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and I would fain really make bold to say charmingly — romantic; and all without intention, presumption, hesitation, contrition. The effect is equally undesigned and unabashed, and I lose myself, at this late hour, I am bound to add, in a certain sad envy of the free play of so much unchallenged instinct.”
    â€”Henry James, Preface to The American
    â€œIn the theater as in the plague there is a kind of strange sun, a light of abnormal intensity by which it seems that the difficult and even the impossible become our normal element.”
    â€”Antonin Artaud, “The Theater and the Plague”

A uditions—the third round of auditions—for his production of Henry James’s The American included a Polite Parlor Questionnaire. He did not know what else he might do and was afraid his theater would be stillborn. He had seen more than a hundred persons in three days and could not remember a single distinguishing feature: the faces were all round white balloons, all but featureless, atop stick figures, which were tap-dancing with canes and bowler hats, singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in four parts all by themselves, and concluding, as if delivering a punch line, “Our revels are now ENDED! This actor, as I foretold you—” while waving little American flags. He believed he would have laughed had he possessed a sense of humor, something he believed he neither possessed nor wished to possess, believing himself to be essentially and perfectly humorless. He sat in a composed way and neither smiled nor frowned when he thanked them. He was acting for them. He was a Mystery. He was the Ghost of a Secret Theater and he would populate his theater with these shrieking stick figures, if that was the only way open to him.
    The idea of an ensemble of local actors, highly trained in ancient and exotic techniques was, of course, ludicrous.
    Some of them were friends, if he could in fact be said to have friends, and they could not fail to find his vision laughable. It was not even, technically speaking, his vision: it was the legendarily ludicrous but defiantly potent Sir Edwin Carmichael’s vision, which he was purchasing, owning, operating, with sir Edwin’s guidance.
    He would move to Paris, tomorrow, if something galvanic failed to happen—if he failed to make these frogs hop.
    But what could happen in a Polite Parlor Questionnaire?
    â€œWhat is for you the greatest unhappiness?
    In what place would you like to live?
    What is your ideal of earthly happiness?
    For what faults do you have the greatest indulgence?
    What is your principal fault?
    What would you like to be?
    What is your favorite quality in a man?
    What is your favorite quality in a woman?
    What is your favorite occupation?
    What is your present state of mind?”
    I might be thinking of a way of life that includes everything. A way of theatrical life that shows real life up for the sham and horror it is.
    After the earthquake and the fires, his voice had broken. Mother had not made good on her threat to castrate him, and he decided in the hideous croaking aftermath of the break that he would never sing again, except as his explorations of the theater might call for it. His mind had not broken, had it? What did the voice have to do with it? The voice was what he had charmed and disarmed the pretty ladies with.
    Oh yes, he had seen them thinking, as if they were characters in a comic strip with thought balloons puffing from their temples, that after all this was San Francisco and they might very well get away with it.
    But Voice was now Mind.
    And Mind required Stage.
    Breakfast had always been a good time for miniature debates, such as might ensue once polite parlor questions had been asked and answered. But once he’d dressed and made his way to the dining room, he found only the twins—brothers who had been born the year after the earthquake in a fishingvillage in the south of France, Cassis, in a house