In the fall of 1984, I had just graduated from Michigan and was playing the bad guy lead character Harry Roat in
Wait Until Dark out in Manchester at the Black Sheep Repertory Theater; Alan Arkin played the character in the
1967 spine chilling thriller film production across from the Oscar nominated Audrey Hepburn, who was playing a woman who had recent become blind; and three bad guys suspected that she had unknowingly come into possession of heroin they had been trying to smuggle into the country. Katherine Hepburn ended up winning that year for
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
Now, the woman who was playing the Audrey Hepburn role was probably in the top five of See You Next Tuesdays a person would ever hope not to meet; we had a pretty strained relationship and interacted very little off the stage.
Spoiler Alert, but this is a pretty old movie and script and anyone who doesn't know the story probably isn't going to rent the movie.
Basically, the blind woman snookers the bad to guy to try to apprehend her and regain the heroin after nightfall, while she had, unknown to him, caused all the lights in the apartment to be non-functioning, rendering him just as blind as she is, giving her the upper hand in a space she is about as familiar with by now blind as she was when she could see.
In a twist, the bad guy finds the one source of light she had forgotten about, and is about to kill her and grab the heroin, which by now she has found, but she whirls and stabs him.
In the stage combat blocking, the actress would hold the knife in her fist and punch me in the chest.
Anyway, the production got great reviews and attracted a big audience, so the run was extended for one week.
We had a walk through before the first night of the extended week, which is a non-dress rehearsal where you don't really act but just review lines and the blocking and stage movements and so forth.
So in the actual play after the bad guy gets stabbed, he uses his own knife to dig it into the floor and drag himself across the floor in one final dying attempt to kill her and get the heroin, but he dies just before.
So in the walk through, I'm obviously not gonna bother getting the floor and drag myself across the floor in that scene, so as I'm just walking it - the bitch, for whatever reason, wasn't even on the stage, I can't remember why - screams at me "get down on the floor!"
What the fuck?
So I say to her, "fuck you!"
Anyway the next night, during that scene, instead of punching me in the chest with her fist with knife in her hand, the bitched stabbed me in the arm, right in the shoulder.
I finished the show bleeding all over the place.
