Scrappy Little Nobody(10)
Starting in theater gave me a basic work ethic that I may not have gotten if I started in film and television. I worked six days a week, eight shows a week (two shows on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Mondays off). It wasn’t so much the schedule—I worked in accordance with child labor laws—it was that I was held accountable for my work.
Once, during rehearsals, our director was playing with the shape of a musical number that involved most of the cast—which jokes should stay, where they should go, etc. He decided to try reinstituting a small joke I’d had in a previous draft, and we started the number again from the top. I lost where we were in the music and I opened my mouth to say the line, a measure too late. He was already shaking his head and signaling the pianist to stop.
“Anna just lost a line. Let’s go back to how it was before and start again.”
Okay. Those are the rules and I will operate within them from now on. I’ll just double my memorization efforts, pretend I’m not crying, and see you all again tomorrow! Beyond tutoring breaks every three hours, I didn’t get special treatment.
When I booked High Society, it was unclear how long I would be in New York. My contract was for six months, but shows can go under after a few weeks of poor ticket sales. Since my dad was a substitute teacher at the time, he was able to move to New York with me, and my mother stayed in Maine with my brother.
We rented an apartment in Yonkers (“we” is accurate; he signed the rental agreement, but I was the one who paid for it) and commuted into the city each day. Yonkers was not very glamorous, but it was cheaper and I was being paid the union minimum. When you are from Maine and you get a job on Broadway, you take what they offer. Between my accountant mother and my former-banker father, I’m sure a budget was worked out, but by the time the show was in tech rehearsals, it was clear to my dad that it was not manageable.
I have no idea if Dad had been planning to say something, but one day when he was dropping me off at rehearsals, the producer walked past us and casually asked, “How are things, Will?”
“Well, Michael, not good.” My dad is plainspoken. It’s a wonderful quality that I feel lucky to have inherited and that has gotten me in trouble more times than I can count.
“When my daughter is grown, she can make the decision to starve for her art. She can live in a one-bedroom apartment with five people and work a second job during the day, but we aren’t going to be able to make this work any longer, and I’m going to take her home unless we figure something out.”
The ultimate negotiation tactic? Be willing to walk away. I certainly wasn’t willing, but my dad was, and as he said, I wasn’t grown and it wasn’t my decision.
The producers agreed to give me a weekly per diem, and that kept us afloat while we were in New York. (When the show closed I had nothing left over, but I won the final “five-dollar Friday” draw and went home with around $250 in cash. Each bill had the name of a cast or crew member written on it, and I cherished them. I vowed never to spend them. When I got to high school, I started dipping into my stash to chip in whenever someone’s older sister would buy us booze until all the bills were gone. I know. It’s all so Little Girl Lost.)
It wasn’t a financial win, but the experience was incredible. The show was based on the movie musical High Society with Grace Kelly, which was based on the movie (and stage play) The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn. The plot centers on a woman who is about to marry the wrong man and the complications that arise the weekend before her wedding. I played the woman’s little sister. I had a bunch of solid lines, a funny musical number, and a great piece of physical comedy in the second act that only once drew blood mid-performance.
The cast and crew were sweet beyond words. They were encouraging and serious and they believed in me. They told me to stay focused on dance lessons, despite my apparent lack of aptitude; held half-serious competitions for crying on cue; and recommended movies and books that they felt “smart young women” should know. Lisa Banes, who played my mother, would lightly bounce along to the music before our entrance and whisper in an old-timey voice, “Let’s go do a great big Broadway show.” How great is that?!
They treated me like I was family and wanted to make sure that my real family was okay under the stress of one parent moving to New York. Once a month my dad and I would drive home to Maine after the Sunday matinee and make it back in time for the Tuesday night show. On those days the entire cast would speed up their dialogue and cut off every laugh a moment too soon so that I could beat traffic. Only one cast member indulged in languid pauses during those performances, and our conductor, Paul Gemignani, would punish her by radically speeding up the tempo of her songs.
One of my closest friends asked me recently if I had a favorite memory from my career. I do, but it’s not my own. It’s one of those stories I was told so often that I can picture it as clearly as if I were there. The only reason I’m certain I wasn’t is because I was onstage at the time.
The first time my mom came to visit, my dad snuck her into the alley just outside the stage door and told her to listen.
“They’re almost done. That’s the curtain call music.” He leaned in a little closer to the door and held up a finger. They listened quietly. Suddenly the applause swelled.
“That’s for her.”
My mom burst into tears.
I love this story. Luckily, most of the stuff that made my mom proud didn’t revolve around me performing.