Single A to Triple A

In baseball, players move frequently from one level of the game to the next. Top prospects dance quickly up the ladder of minor league franchises to the majors, while middling players and flameouts can spend careers only a couple of rungs up that ladder.

This week, I decided I wanted to try and take a step or two up that ladder. I traveled to New York City to audition for the world premiere of the stage musical of Newsies.

Now, some background: I have been infatuated with Newsies since I was about 12. My third year in the summer theater camp I attended was supposed to be my last (I was going to outgrow the program). So I was virtually guaranteed a major role. I had been disappointed and confused at the selection of a show I knew nothing of. And after watching it, I liked the premise but was wary of the lengthy kiss scene at the end (hey, I was 12!).

Long story short, I fell in love with the show as we worked on it, in particular the music. Santa Fe killed (and still kills) me, and Seize the Day and Once and For All just stuck in my head for hours on end.

Years pass. I act some more, fall out of acting for a little while, then leap into a deep end of acting in the world of community theater. Some cohorts tell me I've got a nice voice, and over time my confidence in my dancing grows from a 0 to a 5 or a 6 on a scale of 10.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I discover that the world premiere of Newsies was having an open, non-equity call in New York the first week in May. I waffled for a while about going, but when every single person I mentioned it to encouraged me to do it, I sucked it up and went.

Much like minor league ballplayers, I made my pilgrimage by bus. And also much like minor league ballplayers, I stayed in a low-rent accommodation. A youth hostel, to be exact. My experience there could probably fill another blog entry, but suffice it to say the comedians hired by a youth hostel aren't very funny, the roommates like long nights, and the cacophony of language made sleep difficult.

The morning of the audition dawned early-ish (before 8 a.m.), and I staggered through my morning routine before triple-checking which subway I was getting onto and which stop I was getting off at. I made it to the audition studio with only one or two panicked moments of "I'm going the wrong way!", 15-20 minutes after they started accepting sign-ins.

In that time, one hundred and eighty-eight people had signed in.

Well, I figured I had nothing to lose, so I signed in and found a seat in the back corner. The tension (and the sexuality) were palpable. You could smell it. After some time just sitting and collecting my thoughts, we were told of the process. There would be several groups of about 30, each of which would go in, learn the dance, and then be judged on that. No singing was mentioned.

Damn. That was my ace-in-the-hole. I thought I'd found a perfect song, one that was basically Santa Fe, but for an animated movie.

My call wasn't for several hours, so I killed some time at Dunkin Donuts (which had an "internet cafe" but no outlets - seriously?). On returning a couple hours before my call, I discovered the studio was nearly deserted.

Apparently in the hour and change that I was away, a few groups had gone in and completed their audition, while the rest of us weren't around yet.

The room would fill back up again fairly quickly as 1:30 approached, and the folks in charge of the holding room told us the group system was being abandoned and we would go into the audition in groups of 30 based on whoever was around. So I ended up in a group two hours earlier than I should've.

We were herded into a second holding room where everybody dropped their stuff and got into whatever attire they were going to wear for the dance. The anxiety was growing, as the friendly conversations among auditionees tapered off and we all focused on the task at hand.

Moving to the actual audition studio, we lined up Chorus Line-style and learned the dance combination in sequences of 8 beats. By the second set of 8 beats, it was clear to me that this was going to be an exercise in futility for me. I could probably get the steps down over time, but it wasn't going to come together for me in 15 minutes. One count of 8 featured four separate 360-degree turns and a jump.

I mean, I knew Newsies was a dance show, and that this whole little excursion was a pipedream at best, but I had hoped I'd luck into an audition I could handle.

Naturally, I was in the very first group to dance for the choreographer and Paper Mill Playhouse artistic director. In my group was some little kid (auditioning for Les, I assume) and one other guy. I don't think any of us really brought it, but I didn't fall down.

The problem for me with dance is that I'm six feet tall and all arms and legs. Even if I know what I'm doing and commit to it, if I don't have a dead-on musicality and fluidity, I'm going to look like an idiot. Case in point:



Yeah, I'm the one with the giant swinging arms. I suspect I looked worse in New York, where I didn't know the steps and I had giant swinging arms.

Anyway, following the audition, we were herded back into the second holding room for a few minutes, after which one of the producers came in and listed 8 or 10 names (mine, obviously, was not among them) to stick around. Everybody else was free to go.

It was a shame, I had put a lot of thought into what song I was going to use for my audition, and I was never going to have a snowball's chance at using it. And considering I'm "a singer who moves well" on good days, Newsies was probably not the show for me anyway.

The benefit to me was that I gained a sliver of confidence in my dance, believe it or not. Bad as I'm sure I was, I estimate I danced better than 35-40% of the people there. And considering I have nil formal training, I figure that's not all that bad, really. So if nothing else, I know I can handle pretty much anything short of what they gave me in New York.

So no, I'm not going to be making a paid-acting debut with Newsies. Would I audition for something else? Sure, if it were a singing show.

Driftwood

In the not-so-distant past, I wrote about community theatre's blessings and curses; how that special artform brought you in close contact with people you could get along phenomenally with, and completely lose touch with following the cast party. In that same post, I mentioned that the instances in which I've escaped that fate were few and far between, and it looks as though they're growing fewer and farther.

One show in particular brought me close to a couple of people my age. Throughout the rehearsal process, the run of the show, and even for several months after that, we were thick as thieves. We hung out at trivia, went to shows other companies were putting on, and just visited each other and talked online all the time. I thought I'd finally found people in this little realm whom I could call and hang out with on a boring Thursday night.

But it occurs to me now, seeing the situations that surround us, that community theatre friendships are inevitably victims of circumstance. None of the paths our lives are on are likely to cross again; I work in marketing, and I have the flexibility to continue to perform on-stage to my heart's content (hence my three-show fall). Neither of them do: one is in graduate school and the other is attempting to do the same. And the places we've moved and the changes we've endured have apparently rendered it impossible for any of us to meet in person. I've most recently seen one of these people in, I believe, June, and the other even less recently. Phone calls and instant messages are less frequently answered, and invitations to go out and grab a beer and a bite are, without fail, rebuffed.

I shouldn't be disappointed. I should have seen this coming. After all, it happens every time. I just got my hopes up a little too high when the process took that much longer.

How to save community theatre

I experienced a collision of worlds today, and from that debris I’ve got a half-baked idea that I want to get some feedback on.

Eastern Mass. is flooded with community theatre groups, advocates, participants, and audience members. Inside route 128, it seems as though each significant town has its own theatre group (or two), and each group has its own identity and set of core members.

The last few years, however, have not been kind to some of these groups. Each has suffered various levels of attrition as their most senior members have retired from active roles and the economy’s trouble thinned the numbers of audience members. But some groups have suffered more than others. There are several theatre groups out there that are getting left behind due to a lack of resources and manpower, and there are several theatre groups in danger of folding.

Community theatre isn’t about survival of the fittest, though. If we can save these groups and help restore them to a level at which they can sustain themselves again, and renew the promise of old glorious productions, we, as community theatre devotees, should do what we can.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been contributing in a substantial way to the redesign of the public image of one particular theatre group. We’re conceptualizing a new, more modern logo, creating a stronger and more helpful website, and coordinating an all-fronts PR campaign. The team undertaking these tasks has evolved quickly into a well-oiled machine that seeks out candidates for individual jobs and manages all of them to rejuvenate a company’s image in a short period of time.

Why couldn’t that become a freelance gig?

Assemble a team of “stage ringers” whom a struggling theatre group can contract with. On this team are several consultants who each have an expertise in one particular facet of a theatre rejuvenation project: a website designer, a PR guru, a social media whiz, a graphic designer, a nonprofit manager, a fundraising expert. This team adds the group’s president (a community representative) to their team for the duration of the project, and together they decide on a direction of the redesign and go to work.

What’s more, each of these consultants is a theatre advocate, so the groups with which this team would partner can trust the experts to have the group’s best interests at heart, and the instincts of an old stage friend.

Because this is a freelance group, and because this is a passion for each of the members of this “crack team”, each consultant would accept a discounted fee for their services. This would make it more affordable for the groups interested in the project. And if even that proved to be too much for the group to afford, the consultants who could afford to work pro bono could do so and the others would pass.

It seems to me like a win-win situation: this crack team gets paid for work in an area they love, and the group gets a low-cost redesign that can rejuvenate a flagging group. But I’m sure there are steps I’m missing – what are they? The more I think about this, the more I wonder if it’s doable.

Theatre sandbox

Today is the audition for my second Summer Scene production. Of all the shows I've ever been connected with, Once on this Island is probably the one with which I have the most exposure. So naturally, that's the show I chose to do in my second year (the first was Seussical, which I can get passionate about in no time). But I'm going to encounter a similar challenge: enrollment. I had to make Seussical work last year with only 12 kids, and I've got to make Island work with only 14.

The great benefit of the program is that it can be very sandbox-like: it's a summer camp, these kids aren't doing it because they're going to be going on to Walnut Hill or Tisch, they're doing it because it's fun and they like the idea of getting up and putting on a show. So their enthusiasm (without the inherent competition and diva-like symptoms) gives me the flexibility to try some new things. Last year, I had a concept for how the entire show was going to emerge from a television. And it did. This year, I want to take Island and "Nutcrackerize" it. And I will.

That's why I love this program: it's laid-back enough that I can still make "let's just have fun" our primary motto, but the kids take it seriously enough that I can try some ideas I have.

Community Theatre's blessing, curse, and unfortunate necessities

The last show I'm going to do for a long time ended this past Sunday as Fiddler on the Roof in Wellesley closed. It still hasn't really sunk in yet. Maybe it won't, cause I'm planning on cheating a bit: I'm going to jump into the crew for Spelling Bee in Newton if my schedule will allow, and the director for Wellesley's EMACT festival show has been operating on the fait accompli method of persuading me to join their crew, too. (Not to mention I'm expecting to be directing again this summer at Summer Scene.)

But I realized during the show's run that I had fallen again into the trap of only really talking to people during tech week and performance weeks. Show after show, I'll make friends with lots of cast members during the rehearsal process, but it's completely superficial. "Hey, you work there, that's interesting." "Hey, you're coming to rehearsals from that town, what route do you take?"

It's bullshit. I don't even know why I do it - is it because I spend so little time with these people during the early rehearsal process that I don't really care? Is it because the course of a show is so short from start to finish that by never getting close to people, I never really lose any friends? Is it because the theatre world in eastern Mass. is so small I can run into people a year, two years down the road, so never getting close doesn't even matter?

Whatever it is, that subconscious strategy gets blown to hell during tech. With so much more time and close contact, not to mention cast parties and outings, longer conversations and deeper histories follow. How is it I don't learn until the show is nearly through that one castmate speaks eight languages and nearly went into the seminary? How is it I don't learn until then that another castmate lost his partner very suddenly last year? That another has been with his wife for fifty years and writes musicals of his own? Another is returning to Los Angeles to pursue acting for a career, another is a well-respected cardiologist...it goes on.

It seems to me almost a crime to not know anything until it's too late for it to be meaningful. Even after I've learned these fascinating details, there's so little opportunity to make it into a conversation that it's safer not to bother.

Only on rare occasions does a friendship or relationship surpass the restrictions of a show. I'm dating someone I met through a show. Two close friends were in Oz with me. Another was in Godspell with me and suffered through Beauty and the Beast auditions with me two years ago. But other than that? Nothing real.

It's community theatre's blessing and curse. It's not a huge commitment to do a show three nights a week for eight weeks and on the ninth be kinda crazy and then be done with it all. But by the same token, three nights a week for eight weeks is no basis for a friendship. It's just not enough non-rehearsal interaction.