I was quite honored to be asked to be the keynote speaker at the Annual Episcopal Actors Guild Memorial Service on Sunday – even after I was told that Boyd Gaines was their first choice and couldn’t make it.

The Guild, which operates out of “The Little Church around the Corner” at 1 East 29th Street, has an annual ceremony where it remembers the artists who worked in and around theater but died in the last 12 months. My speech would precede the naming of the names.

Said Father John R. Sheehan, SJ, who recruited me, “The objective is to celebrate the theater. It should be a joyous occasion. It is not intended as a eulogy but more a tribute to this wonderful profession."

It IS a wonderful profession, and I told of some of the plays, performers, and experiences that changed my life. Some were as significant as A Raisin in the Sun, sure, but even lesser works such as Flower Drum Song and an obscure French play, Days in the Trees – which I saw simply because it was the only left at the TKTS booth – turned out to be profound influences.

Actually, it was the movie of Flower Drum Song that taught me an important lesson when I was 15. Soon after the picture began, I felt the presence of two men coming in and sitting in the row behind me. A bit later I noticed that we seemed to share the exact same sense of humor: Any joke that made me laugh made them laugh, too, yes, but it was more than that: The second I started laughing at a joke – and the second I stopped – were the exact same seconds that they started and stopped laughing, too.

At the end of the picture, I couldn’t wait to turn around and say, “Wasn’t that great?!?!” And that’s when I saw that they were black.

That they were would have never occurred me. Because I lived in a lily-white suburb and went to a Catholic school where there were no blacks, I was used to everyone around me being white. Oh, the nuns had said to us, “Everybody’s the same,” and we parroted back, “Everybody’s the same” – but I doubt that we really believed it. That day, though, I learned that we all really are the same. And isn’t it interesting that black and white people were relating to a story about Asians?

Flower Drum Song was co-written by Oscar Hammerstein, who did the lyrics for “Carefully Taught.” I think he would have liked that story.

Days in the Trees told of a miserly woman – the type who, as Oscar Wilde said, “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Time after time, you’d see her go into a restaurant with her grown son, open the menu, and start complaining about the prices. When the bill arrived, there was more carping and insisting that the waitress had added incorrectly.

Finally, the grown son could take it no more, but stood and said, “Mother, it’s so simple. Here’s what you do: You look at the bill, you see how much it is, you put the money on the table, you leave, and you forget about it. That’s it! You forget about it!”

And since that matinee, that’s exactly what I’ve done. And it’s spread to the rest of my life, too. I’ve become much more generous in many more situations simply because I saw Days in the Trees.

“By being in the same room with live people,” I told the crowd, “I feel much more a part of the action and more emotionally involved than I do when I’m at the movies or at home in front of a TV set. Over the years, I’ve come to care about people more from feeling their pain on stage. I once even came to care for a creature.”

Some of the crowd looked confused for a long moment, and then assumed that I must have meant a dog such as Sandy in Annie. No.

I told about the time one of my former students asked me to come see her in a Moliere play in a black box. Of course I said yes, even though I know that seeing amateurs do Moliere can be painful.

I arrived at the theater – a room, really, with folding chairs of all shapes and sizes. Eleven other people were in the room, all scattered about.

So the stage manager came out before the show and said, “Listen, because we don’t have much of a house tonight, how about everyone coming down and sitting in the front row?” And that’s what we did in the dozen seats right next to the playing area. (I can’t say “stage” because there was none.)

The play started, and it wasn’t a terrible production, but it wasn’t a particularly good one, either. All of us were half-watching it, when suddenly something caught our eye. Zooming out of the stage left wing was an enormous water bug, easily going as fast as the turtle in the Bye Bye Birdie movie after Albert gives it his Speed-Up compound.

But suddenly the water bug stopped in its tracks – aware that it had just come in in the middle of something. I – and everyone else in the first row – was looking intently at it. We could almost feel its thought processes:

Wait a minute. I come through here all the time, and there’s never anything going on here. Who are these monsters clomping around? Hmmm, I think I’m in real trouble. I could really get squished in a situation like this.

Should I go back? No, I can’t see what’s behind me, so I might be walking into something even more dangerous. I’d better go forward where I can see where I’m going. But I’d better be careful, too.

I was so impressed with the bug, for it shrewdly waited until the actors moved upstage to play a scene, and then forged forward. Once they returned, it stood still. Eventually, it made it a full halfway across the stage.

But then, all too suddenly, an actor moved backwards and came within less than an inch of stepping on the bug. Immediately all 12 of us screamed and moaned, for we had come to care about this creature, the hardest working bug in show business. We couldn’t bear to see it killed now, not after we’d seen it work so diligently in hopes of getting to its destination.

The actors froze a bit when they heard our noises, unaware of why we’d reacted the way we had, but they were busy acting and looking at each other’s faces, and just plowed on.

So did the bug. It continued to guess correctly on when to move a step or two, or sprint a lot, and when to play possum and hope for the best. Finally, after about 10 minutes of this cat-and-mouse game (to mix a metaphor), the bug made it to the other side of the stage, and zoomed off into the stage right wing.

And the 12 of us all burst into applause, confusing the actors even more. But, come on, it was the best damn performance we’d ever seen from a bug.

Now of course, had this same bug come into one of our apartments, it would have been “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” or we would have stomped down on the floor with an intensity that would have made a Flamenco dancer seem like a gentle ballerina. But seeing the bug on stage and empathizing with the long journey it had made despite impossible odds made us care deeply about him.

You don’t get that at your Quad or on your Quasar.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com

Had a decent time at The Understudy. Teresa Rebeck’s play parallels being an understudy and feeling as if you’re in a Kafka play (which this understudy actually is). But she characterizes Harry (Justin Kirk) as someone who walked away from his fiancée Roxanne (Julie White) two weeks before the wedding with little explanation. Then he puts down the star status that Jake (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) has in action movies to make himself feel good (when we all know Harry would d take the money) So I didn’t much care for the guy. Understudies deserve a better poster-boy.

For this is one tough job. Gareth Saxe, who recently played Hamlet in New Jersey, said, “It wasn’t as hard to what I did in The Winter’s Tale in Central Park in 2000. I only had a small role, but I had to understudy Leontes and Polixenes, too. Learning both those roles and all those lines was a bigger challenge than Hamlet.”

Kurt Rhoads understands. Last year, The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC was doing Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar in rep. Andrew Long, who portrayed Antony in each play, injured his Achilles tendon during the first scene of Caesar. After a short delay, Rhoads -- who played Ventidius (whoever he is) in A&C and Cinna the Conspirator in JC -- would now have to play Antony. And he hadn’t had a genuine understudy rehearsal since May.

Rhoads went out and did each play twice in the next three days, and both plays on Saturday – when I saw him. He was flawless, and even eclipsed the previous greatest achievement I ever saw an understudy give: Richard Howard took over the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival after Marco Barricelli had a family emergency and had to leave. Sure, Howard had to cry out “Line!” about a half-dozen times - but who could find fault with such a role as Cyrano?

But you know who currently might have an even more difficult job than Saxe or Rhoads did? Mark Alhadeff in Love Chiild. The play is a frenetic look at a Brooklyn production of a Greek play – but Daniel Jenkins and Robert Stanton play all the actors and everyone else who comes backstage. Each actor must play more than a dozen roles, but this means that Aldaheff must learn two dozen, for he understudies both guys. Now that is trial by fire.

If he ever goes on, I hope he’s treated better than Olympia Dukakis was went she went on for Wendy Hiller in The Aspern Papers during the show’s Philadelphia tryout in 1962. Dame Wendy had an ear infection, so Dukakis went on – but while she was doing the first scene, she felt someone pushing her -- Dame Wendy in fact, who actually finished the line she’d had started. Says Dukakis, “I think that if she’d had her leg shot off, she would have played the part and dragged a bloody stump around the stage.”

Joy Franz was Phylicia Rashad’s understudy as the Witch in Into the Woods. “I got home from vacation, and went home just to drop off my luggage before I went to the theater,” she said. “But when I got home, the phone was ringing. ‘Get down here. You’re on tonight.’ I said, ‘But I haven’t even washed my hair!’ only to hear ‘Never mind - get in a cab and get here.’ I was terrified, but I got through the performance, though I was a little rusty from being away from the show. I should have gone over the show even during my vacation. It was my job to be prepared just-in-case.” (Look at that! Franz saved the day, and STILL felt guilty.)

Joan Copeland stood by for Vivien Leigh in Tovarich. “I didn’t have to go on for many months, and had many understudy rehearsals,” she says. “Stanley Lebowsky, the conductor, used to accompany me on the piano, transposing on sight to the keys in which I was comfortable. Then the night came that I was to go on, and Stan popped his head in my dressing room to say that because the orchestrations weren’t in my keys, he was going to have the orchestra cut out during my songs. Well, I thought, that that would sound terrible -- to have a large orchestra playing for everyone else, and suddenly just a piano for the main character.” So trouper Copeland just went out and sang out of her comfort range.

Like Kirk in Rebeck’s play, understudies bear the brunt of feeling inferior. You're not the low man on the totem pole; you're not even ON the totem pole. Carolee Carmello, who was understudying in City of Angels, said she didn’t dare presume to speak to the show’s star Gregg Edelman. Not until she was on the same playing field with him -- when they each had a lead in Arthur at the Goodspeed Opera House five years later -- did she dare start talking to him. It led to their marrying.

How much is an understudy appreciated when he steps in? Arnold Wesker saw that during the tryout of his play The Merchant, after Zero Mostel died and understudy Joseph Leon took over, “The death of a star invites a breakdown of courtesies. With a star in your play, you are regarded with greater respect.” What a slap in the face to Leon!

It’s such a tough job that Judy Kaye says she turned down Hal Prince’s invitation to be Madeline Kahn’s understudy in On the Twentieth Century no fewer than three times. Good thing she accepted on the fourth request; when Kahn left the show, Kaye’s career was jump-started.

That’s what all understudies must hope for – all those 42nd Street-like stories. When Fiorello! was casting, Tom Bosley’s agent got him an audition to understudy the title role. But Bosley got the actual role, a Tony, and a career.

Brad Oscar is prominently featured in the new Forbidden Broadway: Behind the Mylar Curtain book – but would he have been had he not taken that understudy job as the Nazi in The Producers? It led to his assuming not only that role, but also Max. He’s proof that anything is possible.

But anything-is-possible works in the other direction, too. Marilyn Cooper had the lead in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, and seventeen years later was merely understudying in Ballroom. But just as ballplayers can go down to the minor leagues and work their way back to the majors, Cooper, two and half years later, was in Woman of the Year and won a Tony. How I loved her acceptance speech: “I guess if you sit at the poker table long enough, you eventually come up with a winning hand.”

So some understudies can go on to their own successes, as two of Ethel Merman’s did: Vivian Vance in Anything Goes and Elaine Stritch in Call Me Madam. Sometimes the understudies eclipse in fame and awards the person for whom they’re standing by: Estelle Parsons in Whoop-Up.

Luckily, many theatrical aficionados appreciate understudies. Seth Christenfeld says one of his favorite things is “Going to a show specifically to see an understudy or replacement, in hopes of seeing a different take on a role.” Theatrical superlawyer Mark Sendroff says that when he was growing up in Nassau County, “If I heard that an understudy would be on for Alexis Smith in Follies, I’d take the Long Island Railroad right into town.” So they’re not among the audience members who groan when the announcement is made that the star can’t appear.

Christenfeld and Sendroff know that an understudy can go on in front of an indifferent-to-hostile crowd and completely win over the audience. That he will probably get a standing ovation as he takes his curtain call (in, deservedly, the precise same spot the star does). Best of all, they’ve heard the crowd going out and insisting that the star couldn’t have possibly been any better.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com