An Actor’s Bits of Business

By Gary Oberbillig

The first year Molly and I were married we lived in an apartment house in Pocatello with Fang, our traumatized Siamese cat, and a boisterous assortment of friends who all had come up together from Boise Junior College, as it was then called, to attend Idaho State University.

Just down the hall from us were Sam and Dixie Lang and our actor friend, Earl Boen, with his mom. Earl and I had been in the same theater arts class in Boise. His talent was obvious even then and he was our star. I usually was relegated to constructing the sets, because I was better at building things than at acting.

Once, though, I was in a local Boise TV production, called Riders to the Sea. Written by famed Irish playwright John Millington Synge, it was about the Aran Islands in Galway Bay.  I had the role of Bartley, who is lured to his drowning by fairy horses and gets carried back to land, dripping, on a hatch cover.

I’d borrowed my stepdad’s heavy leather boots to help make my costume authentic and I guess it worked, going by one viewer’s comment that the clodhoppers were the most expressive part of my performance.

Earl’s mom was an interesting lady.  A single parent, she’d doubtless had to scrimp to send Earl to college. She had a curious jewelry business in a corner of Boise’s Greyhound bus station. With great skill and needle-nosed pliers, she would bend thin gold wire in the shape of your girlfriend’s name.