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aktas we needed.  How many men, that is, I added, as he began counting on his
fingers.  The women are a different problem.
He stopped counting and stared at me as if I were wearing owl feathers. Then
he told me something so shocking you will hardly believe it. In his country,
the women in a plei are actually men wearing women s clothes!
I told him quick enough that the People don t go in for that sort of
thing whatever they may get up to in certain other tribes and he d better not
even talk about it around here. Do you know, he got so upset that it took me
the rest of the day to talk him out of calling the whole thing off. . . .
Women! Mercifull Jesu! Women, on a Stage, acting in a Play! I shall feele like
an Whore-Master!
Men or women, it was hard to know which people to choose. None of them had
ever done anything like this before, so there was no way to know whether they
would be any good or not. Spearshaker asked me questions about each person, in
white language so no one would be offended: Is he quick to learn? Does he
dance or sing well? Can he work with other people, and do as he is told? And
he had them stand on one side of the stickball field, while he stood on the
other, and made them speak their names and clans, to learn how well their
voices carried.
I had thought age would come into it, since the plei included both older and
younger people. But it turned out that Spearshaker knew an art of painting a
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man s face, and putting white in his hair, till he might be mistaken for his
own grandfather.
No doubt he could have done the same with women, but that wasn t necessary.
There were only two women s parts in this story, and we gave the younger
woman s part to Ninekiller s daughter
Cricket who would have hung upside-down in a tree like a possum if it would
please
Spearshaker and the older to a cousin of mine, about my age, who had lost her
husband to the
Shawanos and wanted something to do.
For those who could not be aktas
, there was plenty of other work. A big platform had to be built, with space
cleared around it, and log benches for the people who would watch. There were
torches to be prepared, since we would be doing it at night, and special
clothes to be made, as well as things like fake spears so no one would get
hurt.
Locust and Blackfox were particularly good workers; Spearshaker said it was as
if they had been born for this. They even told him that if he still wanted to
follow the custom of his own tribe, with men dressed as women, they would be
willing to take those parts. Well, I always had wondered about those two.
But Spearshaker was working harder than anyone else. Besides being in charge
of all the other preparations, he had to remake his whole plei to suit our
needs. No doubt he had made a fine plei for white men, but for us, as it was,
it would never do.
Many a Play haue I reuis d and amended: cut short or long at the Company s
desyre, or alter d this or that Speeche to please a Player: e en carued the
very Guttes out of a scene on command of the
Office of the Reuels, for some imagin d Sedition or vnseemely Speeche. But now
must I out-do all I
euer did before, in the making of my
Hamlet into a thing comprehensible to the
Anni-yawia
. Scarce is there a line which doth not haue to be rewrit: yea, and much ta en
out intire: as, the Play within the Play, which Mouse saith, that none here
will vnderstande. And the Scene must be mov d from
Denmark to
Virginnia
, and
Elsinore Castle transformed into an
Indian towne. For marry, it were
Alchemy enow that I should transmute vnletter d Sauages into tragick Actors:
but to make royal
Danskers of swart-fac d
Indians were beyond all Reason. (Speak st thou now of Reason, Will
Shakespere? Is t not ouer-late for that?)
You should have seen us teaching the aktas their parts. First Spearshaker
would look at the marks and say the words in his language. Then he would
explain to me any parts I hadn t understood
which was most of it, usually and then I would translate the whole thing for
the akta in our language. Or as close as I could get; there are some things
you cannot really interpret. By now
Spearshaker was fluent enough to help me.
Then the akta would try to say the words back to us, almost always getting it
all wrong and having to start again. And later on all the people in the plei
had to get together and speak their parts in order, and do all the things they
would do in the plei
, and that was like a bad dream. Not only did they forget their words; they
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