Making a sandwich with the afterbirth

I handled it with quasi elegance and grace but it was day four and I was breaking down. It wasn’t the fact that our fireball of a musical director swept in and changed what we had planned to do. It was the preceding half hour in which I observed, like a twelve-year-old school dance wallflower, the speed-of-light collaboration that created a four-part harmony to run past her. Pencils and erasers flying around. Half-sentences being finished by one anothers’ guttural expressions of understanding-and-moving-on. Sinking backwards into some tunnel I couldn’t hide in. Asked to deliver edits when I hadn’t even clocked what we created in the first place. Frozen. Naked. Fugly[i]. Music as a second language. The facial diarrhea of tears through laughter. “Don’t. Panic.” she calmly panics me. Everyone’s blood pressure rising. Knowing I’m failing yet refusing to turn back. “We’re gonna…(sob) just…let…this…happen…” I break the ice and blubber to youthful faces that are proud of me at my age. Just letting my face leak and [sort of] sing all at once. And I see it…the starting line.

It had been 14 years since I went through the process of sitting in a room working on harmonies from sheet music which has never been my jam. Before that year’s trauma triggered my seven years of smoking, I was a soprano. I typically sang the melody. I was the ingénue. And there I was…getting my ass humbly handed to me for not computing a low-range string of OOHs. Where the fuck did I go??!? It’s just like riding a bike (that’s been left to rot in a farmyard so long trees are growing through the tires). But I was happy…fuelled by my choice to try again as the human I had turned into over all this time.

Every day I start fresh: “Who I am today is not limited by what became of me yesterday” as I smudge my aura and slap on essential oil blends like Wake Up to All I Can Be and Dive In to it with Courage.

On day one, after (I later learned) I broke most of the how-to-audition rules[ii], they asked me, what do you want to do? … With my life??!?  … and there it was. The skipping record I’d listened to for 18 years. You know…the one where I complain how I’m not doing what I want to do? Super entertaining. And I spewed. (It’s okay…read this bit twice.) My heart cracked open. For the love of all that is sacred and holy could THIS panel of ten be where the story finally landed? Finally ended? And it was! Holy shit now what? I gushed. How grateful I was to be finally giving myself this gift of being in this environment! I would no longer deprive myself of tending to my creative needs! I could have started a frickin’ union. And the lineup of eyes staring back were all turning puffy or red or glassy … except that one guy … I didn’t know if he wanted to hug me or hire me or set me on fire. But as I emotionally wet myself in front of this panel of strangers I knew with every ounce of my being that, even though I fucked up the dance call and really didn’t sing my best, I was - starting right then and there - in a safe enough place to start over. To find home again.

Not dissimilar to many actor’s stories, because of how things were when I was growing up, the only place I ever felt at home was on stage. Although I’d been singing in church as early as I could be left alone with the Sunday school teacher, I really found the stage when I did my first play in grade seven. Missy in R. Eugene Jackson’s Rumpelstiltskin Is My Name. I (realize in hindsight the pros and cons to this but) got a lead role in the drama club play EVERY single year until I graduated high school. However, in my small farming community, that only ever required me to show up. There was no training. No discipline. No classes[iii]. No understanding of craft. And off to the small city I went!

Because of (and I repeat) how things were when I was growing up, it only took one year after graduating from theatre school for serial monogamy and the draw of contributing financially to bully my soul out of playing around. One by one my skills of acting, singing, song writing, playing the flute, movement, and general arts-and-crafting fell into dormancy. Yes, I fought it; but it fought back with the strength of that unfillable hole I tried to satisfy with the wrong things. The one that distracted me from the responsibility of getting on with my life for almost 20 years.

“You had a goal at the beginning of the week; did you meet it?” asked the big-hearted intern that helped me more than twice with choreography one-on-ones. Yes; we’ll call it The Great Unsticking of 2019. Now painfully aware of the pit of shame the performer in me had crawled into, I could choose life rather than the purgatory of wanting it. There was a point during the week where I held my ego gently in both hands and scattered its ashes all over the rehearsal hall, actually craving the stability of square one.

It’s half about continually working your craft, practising, honing your skills, yadda yadda, and half about being comfortable with exposing who you are. No part of the world will be impacted if I have the confidence to let it all hang out alone in my basement. And if my throat closes when I’m in front of another creature…if my body ceases to be okay with how it wants to move…then THAT’s the true starting line. Allowing vulnerability.

The production team told us up front that they weren’t there to give us participation awards. Their ongoing intention, achieved through providing an authentic (yet gentle-ish) industry experience, is to help build careers; to push people down an effective path[iv]. The great success for me was the triad of gaining awareness of where I am, exposing desires of where I’d like to improve, and motivating me to evolve. The choice to jump into a week-long musical theatre intensive to transition out of “office life” didn’t dump me off in a place where I could see my future, considering my practice stayed in the same stasis as my dream for so long. But it DID leave me in a beautiful place - crouching down, sweating, placing my hands firmly next to my feet: ready, and set.

One thing I’ve practised nearly every day for years is writing. I’ve identified a fraction of my identity that I actually identify with (yes it rattles my brain too). So, I wrote something that doesn’t hide my ugly bits and I’m pressing “OK” (that’s the crunchy part). Although visualizing my entire creative future is unattainable at this point, I acknowledge I’ll always know deep down one thing that is a step in the right direction. And I simply know my evolution relies on me always taking that step.

Bang.

[i] Fucking ugly.

[ii] You’re welcome (FYI: these are specific to the world of musical theatre as defined by New York people):

• Cut your resume paper to be 8x10 and staple it (4 corner staples!!!) to the flip side of your 8x10 headshot. No paperclips. No 8.5x11 photos. Don’t print your resume on the back of your headshot.

• Your headshot MUST look like you now. Don’t give them a collage of photos with different looks. If you change a feature drastically, and often, it’s fine to show them a single corner ‘other look’ with your current crazy hair style (or whatevs). Include your name, but don’t put it ON your picture (keep it in the border).

• Your resume should NOT have your weight, age, eye colour, hair colour, or say “non-union”. It is good to put your height, contact information, and vocal range (only if you have a unique vocal thing going on - otherwise they can tell by the first 3 notes you sing). Don’t put credits on your resume that are meaningless or that may bring you down a notch. It’s okay to include a credit from a no-name theatre company or armature experience if it showcases something personally professional that you’re prepared to gush about.

• Your audition book should have a table of contents, with tabs to match it. Have contrasting repertoire options for 16 bars (i.e. 30-45 seconds) and 32 bars (i.e. 45-60 seconds). Anything longer is weird. Music should be hole-punched and in a binder and organized strategically to require the least amount of page flipping as possible.

• Your wardrobe tells them a lot about who you are; be intentional about your brand.

• Be low maintenance. Don’t bring in your water bottle (show them you can last 5 minutes on stage without it), your notebook (have you ever taken notes in an audition?), your folder(s) full of things, your phone (you’re not gonna text them while you’re there), your purse (someone will watch it), etc.

• Walk in the room like you would a job interview (that’s what this is). Be confident and present yourself as someone that they’d actually want to work with. Be cool.

• Don’t shake hands unless they initiate it. Consider it perpetually cold and flu season.

• Upon entry into the room, go directly to the pianist (upstage if possible…they have too many people bend over and show them their butt as a first impression), place your book on the stand, flip to what you’re going to sing (don’t make them decide…that’s high maintenance), and take a moment to tap on your chest (no finger snapping) to show the pianist the tempo and feel you want to sing to.

• Plan to sing your best song first…you may only get one opportunity. Don’t announce what song your going to sing unless they ask you (they know them all…just sing it.).

• If you forget your words do not apologize. Don’t blame the pianist (it’s always your fault no matter what). It’s okay (once) to gracefully and efficiently start over.

• If the music is too quiet for you to hear and follow along, it’s okay to stop and kindly ask for more volume. If the music is too loud…suck it up.

• Don’t sing directly TO them (i.e. gazing awkwardly into their eyes). Let them be in the audience and put yourself on stage.

• And remember…you don’t have control over their vision, their mood, who’s in the room, the competition, if you are sick or not. Just do your best, be grateful that today you got an opportunity to practice your craft, and be cool enough to maintain these relationships.

[iii] Not being a part of our curriculum, the only reason I had theatre in my life growing up was because of the school culture and the generosity of those teachers that volunteered their personal time.

[iv] It was like they brought a glass of water to a city that doesn’t know it’s dehydrated; I guess even a city starts somewhere.