweep at Ben’s feet, he jumps and—oh, but Lucas blocks and we go into a series of modified clocks—top, top, right, left, left, right; top, top, right, left, left, right…We had to modify some of the fights because I’m a lefty, or I had to use my right hand (which was a blessing, in an odd way, because it meant that my hands got equally blistered…). But it was fairly easy to do so, and I wouldn’t have given up the hours I spent practicing for anything in the world.

“All right people, blades up, look alive!” I grin as I remember Nick’s call to order. He’d have us practicing the scene fifteen times in a row, and each time he called us to order—“Blades up, look alive!” It got to the point where we would chant it along with him, just to tease him and get him off our backs (most of us were schoolgirls, not muscular guys like him and Alex). There was a portion of the fight where Caius Lucius (the Roman general) was supposed to signal the retreat. Maria, who was filling in, came up with the most interesting signals… “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” “I’m a little teapot, short and stout,” “Yield, rustic mountaineer!” (which was actually a line from another part of the play, and exceedingly fun to say) and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” being some of the more creative ones. And of course there was Alex, the director’s son, who was constantly swinging a sword at us in an attempt to flirt. We weren’t all that appreciative of his affections—he is very strong, and when one of those swords comes at you with that much power behind it…well, you’d be scared too.

I hear the door open and stand up quickly. Dress rehearsal is about to begin, and I should really get to work. I take the sword over to the props table. It’s a mess, as usual—we’re the first cast to dress rehearse, so it hasn’t been neatened yet. “No rest for the wicked,” I mutter with good-natured annoyance, setting down the sword and starting to straighten the props. A stack of wrinkled parchment letters, Juliet’s “dagger” (actually a fancy letter-opener), a pillow, a blanket, a candle, the set of stocks we put Kent in during Lear, an arrangement of plastic fruit on a tarnished silver tray, a mandolin, the tabour I used as the Fool, a ring, a stuffed dog on a stick, a bottle of “ink”…I know all of these things, where they’re from and what they’ve been. Smiling, I replace the sword among its fellows in their bedraggled cardboard box.

Rest well, old warriors, I think, straightening them compulsively. May your blades never chip, and your handles never be lost, and may you never give anyone a splinter, I add with a grin.

“Hey, Margaret,” says Meg, coming down the stairs. “What’re you doing?”

“Oh, nothing,” I reply, looking fondly at the props. “Just visiting with some old friends.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Friends?”

“Well, what would you call them?”

“I dunno…” she replies, resting her chin on my shoulder. “Relics, maybe?”

“Hey!” calls Sarah, coming downstairs. “What’s up?”

“Hello,” calls Anna from the landing.

“Hi you guys,” says Patrick, dropping his bag on a chair.

Well, so much for my reflective interlude.

We join the group, laughing and chatting as we help people into costumes and makeup.

This is home, I think in the three seconds I’m not frantically searching for Sarah’s hat or Anna’s belt. This is where my heart is.