The Play[tex]'s the thing

It's not a conversation a mother expects to have with her 17-year-old son.

"Have you got your Gatorade?"

"Yep."

"Did you remember to pack your good shoes to go with your Confederate uniform?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Don't forget to take the bra."

Yes. That's what I wrote. I sent my son off to another week in Bell Buckle, getting ready for opening weekend of the Tennessee Shakespeare Festival, loaded down with sports drinks, costume supplements and at least one item of ladies' lingerie.

Could a mother be more proud?

Actually, I am. Ben, along with the other apprentices and interns at the festival, will be wandering through the crowd before the main play begins, performing little sketches based on Commedia dell'Arte -- the Italian forerunner of "Whose Line is it Anyway?" The improvisational comedy style uses basic characters such as Arlecchino, or the Harlequin, a clown; Il Capitano, the blustering military man with more swagger than courage; and Columbina, a female counterpart to Harlequin, a mischievous female who often gets the ball rolling. Pierrot, Scaramouche, Pantalone and even "Punch" of Punch and Judy fame owe their origins to Commedia dell'Arte.

One of the characters is La Signora, a wife and mistress who is bold, brash, loud, calculating -- and usually played by a man. So naturally, they gave the part to my 6-foot-6, skinny as a rail, long-haired son with the baritone voice, and they named him (her? it?) Ima Normous.

It is comedy, after all.

The commedia sketches, like the plays the Shakespeare Festival is producing this summer, have been somewhat altered to better fit the rural, rolling hills of Middle Tennessee. Instead of Pantalone and Pierrot, for instance, in their strictly regimented costumes, the characters in this version bear more of a resemblance to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Or, in Ben's case, Sadie Hawkins from the old Li'l Abner comic strip.

Some famous actor -- no one can agree which one -- supposedly said on his death bed, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."

I like to think it was Richard Burbage who said it, because he would know -- the comedy he was doing was Shakespeare's, when Shakespeare was still around to tell him how to do it better.

Ben has discovered this summer that acting is easy -- but putting on a play is hard. He has had to actually expend physical labor, doing more than pushing "Enter" on the computer keyboard or mowing the front lawn. (Our back lawn is about to be declared a wildlife sanctuary because pheasant, deer and the occasional giraffe have been able to hide in the dense grass.)

He has hauled lumber, gotten splinters, cut out gels for the lights, hammered, painted, and sweated.

He's also learned some important life lessons.

* If you work in the hot, hot sun without breakfast, and you have zero percent body fat and even less common sense, yes, you can pass out.

* If you're going to have hair longer and prettier than most of the girls', you're going to have to let them play with it. (This didn't seem too much of a hardship on him, though. What 17-year-old straight guy wouldn't want a pretty 18-year-old girl running her fingers through his hair?)

* Never draw to an inside straight. (Thanks to the guys in the dorm for introducing my son to poker. Now I can recoup his lawn mowing money back with a little Texas Hold'em.)

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" opens Thursday, but we'll be going Friday night. It's the only time my oldest son, Scott, and his girlfriend could make it and we want to go together to see Ben's first venture onto a professional stage. I can already hear it now, after we see him do his Commedia dell'Bellbuckle in drag, before donning his Confederate ghost costume for the main event.

"That's my boy!" My husband, also an amateur actor, will say.

"Yes," I will sniff sentimentally, "But it's my bra."