No Longer Requiring My Services

Last fall I had a terrifying audition for a new musical.  It was only my fourth audition for a musical since I had gotten back into acting a few month prior.  But I knew the composer and from what I knew of the material, I felt I had a good chance.  I wasn't shaking uncontrollably like I used to at these God forsaken auditions.  I felt fairly in control.  I got lost in the middle of my song but the accompanist, bless his Sondheim-loving heart, got me back on track and I muddled through.  I did both scenes I had been given to prepare.  The director gave me a note and I did one of the scenes again.

I'm going to pause here to give what I realize now is a key piece of information.  The note I was given was this:  This is all new to her.  That's it.  "This is all new to her."  That's about as clear as saying, "She feels something."  It could have meant she was overwhelmed, happy, terrified, excited, leery, confused, determined. . .  I went with a combination of all of those things.  But in retrospect I realized he meant something totally different and specific.  Why he didn't just say, "She's really excited about this new discovery,"?  I didn't know at the time, but I do now!!

The composer then had me sing my song again, got on my case about smoking cigarettes and then had me do vocal exercises, all the while yelling at me to "hit the wall with the note!", "Straight tone to vibrato!", "Don't diminuendo!"  I was so flustered at that point that I just kept belting up the scale until I was literally squatting to get notes out.  When she told me I could use my mix voice, I had completely forgotten how to do that.  By the time I left the room, the other girls waiting to go in were ashen and freaked out.  I looked at them all and said, "That was the most terrifying experience I've ever had.  Have fun!"

I called my agent and told him to forget about the project, never speak of it again and move on.  He called me back that night with the offer.

The workshop was tough.  New material was being written daily.  My solo wasn't written until a couple days before the presentation.  The writers weren't quite sure what to do with my section of the story.  And our director kept giving direction that I was doing my best to decipher.  I realize now I should have just asked him flat out to be more clear, but I thought it would make me look stupid.  So, I kept my mouth shut and remained confused.  A few days before our presentation, while I was learning my new song he told me he "needed more access" to me.  I went home that night totally spent, frustrated and deflated.  I thought things had been going well.  I thought I had been giving them what they wanted and suddenly I felt like they were all unhappy with me.  The next day I asked the director what he meant by more access.  What he basically said was that he needed me to project.

This was when the light bulb went off and I realized it wasn't me.  He was actually giving vague, esoteric direction.  I don't know, maybe if I had gone to Yale or Julliard I would have known that "we need more access to you" meant "project".  As it was, he explained that I seemed to be holding the performance close to my chest, which is what I tend to do in early stages of rehearsals.  It's my way of figuring out what I'm doing.  Call it fear of failure.  I tend to not let go until I feel fairly confident in my performance as a whole.  At any rate, I released my performance and "projected" and the results seemed to please the powers that were.  At our final presentation the composer told my FATHER how much she loved me right in front of me.  It had been a foggy, obscure road, but I made it to the end with a product I thought I had been asked to produce and a seemingly pleased creative team.

Life moved forward with the possibility of a run this summer, but nothing concrete.

Suddenly a press release went out announcing that the show was going to a prestigious development program in July.  This set a few of us from the cast on edge.  Why had we not heard anything, yet?  What was going on?  We had right of first refusal which meant we had to move on with the project or be paid off.  But surely we were all moving on with the project.  I mean, why wouldn't we?  We had this one in the bag.  Right?

But still, no word.  Radio silence.  Emails were sent.  Agents were called.  Sweat was sweated.

I got a text from one of my castmates.  She wasn't moving on with the show.  Something about how the development program liked to use their own actors and double-cast when they could, but "we love you" and blah blah blah.  She took it like a champ while I had to put my head between my legs, feeling sure this was a bad sign.  Then again, my part was larger than hers.  I had been told I was the only one who auditioned who understood what the scene was about.  I HAD this. 

A week went by with still nothing.  Every time I got a new email I held my breath, both dreading and looking forward to what it might be.

And then the email came.  It was the composer.  I'd known her for years, so she had been charged with the task of letting me know they would be moving on without me.  They had decided after the workshop that they were going to be adding more "fast and furious" language for my character and they felt this was not a strong suit of mine.  The character, she said, was "spinning into butter."

It doesn't really matter how much you prepare yourself for this kind of thing.  It fucking hurts.  A lot.  Even though I had run through this exact scenario in my head 100 times, when I actually saw the words, I was blindsided.

That first day was the worst.  I only let myself cry for about 10 minutes.  I crawled back in bed but forced myself to get up and face the day.  I had a show that night and despite being on day 19 of a diet that forbids alcohol, I had a whiskey.  I went through all the stages of grief.  I was devastated.  I was furious.  I was embarrassed.  I desperately tried to think of a way to reverse their decision.  Maybe I could reason with them.  Maybe they would replace me and then realize they had made a horrible mistake.  I wouldn't mind.  Like a lover returning after an affair.  It's okay.  You love them and forgive them and are grateful they came to their senses and came back.

As I stood in the shower that night, scrubbing away the layers of fake tan I wear in my show, watching the makeup swirl down the drain between my feet, I repeated the composers words to myself, "spinning into butter."  Standing there, alone in the shower, I yelled, "Why didn't you fucking say that to begin with????"  The only clear direction I had been given through the entire process was in the email letting me know I was being replaced.

I feel cheated.  It's one thing to disagree with a director.  Plenty of times we are at odds with our directors and we fail to see eye to eye.  But to never have been given the chance to understand what the director was looking for in the first place and then to be told you aren't capable of doing it?  That sucks.

My father asked me if I was going to email the composer and tell her these things.  But it's not my place to do that.  She wasn't asking for feedback.  She was just letting me know they were moving on without me because I couldn't talk fast enough for their purposes.  And who knows, maybe that was just an excuse.  Maybe they really hated me.  Maybe they decided they wanted Celia Keenan Bolger and gave me a bunk excuse.  Joke's on them!  Celia's busy starring on Broadway. . .

All I can do now is trust that something better is out there.  And use my free time to create something better for myself.

Otherwise I'm just spinning into butter.

Notes from the Road V. 3

Day something with the Love, Loss and What I Wore tour.  All I know is we have 3 days left.  I started writing this entry back in Ft. Lauderdale, but halfway through I hit an errant key and the entry disappeared into the great black hole in cyber space.  Add this disaster to the fact that we had been playing for nearly a week to audiences whose age averaged 853 and who didn't seem to think the announcement to kindly turn their cell phones off, refrain from texting during the show and not record the show simply didn't apply to them.  For octogenarians, these folks sure knew their way around cell phone technology.  Utterly defeated and despondent, I gave up, weeping silently into my pillow, drinking turned wine straight from the bottle.  It was a dark time, folks.

In Ft. Lauderdale, I did have the immense pleasure of seeing my good buddies Eric Anderson and Liz Larson who were in town doing a new musical.  We shared a theater, but, while both casts were housed at Sheraton hotels, theirs was right on the beach while ours was more like Sheraton's younger, slower brother, Sherman.  This was the view from Liz's hotel room:

And this was their pool:

Note how it butts up right onto the beach.

I didn't bother taking pictures of my view or the pool at the Sherman hotel.  Instead, here's a picture I took of something on the lobby floor:

The only other notable thing that happened in Ft. Lauderdale is that I was contacted by the parents of the boy I "dated" at summer camp when I was 12.  They saw the show and took me out to dinner.  It was kind of awesome.

This is a sculpture outside the theater in Ft. Lauderdale:

No clue.

Thankfully we were given a one week respite from our transient, suitcase lifestyles and we all got to go home to our respective families, pets and/or personal assistants.   Please don't get me wrong, I have been very happy to be a part of this tour.  The ladies I'm working with are a hoot and it's been an experience I had been hoping to have for a while.  But, Florida was a challenge and I knew that I was facing 4 weeks in Detroit.  In February.  In Detroit.  February in Detroit.

I spent the bulk of my vacation week firmly planted on my couch, getting up only to pee or refill my wine glass.  My boyfriend had to be satisfied with my monosyllabic grunts for conversation as that was about all I could muster.  I did see some friends, ate good food and hosted a brunch on Super Bowl Sunday at Lola's where I made that bottomless mimosa my bitch.

Which brings us to Detroit.  In February.  When I first got to my room and saw this:

A gorgeous sunset overlooking some river and Canada.  Canada, which is, by the way, south of Detroit.  I was like, "Word".  I pictured myself rolling in late nights, with some dude (or lady) from the lobby bar on my arm.  You know, big pimpin' style.  But 5 minutes and about 500 elevator dings right outside my room later, I realized if I stayed in that room I would eventually manage to jump into that beautiful river.  So, I moved rooms.  So here's the view from the room I ended up in:

And here was the view most mornings:

Just in case you're unclear as to what that is, it's FOG.

Now, look, I'm not going to rag on Detroit.  I know people who live here.  I can't explain exactly WHY they would want to live here.  Nonetheless, they do.  But I will say this:  Detroit is the sweaty man taint of this country.  And that's all.  Except for this:  Detroit?  Really?  Seriously?  What the FUCK, man?  Jesus Christ.     This place looks exactly like every city in every post-apocalyptic movie.  In Charlotte, NC, they tore down everything.  EVERYTHING.  They apparently didn't give a good God damned about their history and tore down every building, in only SOME cases replacing them with a plaque explaining what had been there before it was torn down.  In Detroit, everything still stands.  EVERYTHING.  Building upon building that was abandoned God knows when.  Caved-in roofs, empty and falling apart.  For miles and miles there is nothing but economic depression and devastation.  Here's a picture of the Subway sandwich shop I visited here:

Yep, that's bullet proof glass.

MEANWHILE, the GOP is prancing around saying contraception and abortion shouldn't be legal.  Cities like Detroit and Flint exist IN THIS COUNTRY and Romney and Santorum are running around yanking their dicks about non-procreational sex.  I just don't fucking get it.  The CRAZIEST thing about this is that these dudes are pandering to an increasingly tiny portion of the population.  Ask a guy on the street in Detroit if he thinks contraception should be made illegal and he'll say, "Look around, motherfucker!"  As will just about everyone except the members of the West Baptist Church.

But I digress.  Here is what Sally basically thinks of Detroit:

She's like, "Seriously?"  Thank the baby Jesus I brought her with me.  She is just about the only thing that has kept me sane.

One last thought:  Is it just me or is everything on TV now shows about yokels with no teeth wrestling cockroaches, alligators and catfish?  

Notes from the road. Volume 2

Day 14 on the Love, Loss and What I Wore tour.  I can't tell you much about Tampa as I am not really a "sight-seer" (for more on this, please see earlier post entitled "Note from the Road").  All I've seen of Tampa is the hotel, the theater, the laundromat, the Dali museum, and the rather depressing stretch of road in between.  I can tell you that there is plethora of tiny penis cars, mostly Corvettes and Porches. And the local movie theater in the mall across the way has a decent selection of movies none of which start any later than 8pm, which is find rather perplexing and a little troubling.  That being said, we seem to be in a very corporate part of town, our hotel is jam packed with blue shirts, so, I suppose by 9pm everyone is hammered, celebrating the awesome Power Point presentation they gave on revenue increases and synergy, or whatever, and they're back in their rooms plowing some stranger they'll never see again.  I have spent the last week holding my breath every time I walk through the lobby for fear that I might run into my ex-husband who is one of those blue shirt wearing business guys who travels for "business" all the time.  I have not run into him.  This is a good thing.  Here is the view from my hotel window:

Notice how you can see clearly into the windows across the way.  They can see clearly into mine as well.  I checked this my first day here by going down into the atrium thing and looking up.  I was greeted by a man in a towel standing at his window.  I waved at him.  He waved back.  Awesome.  But it was this or a room on the second floor directly above the front entrance where heavy trance music is played 24/7.  I opted for the creepy, peeping tom room.

First morning here I went out on a timid exploratory mission and found this:

which just made me so happy.  I fucking LOVE Waffle House and am still not over the fact that they don't exist in L.A. or New York.  I went on in and ordered up some eggs, waffles and hash browns, smothered, covered and diced.  The service was snail-slow, my eggs were snotty and they didn't have real butter.  I might be a leftist liberal snob to think this, but shouldn't a place that serves waffles have real butter.  I can forgive the fake maple syrup since no one even knows what this is anymore.  But come one, no butter in the whole place?  Really?  Though from the look of the general clientele, they're probably not hurting for butter on a regular basis. . .  As I was paying my check I took note of a sign above the register which read, "Waffle House.  America's Number 1 Server of T-Bone Steak".  No joke.

Two of my cast mates went to the beach on Thursday, but as the trip involved leaving at 9am, taking some kind of ferry and the inevitable requirement of walking on the beach (required only by my fear of being discovered to be the lazy bum that I am), I bowed out of the entire ordeal.  I also had laundry to do, as Thursday morning I was down to just pajamas and slippers.  (The night before, in the elevator some guy asked me if I was headed to the gym.  I told him I was going to lobby bar.  He glanced at my threadbare, stained pajama shirt and said nothing else.)  I knew I would not be able to go on the field trip and get my laundry done while still sleeping till noon which seems to be the absolute earliest I am willing to get out of bed.  I am barely capable of doing anything but the show each day.  This might be excusable if I were in a slightly more physically demanding show.  As it is, I sit on a stool, talk and listen for less than 2 hours a night.  You'd think I was doing Nicholas Nickleby, the way I insist on reserving my energy.  As it turns out, the beach was awesome.  It was quiet and serene and while Emily and Sonia went for a walk, Myra laid out and took a nice nap.  So, while I slept in my dark room with a sound machine playing waves at top volume, Myra slept in the sun with actual waves playing at top volume.  I'm an ass.

I did manage to get my laundry done.  I dragged myself out of bed despite the hangover I got from drinking Bushmills and watching Animal Planet until 3am and headed to a local coin-op place.  The proprietor, a friendly, stout woman whose legs were covered in varicose veins and who had fat ears (seriously) was sitting out front with another woman who was probably 5'10 and 98 pounds, chatting about miscarriages and hysterectomies.  They both looked like they could use a little more sleep and a little less meth.  Fat Ears eventually came in and mopped the place.  It was just me and her and she told me, completely unprompted about her history of weight gain and loss.  A guy came in with a couple big bags of laundry and F.E. grunted, "Ah, shit.  I just mopped."  Then she called out, "You dropping off?"  He said he was and she said, "Fuck".  It was nice.  As I was folding my laundry, two men in suits came in and introduced themselves to F.E. and said they were detectives.  The chatted briefly about an incident that had transpired at the laundromat the day before.  Apparently some nitwit left her purse in the bathroom and when she came back for it, there was $50 missing from her wallet.  Everything else was still there; credit cards, cell phone, everything.  And she filed a police report.  For $50.  The detectives represented two of FOUR who were on the "case".  They said they would be back later to see if they could catch the "perpetrator".  It must have been a really slow day at the precinct. 

Friday I joined my cast mates on a trip to the Dali Museum.  Having shirked the beach, I figured I would look like a real asshole if I didn't go to the museum.  This points to a major lack of respect I have in planning for my own laziness.  Instead of going to a beach where I could have laid in the sun and slept, I went to a museum where I had to WALK and LOOK at things.  At any rate, the museum was nice.  The exhibit was just long enough so that as I started to get really cranky about looking at paintings of shit that made no sense, it was over.  I got one of those audio tour thingies which was really informative and interesting.  I learned a lot of neat things.  All of which I have subsequently forgotten.  Although now, if I'm ever presented with the opportunity, I can impress people by saying something like, "Dali was one of the founders of Surrealism and used his art to object to war."  But then I'll probably end up farting and losing all the respect I had gained with my vague art "fact".  This was my favorite thing I saw in the museum:

When no one was looking, I totally made out with the exhibition.

No cell phones ringing during shows here in Tampa, although we do have two more shows, so, you never know!  Tampa audiences have been pretty great.  They can be a talky bunch, but then, they are seated cabaret-style at tables and most of them are drinking.  The reception to the lesbian bit is a little chilly here, except for the lady who kept giving us the lesbian victory fist pumps.  I dedicated the scene to her in my heart.  I didn't know her name, so I just called her "Lesbian Victory Fist Pump Lady".  "This scene," my heart cried out, "is dedicated to Lesbian Victory Fist Pump Lady!  And a hearty 'Woo!" right back at you, Madam."
Our Saturday matinee crowd included a table of four in the front row who had either all had a fight over their brunch bill, had just found out someone died or just simply hated the show from the moment it began.  The lot of them barely cracked a smile and generally looked like they would have rather been chewing rocks than seeing our show.  One of them, a lady who was wearing a bad wig looked like she was smelling a blue cheese dog fart through the whole thing and her husband stared lecherously at Emily (who sits next to me) the entire time.  I was hoping Em hadn't noticed because it was SUPER creepy (he was like 135 years old), but the first thing she said to me when we got off stage was, "That MAN!!!"  I could have kicked him during the curtain call if I had wanted to.  Which I guess I'm issuing as a warning:  If you're going to sit in the front row, at least pretend to look like you're trying not to shit your pants for the whole hour 45 that we're on stage.  And worse, don't stare at one of use like your taking a mental inventory for later when you've taken your Viagra and you're having "alone time" in your den.  We can totally see you and I am not above kicking.  (That's actually a complete lie, I wouldn't kick anyone.  I'm wearing 5 inch heels and if I tried to kick someone I would definitely fall down.)  Remember, live theater is not like that magic box you use at home to watch American Idol and The Big Bang Theory, we can see you and we can hear you.  Okay?  And if you really hate theater that much, here's an idea:  Don't go to the theater.  I know our show doesn't appeal to everyone, but come on.  It ain't Shopping and Fucking, people.  It's a pretty non-offensive, relatable confection, how put off could you possibly be?

We are all pretty ready to head out to Ft. Lauderdale.  While I have enjoyed the 5 million thread count sheets, this place caters more the the guest with the business account who will take prospective clients to the over priced steak house and watch football in the "lounge" over highway robbery-priced bourbon.  Add to that the hotel room doors which seem to have been designed specifically to wake the entire floor up when they slam shut.  We have decided that this is so that you wake up when house keeping is around and let them clean your room (for the tip you have OBVIOUSLY left them. . .).  One would think that doors with this kind of gravitas would be sound proof.  One would be wrong.  There was also a party in the lobby the other night that went on til 1am and was heard three floors up and resulted in drunken slobs having shouted conversations in the hallways as they stumbled to their rooms.  This was outside the room next to mine when I got home tonight:

In case you can't make it out, it's a bag of shitty diapers.  The family next door with the SCREAMING children left it.  In the hall.  Like you do.  So, yeah, I'm ready to go.

In other news, there is a goose who lives in the hedge in front of the stage door at theater.  I have named her Juanita.

If you ever work at the Straz Performing Arts Center in Tampa, look for her.  She's pretty chill.