My beautiful wife Catherine got a call from her good friend Jeanie, asking her if she would help out with a play they were putting on. All the main parts of the play were filled and the practices were going great, but they needed thirty extras for one main crowd scene.
This play was very serious and quite sad too. It was about the Holocaust and what it was like for the Jews who were in the prison camps. They needed extras for when the people were brought in by box car loads and processed into the camp. All the other scenes after that were primarily between the main characters. It focused on the strengths of women in crisis.
Catherine had two good girl friends in the play and we knew the director and four of her friend's husbands were cast as Nazi guards. She asked me if I thought she should do it.
"Honey, I will be helping them out on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They are short of people on those days and I won't have to go to a lot of long play practices. There is just one dress rehearsal tomorrow that she would like me to be in. Does that sound okay with you?"
"Well I do believe it is an important message to get out. We never want the world to forget the horrors of the Nazi's. And I guess if you will just be an extra with no lines to learn and you will only need to be there tomorrow and the other three nights the play is on, I think it would be a good thing to do."
"O.K., I'll tell Jeanie I will do it."
That next night Catherine went to the rehearsal, but Catherine came home from the dress rehearsal with quite a story to tell. She came in the door and I asked her how it went.
She said, "You'd better sit down. It was way more real than I expected and not exactly what I thought it would be."
We grabbed a couple of cold drinks and sat on the couch. I started by asking her a question.
"What do mean it wasn't exactly what you expected?"
"Well once we got there the director, you know him, Glenn from the school, told us we were going to go right to the part where the extras were needed so we could see what our parts were going to be and run through them once and then we could leave."
"There were about 60 people at the theater and thirty of us were extras. There were also about five stage hands. They were all young guys who work at the theater regularly. The other twenty-five were the cast of the play."
"This play is about the women's camp and so all the extras were women. I knew a couple of the other gals too."
"Glenn, the director, says, "Okay ladies, we really appreciate your helping us out. I promised to get you out of here as soon as I can and that is why we are doing this part first."
"This part of the play brings a lot of emotion to the stage and really sets the audience up for the rest that follows it. It is very important that it is real and conveys the horror of the situation. I want to warn you, when you step out of that box car, the way the sound and lights and stage is set up; you will feel like you are there in a prison camp. It will seem very real so please try to get into the moment and just go ahead and react as you would if this were really happening to you."
"You will be stepping off this box car that is on the set. The guards will be yelling at you and they will be pretty gruff and will even be doing some pushing and there will be some physical contact. Please try to roll with it as it is necessary that this comes across as very real."
"On the nights of the play, you will be given clothes that look like the 1940's, but for tonight, we will just practice this dressed as you are."
"This scene takes about twenty minutes. The guards will be lining you up and processing you. None of you have lines and you direction is simple; just do as you are told by the guards."
"You will eventually go through that door on the end of the stage that represents the rest of the prison and that is it. You will be done. Is everyone ready?"
"We were very nervous, but all of us gals said yes. There were about seven men dressed as guards, with uniforms, helmets, rifles and all, who took their places and we walked into the back of a mocked-up box car. The director says, "O.K., action!"
"There were very loud sounds of a train coming to a stop and the boxcar is rocked a bit and then the guards open the door and pointed their rifles at us and start yelling and screaming for us to get out and get in a line."
"I could not even believe how real this all seemed Michael! We were all so jammed together that it was claustrophobic and scary. All of the women began to scream and some to cry and it began to feel even more real."
"The rest of the cast were all watching from the chairs in the front row by the stage. There were about five more men and the rest women. We could not really see them though, because we had tons of bright lights pointed on us and we all lined up as we were told. The men kept pushing us and prodding us with their rifles yelling at us to line up. There was loud recording playing of huge noises and mean dogs barking and men yelling and some people screaming in the distance. It was horrible."
"Wow, Catherine, that sounds like quite an awful experience."
"Oh it was and it was about to get even more awful and more real."
"The guards started yelling for us to strip off our clothes. I couldn't believe it and I was going to leave, but everyone else began to undress and I guess I just got caught up in it and I did too."
"What? You began to undress on the stage in front of everyone?"
"Yes Honey and I can't believe it myself. It really did feel so real and there was so much noise with guards yelling and women crying and screaming and drama that I just did it. Before you know it we were tossing our clothes in a pile."
"Shirts, jeans, shoes, socks, and then as the guards kept poking at us, even our bras and panties all in a huge pile. Then we all stood in a line naked while they stared at us!"
"I can't believe it Catherine. And didn't you tell me you knew a couple of the men playing guards and the director too?"
"Yes, I recognized four of the men. You know them all too. Dan, Mike, Bill and Ken were all guards. And you know Glenn."
"Oh you have to be kidding! You mean they all saw you naked? Well go on. Maybe they didn't notice you in the crowd of thirty women."
"Oh, you'd better believe they did. The guards made us all line up and face the front with our hands at our sides while a commander or some Nazi SS officer or something slowly walked down the line and carefully inspected each one of us all under those bright lights. The guards followed him so they all saw us up close and I mean really saw us and I mean really up close! It was so terribly humiliating!"