But That I Was A Journeyman to Grief
Or, the week your community loses a friend, an idol, a mortal king
🦻If you prefer to listen rather than read, I’ve recorded this newsletter above. Please note that my emotion is very raw in the reading, so please take care if you have fresh grief of your own.
When you are a baby actor and your two goals in life are to work at the Alliance Theatre and Georgia Shakespeare, and within the first year of moving to Atlanta the artistic director of one of those theatres comes up to you in Piedmont Park and says:
“We’ve got an actor who’s in the last show of our season and she’ll need to leave for the last week. Would you be interested in understudying and going on?”
…you wipe the drool off your chin and muster a whispered “yes, yes I would.” You will wonder how he knew who you were and how lucky you were that day - for the rest of your life.
The play was Metamorphoses and it was closing out the 2006 summer season at Georgia Shakespeare. It was based on David R. Slavitt’s translation of The Metamorphoses of Ovid and took place in a three-tiered swimming pool onstage with only a thin deck surrounding it. Metamorphoses was a beautiful, epic, mind blowing, watery masterpiece. It started with a woman kneeling next to the pool looking at her own reflection and saying:
Bodies, I have in mind, and how they can change to assume new shapes - I ask the help of the gods, who know the trick: change me, and let me glimpse the secret and speak, better than I know how, of the world’s birthing, and the creation of all things, from the first to the very latest.
When the time came for me to go on for the last week, it was already a hit. The buzz of Atlanta. They were playing to sold out houses and return patrons and I couldn’t believe I just got to jump in pool with the ensemble and finish the run.
Just before my first entrance on my own personal opening night, I stood offstage, watching with glistening eyes. My excitement and nerves and longing all at frenzied high. I heard a voice whisper in my ear… “you’re the luckiest girl in Atlanta, you know that?”
I turned around. It was my fellow actor, Chris Kayser. An actor of such enormous prowess and talent and longevity of career, it was hard to believe I could even call him a “fellow actor” next to my fresh-out-of-undergrad self. “I know!” I whispered back, nodding, looking for some assurance in his eyes that I wan’t just lucky? That maybe I had earned a spot here? Whether he meant to or not, I didn’t receive the assurance in that moment. No - “you got this”, no - “it’s gonna be great”; just a twinkle in his eye and a reminder of how darn lucky I was, it was on me what to do with that luck.
Is this story a story of love and how it always goes away?… Is this a story of how time can move only in one direction?… Is this story a story of an artist, and the loss that comes from sudden self-consciousness or impatience?
I’d have the great luck of working with Chris many more times in the coming years, including the remount of that beautiful piece in the pool the very next year. I can’t count the number of times or plays we stood just offstage together, eschewing sitting in our dressing rooms for the far greater treasure of watching our fellow actors play the play. He played my father several times and regaled me with stories of his own beloved children, stories of stages and plays long gone, stories of live mishaps, stories, stories, stories. Chris was Legend by the time I met him. He was our Scrooge, our Shakespearean leading man or scene-stealing sidekick, a master of farces and drama alike, one of the few stage actors who worked nearly year round on every stage in the city. I cannot overstate the magnitude of adoration he upheld from theatre-makers and theatre-goers alike. He was the king. And I cannot overstate how much he seemed to be completely unaware of it. He never passed up the opportunity to remind everyone how lucky he was to get to do this thing.
Chris died on Tuesday. We knew it was coming. But how can you ever know what to do with it.
O Gods, I pray you, change me; make me something else; transform me entirely; let me step out of my own heart.
Two years ago I found out I’d be doing another play with him, it was called “Everybody” an adaptation of the ancient play “Everyman”. And rather than one man in the titular role, five actors are cast as “Everybody” and it’s determined by lottery who gets to play it each night. The other four actors play side characters, also determined by lottery. Luck. Or fate. Or random chance determines who will play the lead, and for that performance, stand in for Every Body and face their own mortality. Oh yeah, it’s a play about death.
A play about death, with our friend Chris Kayser, who we knew was dying from cancer.
There are certain sacred, unspoken rules for theatre actors, the top one is probably that what happens in a rehearsal hall, stays in a rehearsal hall (unless it winds up in the play of course, then it goes in front of anyone willing to pay for a seat). The trust that is built in order to have the level of vulnerability necessary to rip open one’s heart and tell the best story this group of people can possibly tell, is unmatched. It’s just a job. But there’s a reason that most of my dearest friends and companions are people I’ve “worked” with, because what we work with is our actual bodies and imaginations and our own tender stories. It’s just a job, but it’s not spreadsheets. So I won’t divulge what happened in those weeks of rehearsing and preparing to present an audience with death and mortality every day. But I’m sure you can imagine it was truly excruciating at times. Excruciating pain met with deep, cathartic joy is not my favorite feeling but it’s certainly one of the most intense.
I believe Chris was mad, we all were, that his life would be cut too short by this stupid disease. He was mad the way it had transformed his body. We were mad the way it made us confront the theme of the play in a way we had no desire to articulate. But he was also accepting, full hearted. His theme - “Carpe Fuckin Diem” - we shouted it joyfully when we needed to remember.
Whoever played Everybody - again, by random luck/chance/fate - ended their performance by running around the theatre in their underwear yelling
MY BODY IS A MYSTERY
TO MYSELF
I AM ANGRY
AT MY BODY
I AM ANGRY
AT IT’S CHANGING
MY ANGER AT EVERYTHING
IS DUE TO THE FACT
THAT MY BODY
KEEPS CHANGING
I HAVE NO CONTROL
THIS BODY IS JUST MEAT
And it was up to each actor to repeat the lines
I HAVE NO CONTROL I HAVE NO CONTROL
and
THIS BODY IS JUST MEAT THIS BODY IS JUST MEAT
and
I SURRENDER I SURRENDER I SURRENDER I SURRENDER I SURRENDER
until you did. Indeed. Surrender. And collapse under the character of “Love”.
This is how I will remember my time with Chris Kayser, surrendering to Love, to the story, to spirits of the stage. I will remember the gift of watching the surrender.
Then we all donned glow-in-the-dark skeleton onesies (it’s a comedy about death!) and our whole bodies danced it out. If that didn’t make us the luckiest actors in Atlanta (the planet?) I don’t know what does.
What do I do with that luck? I keep asking myself that.
A few weeks ago, we knew our time with Chris was becoming shorter so my dear friend Courtney Patterson (who also happened to be in both Metamorphoses and Everybody) and I went to spend some time with him and his dear wife Terri. His mind was as sharp as ever, telling stories, laughing, asking about our families. As we left, we each squeezed his hand, looked him in the eye and said “I love you, friend.” And he said “I love you, friend.”
And in the hours since he passed. I have told so many people I loved them. So many people have reminded me that they love me. There is just love. No one will ever take his place. He left so much of himself in each of us that his place will never be empty.
What do I do with the luck? What did Chris do with his? He passed it on, however he could. He celebrated everyone. Though he was the king, he refused the crown and throne, passing his power to everyone in his kingdom. He played the jester because it was fun. What did Chris do with his luck? He spent it gratefully surrendering to love.
let me die the moment my love dies…
let me not outlive my own capacity to love…
let me die still loving, and so, never die.
What do I do with my luck
I have decided to take on a big act of faith this holiday season. Truly, it’s in the hours of grief and the need to spread more love that this opportunity came to me:
There are some girls in my neighborhood, 10 and 16 who lost their 12 year old brother on Thanksgiving to suicide. They and their mother are, of course, beside themselves with grief. I’m working with an organization who would like to make sure they have a Christmas that reminds them that, when they are ready, the world is still full of love and light for them.
So I’m asking for your help to give these girls everything on their Christmas list.
When I send a post out into the world, it’s usually read by around 1,000 people. I’d love to complete this task with $5 donations from a few hundred of you. I can’t afford to do this on my own and to be honest, I just need as many reminders as I can right now of what a big difference each of us doing something small can make.
If you are able to send a few dollars from your good luck to show these girls some love, it would really be something. If you’re interested in purchasing a larger big ticket item on your own, please message me. But it’s wonderful to see what many small gifts can do when put together.
Venmo: @Bethany-LindMendenhall
PayPal: @BethanyAnneLind or bethanyact@yahoo.com
Please put “Neighbors” in the description. Let me know if you need a different payment method.
I will post receipts and photos of gifts for full transparency.
If you’re like me, you should go ahead and do it now. I have such good intentions that often go by the wayside to my… distractions (that pile of laundry! That self-tape! That cabinet pick!). So please. Do it now! Carpe fuckin’ diem!
*All italicized quotes are from Metamorphoses, by Mary Zimmerman
Tell me your Chris Kayser stories
I'm embarrassed to even chime in here after reading this. Not much of a story from me really. My last show here as I readied the LA move was an early one for Chris. Yanks 3 Detroit 0, Top of The Seventh/Bleacher Bums at Kent Stevens Imaginary Theatre, 1980. Talent is talent is talent. And heart is heart is heart. He was filled to the brim with both. It was always a joy every time we saw each other since. His smile would light up the room every time. The outpouring of love for him that we are seeing and feeling right now is a testament to him, theatre and love. Thank you for this.
This is truly beautiful and exemplifies the very best of loving friendships. Thank you for sharing.