Trust Exercise(13)
Sarah’s failure to be Erin O’Leary used to be a point of pride, if a wobbly one. Now Sarah is furious with her coarse heavy hair, the opposite of Erin’s dandelion floss, with her wide hips the opposite of Erin’s trim ones, with her big unskilled feet in their dirty misused ballet flats the opposite of Erin’s miniature ones which make scissoring blurs through the air. Sarah is furious with the faltering squawk of her voice, the opposite of Erin’s “songbird.” Historically, Theatre students like Sarah (and David) who couldn’t sing or dance solaced themselves with Uta Hagen, Beckett, and Shakespeare. They reminded themselves they were serious Theatre Artists, that Broadway was cheeseball one end to the other. Of course they kept this knowledge to themselves, out of respect for Mr. Kingsley and genuine awe for his musical talent. They were never troubled by their condescension, or at least Sarah wasn’t. But now that it’s mainstage auditions again, all of them are reminded, some of them more painfully than others, of how much they’re exalted by big musicals. David loves Jesus Christ Superstar, knows all the words, sings along tunelessly with the album when he is alone. Sarah has the same secret relationship to Evita. They are serious; but how much better if they also could sing, if they could startle and move their classmates on those rainy days standing around the piano? If, implored by Mr. Kingsley, they could deign to play Christ, or Evita—for the good of the show, given that they were best for the role?
Such secret talent isn’t theirs, however. They remind themselves—though not in conversation, for David and Sarah don’t speak to each other, or have any idea where the other is sitting, so many rows distant as to be reduced to just a dark head tilted over a book, remote and indifferent and hateful and completely ignored (in fact, not even noticed)—of how corny Guys and Dolls is, how glad they both are to be taking a pass on auditions, how much more absorbing they’re finding Endgame (David) or the first scene of King Lear, beyond which she has never yet managed to penetrate (Sarah). They do not share these similar feelings, the similarity having no meaning for them. They do, of course, actually watch the auditions, their hearts in their mouths, almost sick with vicarious hope.
It is, Sarah bitterly thinks, like an Erin O’Leary coronation. Erin will be Adelaide, of course. Acknowledging this, she sings “Adelaide’s Lament,” Mr. Bartoli, the dance department accompanist who also serves as musical director, practically bouncing off the bench as he plays, so acute is his pleasure in playing for her. Many, many of the boys, including many who, like David, can’t sing, but who, unlike David, don’t care, sing “I got the horse right here,” making up for their laughable voices with a lot of mugging and humorous gestures. Some of them will get cast, as the gamblers do not have to be melodic and do have to be funny. David flushes with the consciousness of his own cowardice, the fraudulence of his appeal to Erin. Soon Erin, like Sarah, will find him repulsive unless he can make himself worthy. Sightlessly staring at Endgame, he vows to himself that he’ll audition for the musical next year. In their department, auditions take place constantly—for the grade-level Showcase productions; for the Senior Directing Projects; for the Outdoor Shakespeare every May; for the Spring Mainstage (Drama) and, as now, Fall Mainstage (Musical)—and each round of auditions tends to confirm a corresponding, slightly different pecking order: the purely social pecking order of the sophomore class, in which both Sarah and David rank high; the pecking order of the Serious Actors, which David has started to climb; the pecking order of the Adults-in-Training, the perpetual Stage Managers, whose skills Mr. Browne ferrets out even when they are trying to hide them (Sarah fears this is her fate). But only fall auditions for the mainstage musical reveal a pecking order applicable to the whole school, for only in the fall musical does the whole school take part. The dancers happily subordinate themselves to chorus roles. The instrumental-music students hold their own auditions, for the mainstage orchestra. Among the Theatre students it is often repeated that the dramatic and musical mainstage productions are equal in status, but everyone knows this is bunk. Playing the lead in the dramatic mainstage doesn’t even rate as highly as playing a secondary character in the musical. None of them, not even those who arrived at the school with an actual hatred of musicals, question this valuation. None of them wonder what things might be like if, say, someone other than Mr. Kingsley ran the Theatre program. Brilliant as he is, his hierarchies must be objective, and even last year, when it was still a point of pride to Sarah not to be Erin O’Leary, she had asked her mother for ballet, jazz, and tap lessons, so as to do better in the in-school lessons. Her mother had said, “Are you kidding? Isn’t that what you’re already doing all day, instead of preparing for college?”
As the auditions wear on, Sarah puts down King Lear and she, Pammie, Ellery, and Joelle, who will all work on costumes, compile a cast list. The female roles are a gimme; it’s hardly possible to guess wrong. The male roles, more numerous, sometimes make for a dark horse or two, and the fun lies in guessing at these. Norbert is auditioning, and Ellery sinks in his seat and grabs Sarah and Joelle, on either side of him. “Girls,” he whispers, “give me strength.”
“Why aren’t you auditioning?” Sarah asks him.
“Just because I’m beautiful and black doesn’t mean I can sing.”
Last year, as Freshmen, they had taken sight-reading, and been obliged to stand at the piano and warble the length of a page of sheet music chosen with indifference to their ranges, if they even had ranges. It hadn’t been much of a showcase for vocal, or even sight-reading, skill, and a few of them, as often happened, had bombed, while a few others unexpectedly triumphed. Taniqua and Pammie, both church chorus veterans, had amazed with their sheet music literacy and their competent voices. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Manuel, when summoned to the piano, went rigid, his sheet music snapping in the breeze of his quivering hands. His skin, always dustily brown, turned mesmerically red like a coal in the fire. Just when they thought he would faint, his mouth slowly hinged open—and hung that way, mutely, as if he were an abandoned ventriloquist’s dummy. A rustle of incipient laughter passed over the room. “Quiet,” Mr. Kingsley had said, striking the first note of whatever it was he had given Manuel to sight-read. They were all forced to watch Manuel’s pitiful trembling outlive the note’s lengthy vibration. “One more time,” Mr. Kingsley had said, striking the key and renewing the note in their ears. Was it possible for total petrifaction to grow yet more total, yet more petrified? It apparently was. Manuel was going to stand there enacting the meaning of “dumbstruck” until either Mr. Kingsley showed mercy or the bell rang to end class. “You’re not off the hook,” Mr. Kingsley had finally said, dismissing Manuel with surprising anger. In general Mr. Kingsley’s anger was reserved for his pets, who wore it as a badge of distinction. Mr. Kingsley didn’t bother being angry at people of whom nothing much was expected.