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My Life as a Thespian
Trying to break a leg
If life is like a stage play, I am in the last scene of the final act. Hey, I’m 85! But unlike drama, there is no denouement. The lights will simply go down, the audience go home, and the actor fade away.
In Which Me is Me, my About Me introductory story, I ruminated about the many ways I have seen myself during my long and varied life. I realize now that one way was not seeing myself at all — by becoming someone else on stage.
I was reminded of this recently when I read an article about the late Puerto Rican actors Chavito Marrero (1926–2009), his wife Mercedes Sicardó (1927–2018), and the marvelous Lucy Boscana (1915–2001). I imagined them somewhere in the sky avoiding upstaging each other — if there is a somewhere in the sky.
They were colleagues and friends during my brief career as an actor. Chavito, Mercedes, and Lucy were among the cast members in an 1980s production of La Carreta, the best known stage play of René Marqués, Puerto Rico’s preeminent dramatist. We appeared together in a total of 50 performances at the Tapia Theater in San Juan, Teatro La Perla in Ponce and Teatro Colón in Mayagüez. It wasn’t Broadway, but it is the closest I would ever come!
The star was Lucy Boscana, one of Puerto Rico’s most renowned actresses. I remember in rehearsal one day…
