Bryn Mawr College - Bryn Mawr Yearbook (Bryn Mawr, PA)

Page 17 text:

in folk-dancing wishing to learn Peascod or Pork and Beans or whatever its impossible name may be. For the rest, rehearsals wen- conducted in the Pern Easi music room under the head of chance meetings. There was, to I sure, a fifty cents ' fine if one chanced noi to meet, and Valeska Wurlitzer fought, hied and died trying to teach wildly galloping choruses to one-two-three-kick along the- practice room corridor, than which ;i more inconvenient spot is noi to l e found. I here comes, at last, the great night. I he previous evening, after extracting sophomores from behind banners, from down ropes, and from out radiators, we have ;i dress rehearsal so unspeakable as to promise a successful show. Betty ' s scenery is charming bul has refused to staj up, no one knows her cue, half the costurres have been in quarantine and the other half asphyxiating their wearers by infirmary fumes. Now comes the moment itself. There are rumors that ' 21 is desperate; others, thai they have guessed the animal; others, that they are waiting till the eleventh hour to effect a dastardly coup. I go into the small room of the gym and start savagely applying make-up to a row of faces — make-up that remains in pink blotches and blue lines for days. What a joy it is to give certain anti- powder-and-pink-underwear enthusiasts an especially lurid countenance! After the operation, they blink at their apparition in the one small mirror and wonder if it ' s wicked to admit they look well. Someone rushes in, all eyes, and gasps, Barbara Murless is barricaded in her room by ' 21! There is a pitched battle going on in Pern East. Someone else hurries up the steps, dashes against the door, which, in her excitement, she forgets to open, and falls into all the make-up. It is Margie. She is in evening dress and triumphantly indicates the jacket of Mur- less ' costume which she thinks she has hidden by wearing the sleeves as trousers. The battle is at its height. Word is issued to rescue the besieged. Most of ' 22 as well as all of ' 21 think she is the animal. A detachment whose faces already blaze with war-paint and whose costumes can bear hard use, march to the rescue. The battle ceases. The audience trails in. Some of us peek through the curtain and squeal with joy at sight of faculty in mandarin coats, ' 21 in evening array and juniors ' and seniors ' legs dangling expectantly from the race-track. Cecil, who has been under the delusion that we ' re of such Irish tendencies as to keep our animal in our parlors, and has spent the past four weeks walking into freshmen ' s rooms, is there, all teeth. The audience grows impatient and we gather to sing the curtain song. It is a great hit, for most of us keep on the key and the persistent mutes have carefully been sent on distant errands. The lights go out and the show begins. For the rest, I remember a multitude of things too jumbled to relate. Peggy Kennard as the museum custodian has some slight difficulty with the nether part of her costume; Em is knocked down by the first specimen, a Bryn Mawr Char- lotte on roller skates; Prue tries to restrain a wildly uncontrolled orchestra: and Conti plays the part of a Christian ass (this last is considered rather shocking, and, perhaps as a judgment on our sinful levity, the donkey head falls ofF during the first act); ' 21 confidently sings to a blue devil, which is quite as it should be. and looks very proud when Murless swaggers out in the blue devil uniform. Cecil

Page 16 text:

Jfregfjman H tjoto FRESHMAN SHOW! What a night of nights! How we stay awake and cut and flunk over it! How we thrill and emote during the performance of it! How, the following days, we wear our corsages until they look like herbs and simples! How, all year, when called upon to sing, we wail out the curtain song in close — nay, compact, harmony; the vaguely indefinite curtain song, having nothing to do with the show — but with references to the sea and the lea, or distant shore, true evermore or even night and delight, sure to make it a success and to cause departing seniors singing it three years later to expire with grief. Our Freshman Show was glorious. As far as details go, I remember it in the vaguest fashion; but I ' m sure it was glorious. Preparations, unofficial, began after Christmas vacation, when everyone who had seen a musical show brought back ideas, some of which were good and some of which, along with their promoters, had to be handled as carefully as infernal machines. There were intense meetings of the committee, accomplishing nothing; and there was a politely uncomfortable meeting of the same committee with P. T., wherein that lady set forth the rules of Freshman Show (with all of which we were perfectly acquainted) and wherein the committee, each waiting for the other to speak, looked agonizingly pleasant, and wondered when it should try to go. We were to have no conversation in our show — absolutely no conversation. (It is clear P. T. never wrote a Freshman Show.) She had some balmy notion that a performance is simpler to put on if it is all danced and sung. (It is still clearer that P. T. never heard us dance nor watched us sing.) So we wrote a scene in rhythm — a chef d ' eeuvre — and thought ourselves deliciously sinful. Rehearsals were pandemoniac gatherings in the gym. I believe we were allowed four official rehearsals for the production. These gatherings were composed chiefly of absences. Such as came, sat on the floor talking violently. There were continual misunderstandings as to hours and we learned to smile in the face of such interruptions as the model school bounding in to do model gym, or an obscure class 12

Page 18 text:

is more teeth than ever. But Vinton, hiding her time in the hall with a large knitting bag, quietly dons the contents thereof and crawls onto the stage as the blue tiger. Oh, triumph! Yes, gentle reader, there are blue tigers. Someone on the animal committee knew someone who had seen an article in some magazine in some dentist ' s office about a blue tiger of India or Thibet. After the animal episode there comes the grand finale in the form of the League of Nations, in which Lib is especially noticeable as Britannia ruling the waves (of the sea, not of her own three hairs). We sing Thou Gracious Inspiration, our friends tell us how great we are, and we return happily tired to bed on good terms with the world. Cornelia Otis Skinner. 3Tf)e ££ uppre£teeb ©ebutante Synopsis: Twenty-four hours before her debut war was declared. The next morning she began to brush up matriculation Latin and a few other articles in her mental wardrobe. AS she sat in the lib she tried to shut her past from memory. Her eyes were on her book but her mind wandered disconsolately over the ceiling, twined about the chandelier, and hopped nimbly over the golden globes. Suddenly the tragedy of her past threatened to overwhelm her. With a tremendous effort she thrust it into her subconscious, where it lay seething and bubbling while she soothed her outer consciousness. That evening the tympanic melodies floating into her room from the Victrola stirred within her a deep and disagreeable memory. Thanks to the faithful censor, she knew nothing of it. She merely said, I hate Victrolas; I hate anything made of wood, and began to shout the multiplication table. That same evening she gave her evening dresses to junk and hurled her cigarette case down the register. Her outer consciousness was all serene. After writing a letter in Greek to her family and composing a few sonnets, she went to bed refreshed and exalted. She had cast memories from her and delved deeply into wisdom. But shades of Freud! — no sooner had her eyelids closed than the seething cauldron of her subconscious bubbled over. The debutante, no longer suppressed, took possession of her. Rising hastily, she seized a bit of tulle and some earrings and pinned an ivy plant jauntily over one shoulder, and fled into the hall. Her friends found her jazzing madly — a wraith-like figure in the moonlight. Spellbound they watched her — all save one, who hastened to summon a psychoanalyst. A few moments of whispered consulta- tion sufficed to give him the details of the case. There is a gap between the personalities of the suppressed debutante and the student, he said simply. Only one cure will be effective — she must Bridge the gap. And he handed her a pack of cards. Anne Gabel. 14