Dramarama (14 page)

(shuffle, click)

O
N JULY 27TH
, Nanette was scheduled to head off to her
Secret Garden
audition in Los Angeles. She got permission to miss a day in order to do it, and her father Fed-Ex’d her sheet music because she had to learn a new audition piece to show she could sing the difficult music in the play. She rehearsed a song from
Into the Woods
with the M-TAP teacher. She was taking an early morning cab to the airport, flying to California, and doing the audition that same afternoon.

The day before she was meant to go, I came into the dorm after dinner to find her sitting on her bottom bunk and holding my tape recorder.

“What’s up?” I said, pulling off my sneakers.

“I listened to the tape,” she answered.

“Were we so ridiculous?” I said. “I can’t believe you asked Theo about the ice cream!”

“I mean, I heard what you and Bec and those guys were saying about me. At the costume fitting for
Guys and Dolls
.”

Damn.

I knew I’d been snarky and jealous. We all had.

What kind of idiot was I to record all that and save it?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We were being evil.”

“But we had that talk,” Nanette sniffed. “I thought you were on my side.”

“I am.” I sat down on the bunk, guilt washing over me. “That was before.”

“They said they wanted to poison my lemonade. Dawn wanted to
shoot
me.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“No, but you sat there while they did. And you said, what was it, why did I have to even come here already? And maybe I’d get sick and go home.”

It was true. “I was sick jealous, Nanette,” I told her. “Those were horrible things to say.”

“That’s right, they were.”

“I’m sorry. You—you have no idea how it feels to be anything but the star.”

“That’s not true!” she cried. “I wasn’t the star of
Night Music
. I wasn’t the star of
Fiddler
.”

“But those were national productions,” I said. “You were like, the only kid.”

“I wasn’t the star of
Annie
most of the time, either. I told you I knew how it felt. That night when we talked about it.”

“Nanette, look. I’m not saying we didn’t do something wrong, something mean, but we—”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We are. I never should have said that stuff.”

“So why did you?”

“I—I’ve been having a hard time here. It’s like everyone’s better than I am at everything, and you’re the best of anyone.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” I said. “And don’t pretend you don’t know it.”

Nanette tossed the cassette recorder at me. “You should have stood up for me. Even Iz was nicer than you, and Adelaide was the part she wanted.”

It was the part I had wanted, too. Nanette just didn’t remember.

“A real friend would be happy for someone else’s success.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I really am.”

“Sorry’s not good enough,” said Nanette.

She ran out of the room and slammed the door.

S
HE DIDN’T
come in until after curfew that night, and left for California early the next morning. I had no idea how to make it up to her, and Iz didn’t either.

At seven thirty that evening, though, I was in our dorm room after dinner, and the hall phone rang.

“Candie Berkolee!” someone yelled in the hallway. “Candie Berkolee! Telephone.”

“She’s not here,” I said, sticking my head out the doorway. “She’s a principal.” Meaning she had night rehearsal.

The girl on the phone said something into it. “Isadora Feingold!” she yelled. “Is Isadora around? Phone call.”

“She’s not here, either.”

The girl listened to the telephone and looked at me. “It’s your roommate Nanette,” she said after a minute. “She needs to talk to someone.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” I said, “I don’t think.”

“No, she doesn’t,” said the girl. “But you should take it anyway. Something’s going on.”

I took the phone. Nanette was crying.

“I lost my wallet,” she sobbed. “I thought it was in my bag, but now I don’t have it. I don’t have any ID.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“LAX,” she sniffed. “A cab dropped me off here, and I ate a slice of pizza in the food court, and then when I went to go buy magazines I didn’t have my wallet anymore. I went to lost and found and everything.”

“Oh, no.”

“They won’t let me on the plane without ID. And now I’ve missed the plane, I was looking for it for so long. I looked all over the food court, and the newsstand, and on the sidewalk outside. The people at lost and found were totally unhelpful.”

“Isn’t someone with you? Doesn’t the theater like, shepherd you around?”

“No. I got a cab on my own.”

“What do they say at the airplane desk?”

“I have to show ID. They’ll let me on the next plane with my old ticket, but not unless I have my driver’s license.”

“Do you have any money?”

“No.”

“A bank card?”

“No. My dad is going to kill me.”

“You have to call him.”

“I’m scared.”

“Nanette, you have to. Maybe he can vouch for your identification or fax your passport,” I said.

“He’s going to be so mad.” She was still crying. “I—last year, when I was on tour, I did the same thing. Lost my wallet with all my ID and cards and cash, and he was like, so pissed off at how disorganized I am.”

“Listen. There’s no way you can get home if you don’t call him,” I said. “I’m going to wait here by the phone.”

“I don’t know.”

“He would never want you stuck in the L.A. airport all alone. That’s what your cell phone is for, right? For emergencies. He wants you to call him. Trust me.”

Nanette started crying again. “It’s that . . .” She choked and had trouble getting the words out. “He, he, he wants me to be
professional
. I can just hear him.” She lowered her voice. “‘Do you think Sarah Jessica Parker lost her wallet when she was in
Annie
? Do you think Daisy Eagan spaced out on the way home from her
Secret Garden
audition? No, of course they didn’t. People who space out like that don’t get jobs. And if they get them, they don’t keep them.’”

“Nanette—”

“You don’t understand, Sadye. Your parents actually like you. Mine don’t even know me. They didn’t even drive out to see
Guys and Dolls
, because my brother had a film audition and my sister booked a commercial.”

“Ugh.”

“I haven’t lived with them in a year. Kylie even has my room.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. When I was there for a week before coming here, I slept on the foldout.”

“Ouch.”

“I’m like a work pony to them. ‘Send Nanette on the road, and she’ll send her paycheck home.’ That’s what it’s about. The only reason they sent me to Wildewood is because
Fiddler
ended and I didn’t get the last three jobs I was up for. They figured this way, at least, I’d get seen by Morales, ’cause he’s gonna direct the Lemony Snicket musical next spring and they want me to go for that.”

“Well, you know he likes you,” I said. “So it’s probably worth it.”

“I’m just all by myself in this,” Nanette said. “Like I’m not even a kid anymore. Like I have to be this perfect grown-up all the time, and I’m always moving around. And if I don’t get
Secret Garden
, I don’t even know what I’ll do with myself. It’ll be like four strikes in their eyes, and they’re not going to be pleased.”

“Look,” I told her. “Calling your dad is the only thing to do. You’re gonna be okay. I’m going to sit here, and I want you to call me back.”

We hung up. I sunk down on the floor of the hall, waiting.

Eventually the phone rang again, and I answered it. “Okay, I did it,” said Nanette. “He’s faxing my passport. But he is so mad, Sadye, you have no idea.”

“What time does your new plane get in?”

“Four a.m. into Rochester,” she said. “But I don’t know how I’m gonna get back to Wildewood from the airport.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I promised. “I’ll make sure someone’s there to meet you.”

* * *

I
MARCHED
over to the administration offices to talk to the summer institute secretary, so he could arrange a car for Nanette—but it was after eight o’clock; no one was there. So I went to the
Midsummer
rehearsal room and walked in without knocking. The guy who played Puck was crouching in a feral, feline position, delivering a monologue, while Theo (Lysander) and Rosa (Helena) sat with their backs to the wall, looking bored and waiting to rehearse their scenes.

Reanne held up a hand, signing that I should not interrupt until Puck had finished, and I did wait a couple of minutes, but when he got to the end and she leaned forward and began talking to him about his movement vocabulary, I couldn’t stand it. Weepy Nanette was taking a six-hour plane flight all alone at night and then had no way to get back to Wildewood, and these people were babbling at each other about whether Puck would put his hand on his knees or if that was too baseballish. I tapped Reanne on the shoulder.

She breathed a long sigh and asked Puck to hold it. “What do you want?”

I explained the situation, saying how they had to take responsibility for Nanette.

“Okay,” said Reanne. “You tried the administration offices?”

“They’re all shut up.”

“All right. Let me make a phone call.”

Reanne told the cast they could take a break, and called someone—maybe Morales—from her cell.

“It wasn’t that the audition ran late,” she said. “The girl lost her wallet.”

Reanne turned to me to check that she had her story straight. I nodded, adding, “You need to send a car for her.”

“The whole campus is going to be asleep when she gets back,” Reanne said into the phone. “Someone’s going to have to stay up to let her in the dorms.”

The person on the other line said something, and Reanne chuckled. “So long as it’s not me.”

I interrupted again. “The point is, Nanette can’t pay for a cab. She’ll be stuck if you don’t send a car for her.”

“Shh.” Reanne waved at me, trying to get me to shut up.

“She’s gonna be so exhausted; she’s getting in at like, the middle of the night.” I thrust a piece of paper forward, on which I’d written Nanette’s new flight number and its arrival time. “And she only flew out this morning. She needs someone to go get her.”

“Hold on,” Reanne said into the phone. “Sadye, I know you’re concerned for your friend, but you must see that she made a real mess of what should have been a simple trip.”

“So?”

“So we’re discussing who should take responsibility, and what the possibilities are.”

“I don’t see why you’re not calling a car service now and getting it taken care of!” I yelled. “It’s not like she doesn’t know she messed up. She knows! She feels like an idiot! She needs a ride home!”

“I’ll ring you back in a few,” Reanne muttered, clicking off her cell.

“You have to order her a car,” I said, more softly. “She has no way to get here otherwise.”

Reanne crossed her arms and looked at me. “There is plenty of time, Sadye. Her plane hasn’t even taken off and it’s a six-hour flight.”

“But why won’t you order it?” I asked. “I want to call her back before she gets on the plane, so she knows it’ll be there.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to say ‘Please,’ Sadye,” Reanne finally muttered. “It wouldn’t hurt you to say ‘Hey, Reanne, I’m sorry to interrupt your rehearsal.’”

I looked at Reanne. She was kind, and a bit silly; willing to leap around the woods making woo woo noises and pretending to be a fairy. She was never harsh or bossy with the actors—and she was sweetly encouraging to the lowliest trees at all times. She had dealt with my insurrection, my interruptions, my criticisms—usually with patience and flattery, and never with more than mild annoyance.

I liked her.

I thought she was a bad director.

I began to cry. “I know I’m being dramatic,” I sobbed. “But I owe Nanette, okay? I did something awful to her; I was jealous of her all summer, jealous of how she sings, and how she looks, and her talent, and all the chances she’s had. I’ve been jealous of Lyle for having Demi, and of Demi for having Lyle, and of Iz and Candie for their voices, and jealous of everyone’s parts and—”

Reanne put her arm around me and led me to a folding chair.

“It’s just that I’m nobody here,” I went on. “I could disappear. I could leave tomorrow. It wouldn’t even matter to anyone. I loved
Guys and Dolls
, I loved it, but I could have left the show and nobody would have noticed.”

“That’s not true,” Reanne said sympathetically. “You’re a very important part of our community.”

“Morales doesn’t even know my name. Every single one of my friends has a lead. I’m surrounded by the most talented people here, and there’s nothing I can do to make a difference,” I sobbed. “I try to talk to you about
Midsummer
, I try over and over to share ideas in rehearsal, or in acting class—and no one wants to hear what I say. There’s no difference I can make anywhere at Wildewood—except this.”

“Come, come.”

“I just want to help my friend,” I said. “It’s like the only thing I can do.”

“Take a deep breath,” said Reanne. “I promise you we’ll get Nanette home.”

“I want to be irreplaceable,” I said, sniffing. “I want to be a person that matters.”

“Actors are never irreplaceable, Sadye,” said Reanne. “It’s in the nature of the job: they have to be replaced. Shows are recast all the time. They run for months, people get other jobs, new actors step in. If you need to be irreplaceable, you shouldn’t be an actor.”

N
ANETTE
got back safely. She tiptoed into our dorm at nearly dawn. Before she got into bed, she put a stack of Hershey’s Kisses on my pillow. They were freebies in the backseat of the Town Car Wildewood sent for her.

* * *

T
WO DAYS LATER
, something awful and wonderful happened. A girl named Amy had to be sent home. She wasn’t eating enough, and she was working too hard, given what she was eating, and one day she couldn’t get out of bed, she was so tired and worn down. Her roommates said she had a headache the first day but soon it became apparent that she was on the verge of anorexia and starting to lose it, and had to go back to Connecticut for a bit of rest and psychotherapy.

The next morning, as I sat on the floor stretching before dance class, Tamar came and asked me if I wanted Amy’s part: Rumpleteazer.

Rumpleteazer is one of a comical pair of raucous cats (the other is Mungojerrie) who dance a ridiculous dance while someone else sings how they are knock-about clowns so clever they steal meat from their own family’s oven.

“You’ll have to learn it nights,” Tamar said, “and skip the evening recreation quite a few days; then we’ll have to juggle the dress rehearsal schedules to make sure you can be in both
Cats
and
Midsummer
, but we’ve done it before, other years, and we’re sure it can be managed. Though it’s rather a lot to take on. What do you say, Sadye?”

It crossed my mind that Reanne had told Tamar how unhappy I was. They could have easily filled this role with someone already in the cast; there was no need to give it to me.

But I didn’t care if it was charity. I’d take it.

I got to skip
Midsummer
rehearsal that afternoon to learn the basics of the Rumpleteazer part. It was the best afternoon I’d had at Wildewood. Jade from Hot Box Girls was playing Mungojerrie. She was quite small, and Amy had been, too. Tamar started reworking her choreography on the spot to take advantage of the new difference in our heights. Jade jumped up to stand on my knee, rode on me piggyback, ran through my legs. It was so fascinating to see Tamar working on the fly like that, and to know that she was making use of who I was—customizing the dance to suit me.

Jade and I went to dinner sweaty and happy. We were starving and ate big plates of lame institutional spaghetti like it was the best meal we’d ever tasted.

This is what it’s supposed to be like, I thought. This is what I came here for.

Sadye:
It’s July twenty-ninth. Demi, Nanette, Sadye, and Lyle
on the roof again.

Lyle:
It’s a beautiful starry
night. The moon is out.

Nanette:
And look at us. Sadye
and I are here with two
gorgeous and completely ineligible boys.

Demi:
Hey, what happened to that
Theo boy you like? The one who
hides his buns? He came up
twice. But now he’s--

Nanette:
Yeah, where is he these
days?

Demi:
He’s in absentia!

Sadye:
Publicize it, why don’t
you?

Demi:
We all know you like him.

Sadye:
That was just an early
crush. I only like him as a
friend now.

Lyle:
Hardly.

Sadye:
What? How do you know?

Lyle:
You give him the puppy-dog
eye in
Midsummer
all the time
when you’re being a tree. You’re
like a tree puppy dog.

(Sadye pinches Lyle)

Lyle:
Ow!

Sadye:
I am not a tree puppy dog!
I am a master of subtleness and
concealing my emotions.

Nanette:
Ahem.

Sadye:
What?

Nanette:
Not.

Sadye:
Okay, I still like him.

Lyle:
Okay, you’re not really a
puppy dog. Demi told me you like
him.

Sadye:
Demi!

Demi:
He made me tell!

Lyle:
I forced the details out of
him. I have unspeakable methods
of torture.

Demi:
It’s true. He’s a bad, bad
man.

Lyle:
Look, I’ll demonstrate.
Stand back, my friends, for a
public exhibition of tried-and-true methods for getting Demi
Howard to tell you all his
friends’ secrets.

(Lyle pinches Demi.)

Demi:
Ow! You know you’re not
allowed to pinch me there!
That’s cheating!

Nanette:
Where did he pinch you?

Demi:
You don’t want to know.

Lyle:
On the leg, just above the
knee.

Nanette:
No one ever pinches me.

Demi:
I’ll pinch you.

Nanette:
I don’t want you.

Demi:
Why not?

Nanette:
I want a hetero boy to
pinch me.

Lyle:
Want me to go downstairs
and find you one? I can do it.
I know for a fact that Frankie
lives on the top floor. It would
take me like forty seconds to get
him to come up here and pinch
you.

Nanette:
No! No!

Lyle:
Prime hetero pinching from
Frankie. What more are you
asking for? I can deliver it
right away!

Sadye:
We’re degenerating,
seriously.

Nanette:
Do
not
go and ask Frankie
to pinch me.

Lyle:
Okay, okay. I was just
trying to help.

Sadye:
Nanette, you don’t need
pinching. I’ve got no pinching.
Look at me!

Nanette:
What?

Sadye:
We don’t need pinching. We
can be happy without boys.

Nanette:
Aw, come on. If Theo
pinched you, you wouldn’t be
anti-pinch. You be totally
pro-pinch.

Sadye:
Well, that’s Theo. That’s
not generalized pinching. That’s
Theo pinching.

Nanette:
What’s the difference?

Sadye:
The difference is you’re
not supposed to want general
love. You’re supposed to want
love from someone in particular.

Nanette:
Is that feminism?

Sadye:
Maybe. I don’t know. Isn’t
it just self-confidence? Like,
you don’t need a man.

Lyle:
What, Sadye, don’t you need
us? We need you!

Demi:
Since when is pinching the
same as love? Pinching is not
the same as love.

Sadye:
It is in
this
conversation.

Nanette:
I don’t care if I’m
supposed
to want it or not want
it. I just want it. Love from
hetero boys, love from
audience members, love from
the world.

Lyle:
But not from Frankie.

Nanette:
That’s right.

Sadye:
We love you, Nanette. Isn’t
that enough?

Nanette:
No. I want hetero boys
and the whole world.

Sadye:
I better turn this recorder
off before we say anything more
incriminating.

(shuffle, click)

N
ANETTE
could cry on cue. “I taught myself after I made this straight-to-video movie,” she told us at lunch one day.

“Wait, you were in a movie?” Demi asked

“Oh, yeah, but it was a little part and it sucked,” said Nanette. “It’s my sister who’s going to have the movie career, probably. At least that’s what my dad says.” She drank some cranberry juice and went on. “Anyway, the director was this complete jerk, and this boy and I had a scene where we had to cry because our mom was dead—it was like a mystery thriller—”

“Who else was in it?” Demi wanted to know.

“Oh, that guy from TV, Michael Rapaport; it doesn’t matter, I didn’t get to meet him,” said Nanette. “I was just in the one scene. Anyway, we had to cry and whatever, I was like twelve and the kid was only six, and I guess this director didn’t work with kids a lot, because we weren’t crying, and we weren’t crying—I mean, we tried, but we couldn’t—and the boy started laughing, and the director just yelled and screamed at us, telling us we were awful actors and bad people and he was disgusted by us—until we both started to cry for real. Then he rolled the cameras, got the shots he needed, and told us we’d done a great job.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Whatever. It happens all the time on films.” said Nanette. “Because they need the shot, and you’re wasting everyone’s money if you can’t do it. So then I spent like a million hours looking in the bathroom mirror and learning how to make myself cry on cue. So now if they ask me to cry, I say, ‘Which eye do you want?’”

“How do you do it?” asked Demi.

“I used to think about how my brother died—I had this brother who died when I was like four and he was six—but now I just think
Cry
—and I do.”

“Do it,” said Demi.

“Yes, do it!” I pushed.

And Nanette did. She wiped her mouth delicately, stared into space, and then her face crumpled and tears started dripping down her cheeks.

Then we felt bad. Or at least I did. I mean, Nanette has spent most of her life being a trick pony for grown-ups. She didn’t need to be a trick pony for her only friends.

S
TILL
, when Morales announced in class that we were going to spend a few days working toward crying on cue, I was interested. I thought, if I can do this, then I’ll know I’m an actress—and none of the badness of this acting class will matter.

If I can do this, I’ll know I belong here.

“There are four approaches to crying for the actor,” Morales announced, striding back and forth in front of us as we sat on the floor. “One. You call up a miserable life experience in your past. You imagine it, focus on it, until you feel like crying. This might be useful for film actors who have to do a reaction shot, but it’ll take you out of the moment when you’re playing a part onstage, because when you’re onstage you need to stay in character. That’s why I don’t believe in the Method, and why I don’t teach it.

“Two. A variation on the first one. You imagine your mother dead, your dog dead, your best friend. Not something that happened, but something hypothetical. You do it with intense concentration until you cry. I have problems with teaching this approach, as I have problems with the Method approach, because it takes you out of character. But you can see that it involves some imaginative projection, rather than dredging up memories, so it is closer to acting, as I see it.

“Three. You learn what crying looks like. The lower lip quivers. The crier clamps the lips together as if trying to stop. He looks down. Blinks back the tears. You take some time to look at yourself crying and you note the expression so minutely that you can mimic it on demand. Very often tears will follow once the rest of your body is there.

“Four. You enter so deeply into a character’s inner life that you weep because your character weeps. You feel the emotions of your character and cry because he needs to cry.

“So: I posit that if we begin with the second approach—and you cry, then we can take a moment and study ourselves in this state. We can master the particular physiognomy of our own tears—what do the shoulders do? What do the facial muscles do? Where do the hands want to go? And begin to replicate them, as one does in approach number three. Practicing this imaginative projection and then self-observation will make you more fluid, more open to the emotions you’ll need for a character who’s going to cry. Then we’ll take that fluidity and we’ll work on new monologues for the rest of the summer, so you guys can get to the point of approach number four, where your character’s emotions can take you to that point. Got it? Good.”

He dimmed the lights and had us all lie on the floor. Then he took us on a guided visualization—like those Reanne had done at the start of
Midsummer
rehearsals—only this one was designed to make us weep. We were at war, he said. Our homes were vandalized by enemy soldiers. We were to picture our own homes, our own parents, our living rooms.

And then our furniture trashed, our belongings set fire.

Our parents murdered. Our bodies violated.

Our dogs and cats strung up by the neck.

Within ten minutes I was crying, half from the visualization, and half from a mad and frustrated urge to run out of the rehearsal room. It felt so wrong being trapped in there and forced to imagine these horrible catastrophes. I longed to stand up, yank open the door, and walk out of Morales’s classroom forever. Just to go into the sunlight and the air, away from this fabricated horror.

“You may sit up now,” said Morales. “I’m going to raise the lights a bit, and I want you to move over to the mirrors and find a space for yourself. Look at your face. Look at your backs, your legs, your shoulders, your hands. Feel the rhythms of your breath, remember how your throat feels. Sense memory, people, sense memory.”

I got up and walked to the mirror, tears still streaming down my face. I could see that some people were crying and others were not, but I didn’t feel the sense of accomplishment I’d thought I’d feel if I managed to cry.

I felt manipulated and angry. Trapped.

Because I had to stay. If I walked out now, how could I come back? It would be like walking out on my dream of being onstage. Admitting failure just when I’d finally had a glimpse of what it felt like to be part of a decent show.

And yet, I hated what Morales had made us do. It wasn’t anything I’d ever wanted, to have my emotions jerked around like that by someone I didn’t even like. It wasn’t what I’d meant when I’d asked him how to get there.

I sat, crying and staring at myself in the mirror.

Finally he brought up the lights and asked us to discuss the physical qualities we’d noticed in ourselves, whether we’d actually wept or not. People raised their hands and said stuff. I wasn’t listening.

As we filed out of class, Morales tapped me on the shoulder. I stayed while everyone else went out. “You made progress today,” he said. “You should be proud of yourself.”

For a second I thought, Oh, thank goodness he’s noticed me. He thinks I’m improving. Tamar must have told him I’m good as Rumpleteazer. I’m improving, I’m an actress; Mr. Jacob Morales thinks well of me.

And then I remembered how I felt, and I said, almost without meaning to: “I had a problem with the exercise, actually.”