New Year's Letter: A Bit of Heaven in '11

I love those newsletters that people sometimes send with their Christmas cards each year, but most folks make fun of them, at least in my experience.  So, I don't ever send one (the fact that my Christmas cards always feature a picture of myself is cause for enough ridicule).  But perhaps I can duck all that ridicule by, instead, writing a newsy New Year's Note.

2011 was one of my better years in recent memory, though it began with absolutely nothing positive on the horizon.  On January 1st, I had no jobs lined up, and no prospects. 

All that changed at the end of the month, when somebody dropped out of the Olney Theatre's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, after one rehearsal.  I was working the front desk at our annual local Equity auditions when the casting director, the lovely and talented Brad Watkins, grabbed me by the arm and said, "Get your Equity ass to my theatre at 2:00, you're hired."  I started rehearsal that very day, and had a blast playing dual roles.  Wearing a skanky beard which completely covered my face, I played Joseph's father, Jacob, and in another sequence, I enjoyed a little song-and-dance as Potiphar, a rich Egyptian.

By the time we finished the run, nobody in Joe's Coat  even remembered that I was a replacement.  I was surrounded by some of the strongest singer/dancer/actors in the DC area;  the cast was littered with Helen Hayes winners and nominees, all of them playing one of my sons or one of my wives. 

I really loved the concept of this production (the show itself is not one of my favorites), but more, I was grateful to get the opportunity to work with this big group of talent.

That same audition during which I so unexpectedly snagged the gig at Olney Theatre, I was approached by the artistic director of Wayside Theatre, the lovely and talented Warner Crocker.  "Do you know the play The Nerd?" he asked.  I did not, but he urged me to read it, with an eye to playing a role in his upcoming production.

Several weeks later, I was spending the day as an extra on a big-budget film which was blowing through town (I don't know the name of it, but it's the one with Julianne Moore playing Sarah Palin). 

During the long stretches of boredom, I bumped into an acquaintance, the lovely and talented Bill Diggle.  "What are you working on?" I asked, knowing that he was always working on something.  "The Nerd," he answered.  "Really?" I responded, "I'm getting ready to do it!"  "I know," he said dryly, "I'm directing you in it."  Turns out that Warner was ducking out of directing the play in order to take care of some administrative duties.

No harm was done.  The Nerd turned out to be one of my all-time favorite theatrical experiences.  Warner knew what he was doing when he cast me as the wise-cracking neighbor with a secret agenda; it was the best part I've had in quite a while. 

The experience was capped by the visit of my whole family, who gathered from North Carolina, Georgia, and New York, to celebrate my father's birthday, and to see the show.  A year earlier, the family had gifted me with a very special Christmas present: a donor's brick on the wall of Wayside Theatre. 

Between Joe's Coat and The Nerd, the little independent movie I shot in 2010 was released.  And by "released," I mean it was self-distributed by the producers.  I understand that they had been submitting the film to various festivals around the world, and no one had nibbled.  A Modest Suggestion  can now be purchased here, and streamed here, as a one-week rental on Amazon.  I bought about 8 copies, and gave them as Christmas presents.  Who wouldn't want a Christmas present which starred me?

My unemployment had run out by the time I snagged another unexpected gig in September.  Once again, someone from Olney Theatre had dropped out of a show, though this time, it was a couple of weeks before rehearsal began.  The lovely and talented Brad Watkins put an emergency note on Facebook, asking for suggestions of replacements. 

The role, Carter in Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, was a very small one, so small that I wondered if Olney was looking for a non-union actor to play it.  Nevertheless, I dropped Brad an email suggesting myself for the role.  A week later, I was auditioning for the director, and a day or so after that, I was offered the gig.

I'll never make fun of Facebook again.

So, for the second time this year, I landed a job because somebody else quit.  Who cares? I had a lovely time with the show, though the timing of the gig caused some challenges with my personal life.  In the midst of rehearsals, I was notified that I was being awarded a subsidized apartment in Manhattan Plaza, an artists' complex right off Times Square in New York. 

It was a flukey lark that I landed on the waiting list for such a place, back in July of 2003.  It took 8 years, but my name finally rose to the top, and on Halloween, I spent my first night in Apt #29G at ManPlaza. 

It still seems like I'm camping when I'm there, as there is no furniture to speak of, and a blowup mattress serves as my sleeping arrangements.  But the opportunity is too good to pass up, so for the foreseeable future, I will be Bi-Urban, splitting my time between NY and DC as duty dictates.

The year ended with my annual trips to Los Angeles and to North Carolina, so I put Real Life on hold for a bit of Holiday Cheer.  Only now is it sinking in, that I should be dipping my toe into the New York lifestyle, whatever that means.  And I'm ending the year right where I started, with no work on the horizon, but this time, I'm not so worried.  (Yet.)  A lot of people would consider 2011 pretty lousy, and I won't argue, but for me, it was a pretty good year.  I can only hope for more of the same.

Friday Dance Party: Dream A Little Dream in a Paper Bag

The anniversary of Cass Elliot's death is today, so she is the star of this week's Dance Party. As one of my favorite old-timers, she has graced these pages several times in the past, including one of the more bizarre clips in the history of this series. In fact, the very song which Elliot is singing below appeared here, in a very different context, last year, when I was reminiscing about the little British film, Beautiful Thing.

This particular tune is the biggest hit Cass had as a solo artist (in fact, though it is remembered as her breakout solo hit, the song was recorded with Elliot's group The Mamas and The Papas, with Cass singing the lead. As the release date neared for the single, the group was clearly falling apart, so ABC/Dunhill, the record company in question, gave Cass separate billing on the recording, a move which angered Papa John Phillips and which hastened the group's disintegration). Her rendition of this song, which was written way back in 1931 and recorded by Ozzie Nelson's band and everybody else under the sun, has become the definitive version. And it crosses my mind, and lips, during every performance of The Nerd, in which I have been appearing at Wayside Theatre.

There is a moment in this very silly comedy in which the characters play a parlor game dreamed up by the eponymous nerd. The rules involve shoes, socks, and paper bags, as you can see:

During the game, the contestants are required to stick their fingers in their ears, turn around in circles, and hum. This ain't Noel Coward, folks, but it gets its share of guffaws. The song which I inevitably hum under that paper bag is "Dream a Little Dream of Me." I have a hunch it does not rival the rendition below. We're still playing your music, Cass!

The Good Samaritan and the Unexpected Understudy

It was a pretty hectic two weeks, getting The Nerd up and running out at Wayside Theatre, more on that in a mo'. But I was very, very glad to pull up to my condo building late Sunday afternoon. After an awkward matinee that day (during which I knocked a full cup of drawing pencils off the table, dumping dozens of pencils onto the stage floor, gotta love live theatre), and a very hot 90 minute drive back to DC, I was ready to relax for a few days. 'Twas not to be.


Monday morning, as I was lazily preparing to head out into the heat to run some errands, my cell phone rang. A woman who does not know me, nor I her, was calling in a neighborly fashion, to alert me that a black bag had been delivered to her doorstep in the middle of the night. According to the label, the bag belonged to me.

I hurried downstairs with a sinking feeling which was justified as soon as I stepped outside. My car had been burgled in the night, the glove box had been ransacked, and my trunk emptied. Well, not completely emptied: the thief had left behind the skanky towels I use at the gym. But the black bag which contained my laptop was gone. I was feeling quite the fool as I walked around the corner to the neighbor's house to retrieve my empty bag. (Well, again, the bag was not completely empty: the thief had apparently been unimpressed with my 8x10 headshots, and had left them behind. Everybody's a critic.)

It was my own stupidity which made the Big Heist possible. My car was not broken into, I had apparently left it unlocked. And it was more stupidity which persuaded me my laptop would be safe overnight in the trunk. For several hours on Monday, I kicked myself for my oversight, even as I recognized the ridiculousness of the feelings. I, the victim, was feeling guilty, while the perp was happily walking around with my laptop. (And several dollars worth of quarters, which he had also snatched from the car. Even lowlifes have to feed the meters in DC.)

Such things happen regularly when living in urban settings, which is where I choose to live, so what the hell. I suppose I should feel lucky that the sleaze did not know how to start a car without a key, as I drive a Honda Civic, and I'm told they are prized on the hot car market.

I was feeling violated for a couple of hours, but it is amazing how a gig improves my mood, no matter what is going on. The Nerd is in full swing now, after a rocky final rehearsal period.

One of our actors took ill only a few days before our opening, and it was determined that he could not perform our first weekend. Wayside, like most theaters its size, cannot afford understudies, so our director stepped into the breach. Luckily, Bill Higgle is an actor as well as director, with strong comedic chops which he showed to great advantage during our two preview performances, and again opening night. After only two rehearsal days, he was able to bring a lively tempo and hysterical timing to the character, which is several decades too old for him, but nobody cared. Bill infused his time on stage with real drive, and his performance proved the pace necessary for his scenes to be truly funny. I had a great time with Bill onstage, and was sorry to see him return to DC, his home base, once his performance was no longer needed. The experience was another in a long line of "The Show Must Go On" stories which all actors cherish.

We have two more weeks of the show, afterwhich, who knows what's coming next?

Nerd Notes: Furniture Booties

As we head into the third and final week of rehearsals for The Nerd at Wayside Theatre, I have to mention the unusual space in which we conducted our initial rehearsals. Our first two weeks were largely spent in the ballroom of a private home in Winchester, VA.. Apparently there is a generous patron of Wayside who has offered the use of his ballroom as rehearsal space. The building is an old and stately home, with a huge front porch greeting us every day, plus wood floors everywhere and banistered stairways leading to the third floor ballroom.

The building has a pleasant aroma of aged wood, and reminds me of the grand house I visited twice during my early childhood, where a great-grandmother lived.

This rehearsal space is located in a real showplace, but since people actually live there, we were not offered a guided tour. But as a former waiter, I felt sorry for the hired help who must serve whatever functions happen in the ballroom, as it's three flights away from the kitchen. The house is big enough to accommodate a back staircase (I inadvertently took it one day, and landed in the kitchen), so guests were not required to bump into the servants on their way to the Big Event upstairs.

My previous shows at Wayside have been rehearsed in the council room of Middletown, VA's town hall. That room was conveniently located across the street and across a parking lot from the theatre itself, and I have no idea why that space is no longer used for rehearsals. Anyhoo, nowadays, the first few weeks of rehearsal for Wayside's shows are conducted about 10 miles down the road from the theatre, in that swanky ballroom sitting atop the stately home.

There was nothing whatsoever unpleasant about this arrangement, but I started thinking about the various rehearsal spaces in which I have worked over the years. Rehearsal space always seems a challenge to theater companies, no matter what their size. The lucky theatre companies which are attached to universities fare pretty well with their rehearsal spaces; Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre, for example, is located on the campus of Shenandoah University, so they have access to some of the rehearsal/practice halls which students use during the school year. The Kennedy Center has lots of rehearsal space, and Olney Theatre, where I just finished working, now has a rehearsal hall located in their new theatre building.

But throughout most of my career, it has been rare to rehearse a show on the same campus in which it is performed. Wayside occasionally enlists their own bar/cafe for such uses, but has no actual rehearsal space on their property, and that is in no way unusual. Even huge theaters such as The Shakespeare Theatre in DC rehearse their shows largely off-site. This fact has always perplexed me, particularly when companies build their own theaters. The Shakes, for example, recently spent more than 80 million dollars constructing a state-of-the-art theatre, but failed to include appropriate rehearsal space. Ford's Theatre, the oldest theatre in DC (and one of the oldest in the country) recently underwent a multi-million dollar makeover, and did not include rehearsal space in their redesign (their shows are rehearsed on the top floor of a church building several blocks away). Until their recent revamp, Arena Stage, considered one of the grandfathers of all regional theaters, rehearsed their shows in a mini-mall down the street. The fact that rehearsal space is not considered a vital and necessary part of a theatrical facility baffles me.

But back to the current gig. The ballroom in which The Nerd has been rehearsing has beautiful wood floors. The gang at Wayside spent a lot of energy hauling rehearsal furniture up those 3 flights, and to insure the integrity of those floors, we spent some time during the first rehearsal tying makeshift protection on all the furniture. (Moments like these make me love working with small theater companies, who are always confronted with problems which must be solved in creative ways.) We have since moved into the theatre proper, so I don't expect to see that ballroom again anytime soon, but I won't soon forget the sight of our various chairs and tables spread out across the ballroom floor, wearing booties.

Happy Dancing And A Nerd Note

The mood has improved quite a bit around here this week, and not all of it has to do with the Marriage Equality now achieved in one of the country's most populous states. Sure, I'm happy about the development, and I'm not the only one to recognize the significance of the vote happening so close to Gay Pride Day. I've written several times about the Gay Pride celebrations which happen all over the country these days, not all of them occurring during June, which is Gay Pride Month. But there certainly seems a nice symmetry to the historic vote in New York on Friday, since today marks the 42nd Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, commonly recognized as the official beginning of the modern gay rights movement.

Yeah, yeah, enough of that. I've had a busy week on my own, I'm sure you're dying to read all about it. I've been trying to get life in order before heading out to lovely Wayside Theatre ("the little theater with the big heart") for some summer stock fun. I've worked there a couple of times in the past, including a gig as Sancho Panza in Man of La Mancha, about which I wrote extensively at the time. Haven't been back in a few years, so I was pleased as punch when artistic director and Grand Pooh Bah Warner Crocker approached me last January, at our annual Equity auditions. He suggested I read a play called The Nerd. I had heard of it but had never seen the piece, so I ordered a copy online and read it within a week or so. It is one of the very few scripts I have ever read which caused me to laugh out loud, so I dropped Warner an email that I enjoyed the play and would be available for the summer run.

Many weeks passed, during which I was unexpectedly involved in Joe's Coat out at Olney Theatre (you remember that story, right?), but a month or so ago, I received word that I would in fact be returning to Wayside to play in The Nerd. I won't be playing the actual nerd, whatever you people think, but will be playing the dry theater critic who lives downstairs. Perfect casting, if you ask me.

I had assumed all along that the lovely and talented Warner would be directing the play, as he directs 99.99% of the shows at Wayside, but here's a funny story. Several weeks ago, I agreed to do one day's extra work (excuse me: "background work") for a film for HBO which had been shooting in the area. I dislike extra work (excuse me: "atmospheric artistry") with a vengeance, but I've been out of work since early April, so I bit the bullet and agreed to spend a very long day in a tent on the parking lot of a warehouse where a crucial scene of the film was being shot. It was an excruciatingly hot, humid, and dull day, but we went into overtime, which means the SAG (union) actors made some bucks.

During the hours and hours of waiting around in the hot tent, I recognized Bill Diggle across the way. I have only met Bill a few times, at auditions or, more frequently, at Opening Nights at Wayside (either his or mine). His head was buried in a script so I left him alone. He works all the time, though I try not to hold that against him too much. Anyway, I finally bumped into him an hour or so into the day. The encounter went something like this:

Me: "I didn't want to interrupt you while you were buried in your script. What are you working on? You work all the time so I hate you." (okay, that last sentence was only in my head)

Bill Diggle (BD): "I'm doing The Nerd."

Me: "Really? I'm getting ready to do The Nerd!"

BD (dryly): "I know. I'm directing you in it."

This was how I discovered that the guy I thought would be directing my show, wasn't. Not that it matters, I have a hunch the young and talented Bill Diggle will be a hoot to work with, and I've heard this arrangement will allow Warner to spend some time reorganizing Wayside's administration, insuring that the venerable theater moves well into its second half-century. Yes, The Nerd is part of Wayside Theatre's 50th Anniversary season, and I'm pretty pleased to be a part of that celebration.

So this week, I've been doing the Happy Dance. I'll be heading out to rural Virginia today, and we'll begin rehearsal tomorrow. I have a strong suspicion that I'll be issuing regular updates on our progress, as I did with Man of La Mancha. Stay tuned. And, if you are reading this on June 27, remember those brave men in heels who ignited the Stonewall Riots 42 years ago, and hug a homosexual.