Dramarama (8 page)

“Nothing.” Candie buried her face in her pillow.

“You’re a soprano,” pushed Nanette. “You must know ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ Sing that.”

“I don’t think I know it. Not really.”

“Or ‘The Sound of Music’?”

Candie shook her head.

“You don’t know ‘The Sound of Music,’ are you joking?”

“No.”

“There must be something. ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’? A song from
Jekyll & Hyde
?”

“Not a capella,” said Candie. “I can’t sing those a capella.”

“Aw, leave her alone,” I moaned. “She can sing ‘Memory’ if she wants to.”

“Only if she wants to seem like she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“There’s nothing else she can do.”

Candie was silent.

“I was just trying to help,” huffed Nanette, getting into bed and pulling up the covers.

T
HE NEXT DAY
of monologues and songs was like the first. A string of faces, all nervous.

Iz was fiery and cute onstage—much more attractive than she was up close, and she sang “Sandra Dee” with that gritty belt, and so much polish to the jokes and gestures that you could tell she’d done it in a real show the summer before.

The night before, Blake and Demi had failed to get on the roof of the dance building, as Lyle had predicted, but they’d kissed in the staircase until curfew. Which was probably Blake’s plan in the first place.

“Just kissing?” I whispered to Demi as we sat in the audience.

Demi slapped my hand. “I’ve only known the boy two days! I’m saving myself for marriage.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah.”

“We have a whole lovely summer stretching out in front of us,” said Demi dreamily. “Me and Blake, Blake and me.”

I hoped he was right.

And then, if I’m being honest, I hoped he wasn’t.

C
ANDIE WAS
number 115—quite near the end—and she sat between me and Iz after lunch, when Demi went to sit with Blake. Her pink skin was sweaty, and she’d done her white-blond hair in a pair of pigtails that made her look like a farm girl. She didn’t say a word, and I thought about how hard it must be to be so close to last, watching all those talented people take the stage.

Sitting there, I felt a kinship with her. Candie and me, we were the also-rans here. Neither of us was exactly pretty, and neither of us could compete with girls like Iz—much less with girls like Nanette. We were the ones who should probably pack up our dreams, take them home with us at the end of the summer, and stick them down in our family’s basements.

I resolved to be nicer to her even though she didn’t thrill me—even though her needy spirit grated on me and made me want to shake her—because I was sure she felt the same way I did.

Candie’s group was called, and I sat through two back-to-back renditions of “Out Tonight” from
Rent
, followed by one guy who attempted to sing a song from
Avenue Q
in which he pretended his two hands were Muppets, and a lame fellow whose singing was so bad that I don’t even know what he sang.

Candie went up and stood center stage. “I forgot my sheet music,” she said. “Or, well. Actually, I changed my song.”

“That’s all right,” came Morales’s thin, high voice. “Begin with the monologue, please.”

Candie’s speech was from
The Diary of Anne Frank
— and thing was, all her lack of self-consciousness—her
Jekyll
obsession, her ex-boyfriend hang-up, her awkward style, the fact that being around her was like being around an open, gaping wound and you wanted to beg her, please, to bandage herself up—it was brilliant onstage. She was honest.

And then she sang. A capella, she launched into “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Now, if you’ve ever had to sing that song in a school assembly, you’ll know that it is really, really difficult. It goes way low down, and very high. The “rockets red glare” part is a disaster for most people. But Candie—her voice swooped up to the top notes like a dove. She tipped her soft, round face up to the balcony and raised her arms as she got to the end, every note creamy and clear.

“Well,” muttered Iz. “She’ll give Nanette a run for her money, now won’t she?”

T
HE CAST LISTS
were posted the next morning at eight a.m. on a kiosk in the center of campus. After we looked at them, we were supposed to proceed to breakfast and our first day of regular classes and rehearsals.

Nanette was too cool to go at eight and said she was going to take advantage of the empty bathroom, but Candie, Iz, and I ran out early. When we got there, the five posted lists were obscured by a crowd of people—nearly all of Wildewood was already there to see. The girls had no makeup, the boys had bed head. Everyone was squealing and jumping in glee, talking and clutching each other’s arms. “We’re together!” “I knew you’d get a good part!” “I’m so excited!” “It’s gonna be a great show.”

I looked for my name first on the list for
Little Shop of Horrors
(which has such a small cast that there are no bad parts), then on
Bye Bye Birdie
next to it.

Not on either one.

Then
Cats
, which wasn’t a show I wanted, but which was such a dance-centered project I actually had a decent chance of getting a good part.

Not there either.

Then
Show Boat
.

No.

I looked again at
Cats
, thinking maybe I’d missed myself, since I wasn’t used to seeing Sadye in print.

But no.

People were all around me, pushing and exclaiming. My throat closed up as I moved my way to the end of the bulletin board so I could scan the list for
Midsummer
.

There it was. Sadye Paulson.

I was playing a character I didn’t even remember, though I’d read the play in English class. Peter Quince.

I was playing a man.

Apparently, I wasn’t even recognizably female.

I wanted to be happy for my friends, but tears had made my cheeks wet before I even realized I was crying.

I tried to remember what Morales said about humility; about subduing the ego for the good of the show.

I tried to think that doing Shakespeare would be wonderful training for my career. I told myself I still had a long summer of acting classes and voice lessons and rehearsals—and that at least I was out of Ohio.

It just seemed so unfair, not to have what I’d been dreaming about for months.

Not to have a chance.

I could see Demi on the other side of the crowd, jumping up and down. He was playing the title character in
Bye Bye Birdie
—but I didn’t go up with my congratulations. I knew I should, but I choked on the words and turned back toward the dorm.

That was my first mistake with him.

N
ANETTE WAS
in our room, drying her hair. “How’d it go?” she asked.

I swallowed hard. “You wanna know what you got?”

“Don’t tell me!”

“All right . . .”

“No,
do
tell me,” she begged. And for once her hard face looked open.

“Julie in
Show Boat
.”

It was a big part. Nanette danced around the room.

And at that moment, I hated her. She had everything I wanted.

Everything.

“Candie got Audrey in
Little Shop
,” I said quietly. And I hated myself as I said it, even though I knew Nanette would find out eventually, because she stopped dancing and the hardness came back into her face.

I could see I’d taken away her moment of happiness. It was the part she had wanted.

“Someone had to get it.” She shrugged.

But she wasn’t that good of an actress.

I gave her the rest of the rundown. Demi as the rock star in
Bye Bye Birdie
. Iz as the fiery Latin secretary who dreams of a split-level house and marriage. Blake was playing a boring part in
Show Boat
.

Then I told her about
Midsummer
. “Lyle’s in it with me,” I said as cheerily as I could. “He’s playing Bottom, so it should be kinda fun.”

But underneath I was in a downward spiral, thinking, Everyone who can dance at
all
is in
Cats
, except me.

Am I not the dancer I thought I was?

Is my singing so bad that they won’t even let me leap around in a stripy unitard because I’ll pull the whole chorus off-key?

Why do they think I should play a man? I don’t look like a man.

Do I?

Do I?

I shouldn’t be here. My name got mixed up with someone else’s, and some poor girl with loads of talent is sitting home somewhere in Ohio, rejected, when she should be here instead of me.

“Earth to Sadye,” barked Nanette. “What about the ten-day wonder, sweet pea? Are we in it?”

I was startled out of my misery. I didn’t know.

How could I not know? How could I not have checked?

“We have to go find out,” said Nanette. “Come on!”

So back we went, and heard that Reanne hadn’t posted the ten-day wonder cast until eight thirty— explaining to the cluster of Wilders who stood around the bulletin board that Morales had left his final decisions until the morning, which is why it went up late.

Nanette was the long-suffering cabaret performer, Miss Adelaide. Candie had the other female lead: Sarah, an upright mission worker who falls in love with a handsome rake of a gambler, Sky Masterson—to be played by Demi.

Lyle was small-time thug Nicely-Nicely Johnson, and Blake played a police officer, Lieutenant Brannigan. Theo was Benny Southstreet, another gambler who opens the show singing a trio, “Fugue for Tinhorns.” James was Rusty Charlie.

And there, down at the bottom under Dancing Hot Box Girls, was my name. Sadye Paulson.

I was in.

In the ten-day wonder. Directed by Jacob Morales, of the Broadway big time.

And for that moment, though it was short-lived, I didn’t care if I didn’t have a speaking part, didn’t care if I wasn’t a lead, didn’t care. Because in was in was in was in.

WILDEWOOD SUMMER INSTITUTE SCHEDULE

Sadye Paulson

8 a.m. Breakfast

9 –10:30 MWF: Advanced Dance (Sutton)

T/Th/Sat: Acting (Morales)

10:45 –12 MWF: Pantomime (Ellerby)

T/Th/Sat: Singing (De Witt)

12 –1 Lunch

1– 5 Afternoon Rehearsal

5:15–6:30 MWF: Stage Combat (Smith)

T/Th/Sat: Restoration Comedy (Kurtz)

6:45 Dinner

8:30–10:30 p.m. Evening Recreation/Evening Rehearsal

11:30 p.m. Curfew

I
HAD MORALES
for Acting, nine a.m.—but I was late. I had been looking forward to the class since I’d first seen my schedule, and was even more excited now that I knew I was in his show—but the lines at breakfast were long, because everyone had stayed outside waiting for the
Guys and Dolls
list to go up. We only had twenty minutes to get food and eat, and I knew I wouldn’t make it through my classes if I didn’t eat at least a yogurt.

It was 9:05 when I got through the door. Morales was seated on a stool, lecturing a crowd of twenty students who sat on the floor of the classroom. He stopped when I entered.

“We’ve done the introductions already.” His eyes were steely. “And you are?”

“Sadye Paulson.”

“Sadye, please join the group.”

I sat down, and Morales waited until I was settled before he continued talking. “I see we are going to have to begin at the very, very beginning, instead of at the advanced level a group like this
should
be operating on. Why?” He looked at me directly. “Because, Sadye, when an actor is even five minutes late for rehearsal, the way you were late for class today, that actor is being unprofessional. She is compromising the forward momentum of the production she’s been cast in, not only because she’s wasted the five minutes of every member of her cast, the director, the choreographer, the assistant director, the assistant choreographer, and the stage manager, which easily amounts to wasting more than an hour— more than an hour, people!—but also because she’s creating an environment where people don’t care about what they’re doing.”

Demi, sitting next to me, patted my arm.

“If the spear-carrier in the back row is less than fully committed,” continued Morales, “a production suffers. The ensemble creating the theatrical work begins to erode—and that erosion, that lack of total commitment, can be detected by the audience. Do you understand me?”

We all nodded.

“And the same holds true for acting class. For dance, for voice, for singing, for everything you do here, and for everything you do when you return home. The starting place must be your commitment, because without that, we cannot work. I cannot help you. That commitment exists in your heart, or even deeper—in your cells—but it also has to be in your feet. Because they get you here on time. Every day. The commitment exists in your shoulder bag, because you carry your scripts and your dance shoes, and everything else you need to learn your craft and create your art. It should exist in your memories, because you learn your lines days before you’re required to be off-book. In your body, as you eat well and get enough sleep so you can participate to your best ability.
That
is the starting place.
That
is what you need to learn, and I’m sorry to see you starting off the summer like beginners instead of professionals”—at this point, several people gave me dirty looks—“but I hope and trust you have the drive and motivation to learn.” Morales looked at his watch. “Because now we’ve lost fifteen minutes of our class period on this remedial lecture I’ve had to give you, and we don’t have time for the acting exercise I had planned. Instead, I want all of you to find a space on the floor and lie quietly, using this time to think over what I’ve said, and renew your commitment in your cells. At the cellular level, people.”

We stood up in silence, shuffling to find spaces on the cool rehearsal room floor, and lie down. I wanted to curl into a ball and cry from embarrassment, but everyone else was peacefully on their backs, so I swallowed hard and did the same.

Morales, once we were settled, walked out of the room.