Oh, stories. I was in a summer stock production of "Taming of the Shrew" playing Petruchio, and as usually happens in these things, the Kate and the Petruchio either fall in love or hate each other. In this case, before the end, we hated each other. There are two big fight scenes in the play -- the first meeting, and the starvation scene. They are two acts apart. The second performance night, the first scene got way out of hand, and turned into a physical brawl. The audience had no idea. The Kate hissed to me at the end of it: I am going to kill you in the dinner scene. Since she got to throw dishes around, this was no idle threat. I went off stage and spoke to the stage manager, who was an old hand, and had actually choreographed our stage fights. In the interval, he went home, and brought me back something. The play continued. We are in Renaissance garb, and the dinner scene begins -- it was a bit raucous, and then what happens is that food is brought in, but she is not allowed to eat any of it, which is when things get rough. She reached out to pick up various utensils and dishes to fling at me, and out from under my cloak I pulled a handgun and fired a shot in the air (it was a blank). The audience loved it, and the rest of the scene went really quietly. She sort of threw things in my direction and shrieked a bit, but she had become a bit wary. At the end of the play she stomped on my toe in the banqueting scene, but we sort of calmed down after that. The rest of the run went smoothly. We parted wary colleagues. The cast did give her a holster as a joke gift at the cast party, which she took in good part. Ah youth!

yours, Peter T.