....after this message from the Professional Organization of English Majors.
GK: So you take a Shakespeare course in college and you fall in love with it ---- the passion, the drama----
TR: (HORSES WHINNY) (MANLY HURRAHS)
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood, set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide; On, on, you noblest English, And teach them how to war.. The game's afoot: Follow your spirit; and upon this charge, Cry 'God for Harry! England! and Saint George!' (HORSES, SWORDS, CANNON)
GK: And you really feel the language and it inspires you to dream of being an actor. To do Tennessee Williams.
TR: Stella! Come on, Stella!
FN (STELLA): I'm not going back, Stanley, never going back, never.
TR: Hey, Stella! Hey, Stellaaa!
GK: You dream of doing Arthur Miller.
TR: Oh, they all know me up in New England, boys. Willie Loman is very big up there. They see me coming, it's all smiles. You come with me someday, you'll see.
GK: You would love to do Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"----
TR: So you getting any bites?
FN: I don't think so. You?
TR: Nothing yet.
FN: Same here.
TR: Should we stay here?
FN: Could do that.
TR: What do you want to do?
FN: It's up to you.
TR: You want to find another spot?
FN: Maybe we just need to change bait.
TR: To minnows?
FN: Don't have any minnows.
TR: Neither do I.
GK: You keep trying out for parts but you never get one.
You try out for musicals.
TR (SINGS): Seventy-six-----
FN: NEXT.
GK: You try out for David Mamet.
TR: What you going around in circles for? Huh?...wait, wait, wait, don't interrupt, I'm talking. I want you to mow the grass back and forth. Back and forth. Straight lines. No circles. Straight. No checkerboard. Back and forth. Straight. You get me? You know what I mean by straight? Do you?
FN: THANK YOU. NEXT.
GK: You try out for the Wizard of Oz.
TR (WICKED WITCH): I'm melting....
FN: NEXT.
GK: All you can land is a cable-access children's show that airs on Tuesday mornings.
TR: Okay, kids. Little Rascals coming right up but first it's birthday time. (CLOWN HORN) C'mon kids. (SINGS IN A GOOFY VOICE) Who's got a birthday hey hey hey?
Stand up straight and shout Hurray.
Take the biggest breath you can take,
And help me blow out the candles on the cake. (BIG INTAKE) (HONKS)
GK: And on weekends you dress up in a chicken suit at Kentucky Fried (TR CLUCKING). It's an acting job so you took it but the mask is hot and the eyeholes hurt your eyes and you're making $3.50 an hour, and you feel like maybe this is the end.
TR: I'll be forty this summer---- (CLUCKS) ----Forty years old and I'm a clown and I'm poultry (LONG SAD CLUCK)
GK: Wait a minute. Remember what your old English professor Miss Bentwood said???
FN (LADY): Suffering is at the heart of genius, the engine behind every great work of art. When the going gets tough, the English major starts writing.
TR: YES! YES!
GK: So you sit down in your basement apartment with the leaking water pipe and you write.
(SLOW DRIPS THROUGHOUT)
TR (WRITING): I have never felt so alone as when I was inside that chicken and I started to become very aware of my breast, my thighs, my liver, my drumsticks, and I began to see that life was devouring me, but I could become a new me because inside me was an egg and that egg would hatch and I would become whole again.
(BRIDGE)
GK: And your memoir, THE EGG WITHIN, is an enormous success.
FN: My next guest is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-seller THE EGG WITHIN, Mr. Tom Roswell----
GK: And over and over you tell your story.
TR: Performance was a disguise for me. I wanted to be an actor so that I could escape who I was. But when I became a chicken, that was when I began to discover myself.
GK: And you, once a failure, now are able to buy that sheep farm in Vermont you've always wanted (SFX) and the thoroughbred horses (SFX) and the Maserati (SFX). And this is why we major in English. There is always hope for an English major because failure is only material. We write our way out of failure and suffering. Remember that. When they ask, Why are you majoring in English, tell them----
TR: Because I want to experience abject misery and suffering so I'll have things to write about.
GK: A message from the Professional Organization of English Majors.