Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

“Thanks,” he says. “In I go. First day! Always a tough one. Wish me merde!”

“Merde, Mr. Duke.” Two thumbs-up from Madison.

It’s Felix who’s taught them to say merde . An old theatre superstition, he’s told them, it’s like break a leg. The more he shares about old theatre superstitions the better: widen the circle of illuminati.

“Page us if there’s trouble, Mr. Duke,” says Dylan. “The guys have got your back.”

There will be trouble, thinks Felix, but not of the kind you mean. “Thanks,” he says. “I know I can count on you.” And he’s off down the hallway.

The same day.

The hallway is in no way dungeon-like: no chains, no shackles, no bloodstains, though there are some of those backstage, as he understands. The walls are painted a medium-light green, on the theory that this shade is calming to the emotions — not like, for instance, a passion-inflaming red. If it weren’t for the absence of bulletin boards and posters, this might be a university building of the more modern sort. The floor is gray, of that composition substance that wishes to look like granite but fails. It’s clean, with a slight polish. The air in the corridor is static and smells of bleach.

There are doorways, with closed doors. The doors are metal but painted the same green as the walls. They have locks. This isn’t a dorm wing, however. The cellblocks are over to the north: the maximum-security block, with men in it whom Felix never sees, and also the medium-security block, which is where his actors come from.

It’s in this section of Fletcher that the rehabilitation for the medium-security inmates goes on, such as it is. The courses for credit, the counselling. There are a couple of psychiatrists. There’s a chaplain or two. There’s a visiting prisoners’ rights advocate who conducts his interviews somewhere in here. They come and go.

Felix stays away from these people — the other teachers, the rights advocate, the shrinks and chaplains. He doesn’t want to hear their theories. He also doesn’t want to get tangled up in their judgment of him and what he’s doing. He’s had some brief encounters with them over the past three years, and those encounters haven’t gone well. He is viewed askance, with a tut-tutting kind of moralizing that he finds obnoxious.

Is he a bad influence? They infer that he is. He has to keep reminding himself that anything he might say in return, or rather yell, will be jotted down in some notebook or other and used against him if these professionals are called upon to, as they say, evaluate his therapeutic and/or pedagogical efficacy. So he keeps his mouth shut while being bombarded with sanctimonious twaddle.

Is it really that helpful, Mr. Duke, to expose these damaged men — and let us tell you how very damaged they are, one way or another, many of them in childhood through abuse and neglect, and some of them would be better off in a mental institution or an asylum for recovering drug addicts, much more suitable for them than teaching them four-hundred-year-old words — is it helpful to expose these vulnerable men to traumatic situations that can trigger anxiety and panic and flashbacks, or, worse, dangerous aggressive behavior? Situations such as political assassinations, civil wars, witchcraft, severed heads, and little boys being smothered by their evil uncle in a dungeon? Much of this is far too close to the lives they have already been leading. Really, Mr. Duke, do you want to run those risks and take those responsibilities upon you?

It’s theatre, Felix protests now, in his head. The art of true illusions! Of course it deals in traumatic situations! It conjures up demons in order to exorcise them! Haven’t you read the Greeks? Does the word catharsis mean anything to you?

Mr. Duke, Mr. Duke. You are being far too abstract. These are real people. They are not ciphers in your aesthetic of drama, they are not your experimental mice, they are not your playthings. Have some respect.

I do have respect, Felix answers silently. I have respect for talent: the talent that would otherwise lie hidden, and that has the power to call forth light and being from darkness and chaos. For this talent I clear a time and a space; I allow it to have a local habitation and a name, ephemeral though these may be; but then, all theatre is ephemeral. That is the only kind of respect I recognize.

Brave sentiments, he tells himself. But high-falutin’, Mr. Duke, wouldn’t you say?

He pauses at a closed door blocking his way, waits until it slides open, walks through. It glides shut behind him. There’s a similar door at the other end of this segment of the building. Both of these doors are kept closed and locked while his classes are in session. Safer that way, Mr. Duke.

There’s no audio link with Security outside, there’s no video. He has insisted on that: actors should not be spied on while they are rehearsing, it’s too inhibiting. The pager on his belt should be enough, is his position, and so far he’s been vindicated. In three years, he’s never had an occasion to use it.

There’s a washroom in here, first door on the left. There are three smaller rooms that he can use as rehearsal space or dressing rooms or green rooms, according to need. There are two demonstration cells, a replica of a cell from the fifties and another one from the nineties, once used in conjunction with a Justice Administration course taught at the University of Western Ontario but uninhabited since. Each has four bunks, two upper, two lower, and an observation window in the door.

The Fletcher Correctional Players utilize them for sets during their video filmings. They’ve been army tents, for Brutus and Richard and their nightmares. With the aid of red blankets and paper banners, they’ve been throne rooms. They’ve been the Scottish witches’ cave, they’ve been the Roman Senate, they’ve been a dungeon in the Tower, where First and Second Murderer have skulked, preparing to drown Clarence in booze. Lady Macduff and her children have been slaughtered in them. That was almost too traumatic: some of the actors had had flashbacks to their nightmare childhoods. Violent brutes, threats, bruises, screams, knives.

Felix peers through the windows of these cells on his way past. All is dingy within, although tidy, the bunks neatly made up with gray blankets. Who’d ever suspect the sorcery, the ceremony, the mayhem that has taken place in there? And what will happen in them next?

Finally there’s the largest classroom, the one Felix uses for the more expositional segments of his course, prior to rehearsals. It has twenty desks; it has a whiteboard; it also, thanks to Estelle, has a computer — unconnected to the outside Internet, so no porn-site surfing is possible; it is to be used for theatre work only. Most importantly, the room has a large flatscreen. It’s on this screen that the actors are able to watch the results of their endeavors.

This room has two doors, one at the front and one at the back. It has no windows. It smells faintly of salt, and of unwashed feet.

This is the extent of it, Felix muses. My island domain. My place of exile. My penance.

My theatre.

The same day.

Felix stands beside the whiteboard at the front of the large main room, facing this year’s class. Although he’s read the signup list and sent out the course packages — the playbook, the notes — he never knows ahead of time who will actually show up. There are always some dropouts, and thus some replacements from the waiting list. To his credit there’s always a waiting list. There can be absences for other reasons too. Transfers to other facilities, early paroles, injuries requiring infirmary time.