My Life in the Theatre – 1978 San Francisco Play Production Number 64 Sacrifices
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In 1978, I was a member of “Lilith, a Women’s Theater Collective,” from San Francisco. We were writing a play called “Sacrifices”. I was the member assigned as writer-only. Which meant in the collective not that I was the writer (too egotistical, not consensus building, I mean, everyone was the writer,) but simply that I was the collective member assigned to record brilliant moments in rehearsal, take them home, type them up, and string them together. It was a weird sort of writing— I would be huddled over my new electric typewriter, connecting rehearsal moments, when the muse would wander in and add her two cents worth and that was pretty exciting to me personally and sort of OK with the collective; but you couldn’t go too far in my own voice, or the other creators would feel oppressed and unheard.
One morning at 4:30 am, I was hard at work in my tiny room in the Goodman Building, the political arts commune where I lived. The Goodman Building was an old hotel in San Francisco—a really old hotel. —when the electricity went off. This was an experience not too unusual in the Goodman Building, but bad news for an electric typewriter—or even writing at all, since it was dark. I had a 9:00 am rehearsal, which was why I was pulling an all-nighter; so I grabbed up the sheets of paper, the only copies of this manuscript so far, and headed for the all-night donut shop on the corner of Geary and Van Ness.
The only other early morning donut patrons were a group of Japanese businessmen, engaged in animated conversation, donut buying and briefcase opening and shutting. I got my Styrofoam coffee and headed for a bright orange vinyl table near the window. I was writing a part of the play where the main character (also named Lilith, like the theatre company) has just been sacrificed (hence the play’s title Sacrifices) to the dragon outside the walls of her village. The dragon is not going to turn out to be really a dragon, however, but a — (Wait, I’m not giving too much of the plot away am I? I mean you might want to see it. Well, no that won’t be happening; I’m not sure an entire script remains). I’ll just tell you: It’s not a dragon but a bunch of women under a dragon costume! These are all the women who have been sacrificed (the title again, remember?) to the dragon in previous years. At this crucial moment of play an immortal bag lady arrives to give Lilith advice. Now, I realize this may be hard to believe, but in 1978 an immortal bag lady was not the theatrical cliché she is now – there were many fewer homeless, and even fewer old female characters spouting endless wisdom from the debased worldly situations in which they found themselves. It was a very original idea.
The 38 Geary Muni Bus in front of the donut shop. She threw herself off —stained lime green polyester pantsuit, grey hair large and done up but getting away from her, jerkily moving and glancing around like a moulting tropical long legged water bird. Her eyes sought mine, and I felt the sickening certainty that I had been chosen. She came in the shop and picked up a huge fistful of little sugar packets, plowed through Japanese businessmen right and left and strode to the orange vinyl standup strip next to my table. I was trying so hard to act natural and still not make eye contact –you know! I focused hard on my script, penning the immortal words of the goddess bag lady. She ripped apart the sugar packets one by one, filling her palm with a pile of sugar, all the while staring at me and muttering fiercely. The Japanese businessmen were huddling as far away from us as they could manage—small donut shop, hard to accomplish distance.
Suddenly the muttering stopped. I looked up. She threw the sugar contents into my eyes, grabbed my script, clutched it to her (somewhat exposed because of broken zipper) bosom and screamed, “Listening to the witch and copying it down! You’re listening to the witch and copying it down!” I leapt up and grabbed the script. She held on, back and forth across the table we went, locked in a screaming kabuki -like tug of war. The Japanese business men trying to intervene and still not get coffee all over their very nice suits. Back and forth, she demanding the pages, me unrelenting.
Suddenly, she let go. I fell back onto a cushion of very small men, she ran out of the donut shop, jumped on the next 38 Geary, just pulling up, leaned out most dangerously pointing and screaming, “You will burn burn burn for this. You all will burn burn burn.”
I gathered my soggy sugar encrusted pages and went back to my room. I called Terry and Michelle, two other Lilith core members and we agreed to meet at 8:45 and talk it over. I was fairly certain something of real significance had transpired, Michelle thought we needed to get ourselves a witch to counteract the curse. Terry thought we should just get to rehearsal and forget about it. At the end of rehearsal, we shared with the rest of the collective, and arranged to meet at Terry’s house to do a protective ritual that night.
Terry lived in the Haight, second floor of a row house which might very euphemistically been called Victorian. The back room, which had been my room previously, and was still where I kept most of my stuff, was currently being used for creating all the props costumes and musical instruments of Sacrifices. Michelle, Terry, Nancy and I arrived early to create the ritual, which was to be officiated over by a Tarot Reader named Amber Waves (who named herself after the line in the National Anthem “Amber Waves of Grain”). Amber Waves, Michelle and I were seated on a sofa with our backs to the rear window, Nancy was seated across from us, Terry on the floor. We were planning our cleansing ritual, deep into it, when Nancy, usually shy and not saying much, spoke in a loud clear commanding voice, “You women, all of you. Listen to me. Stand up and walk over here now!” As if under a spell, we stood and walked toward her. She broke out in tears, gesturing behind us. We turned and looked at the windows as the entire outside rear wall burst into flame. We only had time to run outside. We lost everything.
The fire department came swiftly, they saved the block but it was too late for us. The people downstairs had a back porch bar-b-que, stepped inside for a minute, and couldn’t imagine how it happened so fast like that. There were many people in the street. It was the Haight! On a Friday night, in the 70’s. There was an insane street person, nothing like my morning foe, a small gnomic women this one, smelling of urine, carrying a jug of wine, dancing a manic little jig, “Told you so told you so told you so,” while Terry kept saying, “I just refuse to believe this, this is only a coincidence. I refuse to let myself believe this.”
We discussed canceling the show, changing the show. In addition to our fear of the curse we were supposed to open in ten days and we had no sets, costumes, props, musical instruments, and I personally had nothing left of my things in storage –books and records, stuff from my grandparents, the journals, diaries, writings and yearbooks of my youth, all gone. I went back inside the next day. Because the fire had burned so fast, some things remained standing in charred ashy form, like the ruins of Pompeii. The piano stood there, and on top of it a stuffed Gorilla, the mascot of our old improv group the Gorilla Theater. I touched the gorilla and the whole edifice began to crumble away from where my finger had touched it, Gorilla and piano dissolved slowly into a big pile of ashes and charred wood, and a little gold plaque on the piano which read “Happy 13th. love Grandma” clattered to the floor.
Lilith produced “Sacrifices” — many people in the theater community turned out to help us rebuild, The San Francisco Mime Troupe let us use their space. In Chinatown, we discovered a shrine in Chinatown to Tien Hu, a Chinese goddess, who is the patron saint of travelers and wayward women. The entire Lilith collective went there to pray.
I was about to discover I was pregnant. I moved to a rural commune in the Colestin Valley south of Mt. Ashland, which was disintegrating by the time I arrived. Then the Buddhists came and bought it, and I pray there to this day. And now it’s almost 30 years later; my neighbor Tod has started this magazine, Terry wrote a piece for it, and I’m huddled here, again late at night, on the final deadline, using a laptop now, writing down this amazing remembered day, writing about writing.
Hey, the goddess, she moves in her innumerable mysterious intoxicating ways, huh? Blessed be.