Cowboy role
Reporter makes stage debut
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — “Canteen, please!” The coach is seen in low angle from the outside as it trundles along. Curly, just visible up on the box, passes a canteen down to Hatfield, who is reaching out of the window to receive it.
That’s from a script reading of “Stagecoach,” the great
1939 John Ford Western movie based on the
Ernest Haycox story
“Stage to Lordsburg.”
The WWA Players, members of the Western Writers of America, presented the reading
June 23 in the performing arts space of the Kansas City Public Library.
Directed by Kirk Ellis, WWA president, Emmy Award-winning writer and Santa Fe resident, the production was intended to leave much to the imagination of the audience. There was, of course, no stagecoach or six lathered horses, no marshal’s office, saloon or stage stops. Instead, there was a podium, from which Kirk read scene descriptions; a row of chairs; a high table on wheels; actors in varying degrees of Old West attire; and props, including a canteen.
About that canteen. I was supposed to hand it to Albuquerque’s Jim Jones, who was sitting on stage a few chairs to the left of me. I portrayed the role of U.S. Marshal Curly Wilcox, a shotgun guard on the stagecoach run from Tonto in Arizona Territory to Lordsburg in New Mexico Territory. Jim played Hatfield, an elegant gambler of Southern origin and a passenger on the stage.
Trouble was I’d forgotten to bring the canteen on stage. Oh well, I reasoned, if the audience can imagine a stagecoach and six sweating horses, it shouldn’t have any trouble conjuring up a canteen. I leaned toward Jim, extending an empty hand just as Kirk appeared from stage right, offering the abandoned canteen to me.
“Oh wait,” I improvised. “Here it is.” It was the best I could come up with on the spot. After all, as Kirk cautioned the audience early on, “This is ‘Stagecoach,’ on training wheels. We are writers, not actors.”
“Stagecoach” on training wheels. That’s pretty good. But I can’t help but think of the production as “Stage Fright to Lordsburg.”
A call to arms
I’m a WWA member. But I had not originally been cast in “Stagecoach,” which was presented during the WWA convention in Kansas City last month, the latest entry in a series initiated with the reading of “The Homesman” script at the 2015 convention in Lubbock, Texas, and continued with “Comanche Station” in 2016 at Cheyenne, Wyo.
On May 17, however, Kirk emailed me, asking if I’d be willing to fill one or more bit roles, parts that required only a line or two of dialogue. “Yes is the right answer,” Kirk’s email noted. “Yes” is how I responded.
Back comes an email from Kirk revealing his decision to move me into the supporting role of Marshal Curly Wilcox. Whoa, Nelly! Smile when you say that. Curly has a lot of lines and is on stage more often than not. And I had not been on stage since I was St. Francis of Assisi in my eighth-grade Christmas play at Cathedral School.
Just as I was starting to panic, I