Chapter 3: Auditions
Monday after school was the first tech meeting. Alexa was there, still the only taker for stage managing. Sarah Grasso, a junior who had been working on costumes, and two sophomore boys interested in lights and sets. Most kids got involved in the nonacting roles after they didn't get a part, but there were those who, like myself, wanted to be behind the scenes.
Alexa proved to be well-organized; by Tuesday morning she had already posted the audition sign-up sheet, and had a typed-up list for me Friday afternoon. Looked like she'd be a good stage manager, one who might actually help – I've worked with some that required way more hand-holding than I really had time for. Although she smoked, though not in front of me. The acrid smell of stale smoke preceded Alexa each time she entered the room. For some reason, cigarettes seemed to be an integral part of the acting world, even in high school. Odd for people who needed their voices.
As we sat in the auditorium going through the script, Alexa asked me how I was going to turn As You Like It into a musical. "Who said it was going to be a musical?" I asked.
"Oh, I know you always end up doing a musical," she said. "At least, that's what you've done the past two years."
It was true. I did like doing musicals, almost as much as Shakespeare. Which reminded me -- many think As You Like It was staged as a musical, because some of the dialogue is so lyrical. I opened my valise for my copy of the script, and saw a pile of song sheets I had stuffed in and forgotten to remove. I pulled them out, considering.
Auditions can be a both a painful and revealing process. Revealing who has thespian aspirations, who has actual talent, and painful because many don't, but want to. As the one behind the scenes, I found the experience oddly exhilarating, experiencing that feeling of anticipation vicariously, without the inevitable parallel of disappointment. And, to be honest, that's another lure of directing. The power of determining who will be who, rather than having hope hinge on other's decisions.
Several student s I didn't know tried out for Rosalind. The afternoon was stretching out. I checked the clock; I was meeting Chris that night for a late dinner. We usually met every week or so, but it had been almost a month. Tonight, she said, she had something "important" to tell me. Probably what I had been avoiding. "Who's next?" I asked Alexa.
"Grace Manning."
A familiar face. I was curious to see how she would do. I grabbed a script and stood. "I know her," I said. I also knew she'd probably have read the play oh, once or twice, and likely memorized Rosalind's concluding soliloquy. So I thought I'd test her with something in the middle of the play. I jumped on the stage and handed her a copy of the script, and recited Silvius's line, "'My errand is to you, fair youth. My gentle Phoebe did bid me give you this." I pointed to the middle of the page and added, "Act. IV, scene III. Pardon me. I am but as a guiltless messenger."
Grace didn't miss a beat. "Patience herself would startle at this letter," She began. I moved back and watched her as she fell into the role, reading the lines with the annoyance they required, smoothly, easily.
"And play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all:
She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;
She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
Were man as rare as phoenix. 'Od's my will!
Her love is not the hare that I do hunt:
Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well,
This is a letter of your own device."
I had found my Rosalind. And I knew what I wanted to do with the play musically as well. "Okay," I said, cutting her off. She stepped off the stage. "Many of you probably know I like musicals. So I thought –"
"There's one more audition," Alexa interrupted. "For Phoebe. Jessie Sammler"
A slight girl walked timidly on stage. I looked at the clock again. I was doing okay for time. I handed the script to Jessie and pointed to the latter part of a speech in Act III. She began hesitantly, stumbling over a couple words, but her voice grew stronger, wistful, ironic as she read.
"I have more cause to hate him than to love him:
For what had he to do to chide at me?
He said mine eyes were black and my hair black:
And, now I am remember'd, scorn'd at me:
I marvel why I answer'd not again:
But that's all one; omittance is no quittance.
I'll write to him a very taunting letter,
And thou shalt bear it: wilt thou, Silvius?"
While she read, a group of kids behind me began whispering. Including Grace. I turned, annoyed, and Grace stopped. Sammler, I recognized the name suddenly – that was the name of Grace's step-father. So this Jessie – she must be Porcelain, who Grace wrote about. And she was good too, perfect for Phoebe, really, but I thought I'd include her in the callbacks for Rosalind, since I liked to have at least three names for a callback. That would probably bother Grace, I realized. I found myself wondering with an odd anticipation exactly how she would react.
"Thank you," I said, as Jessie finished reading. She started to walk off stage. "Wait, Miss Sammler – stay right there. Now. About the music. I am going to add folk music to the play. Yep. The music of weird old America." I looked around. "How great is that?" The students looked confused, not sure what to make of this development.
"No one told us we'd have to sing," complained a boy.
"I know," I said. Considering I didn't know it myself until 10 minutes ago.
Grace asked, "Do you want us to sing, like, today?"
Why not? I looked at the clock again. I still had two hours – shouldn't be a problem. I began passing out the song sheets. "We'll work backwards in order of the auditions," I said. "Which means, Miss Sammler," I turned to where Jessie was on stage still, "You can go first." I handed her the sheets.
"You want me to sing," she asked nervously. "I don't think I know any of these."
"Then sing anything."
She looked at the songs again and said, "Oh, I kind of know this one from camp." And she began to sing. Clear, sweet, strong, much stronger than her acting voice. All whispering in the auditorium ceased. My God. I didn't want to breath Wow. Usually I poker face during audition, but not this time. "I love it!" I exclaimed.
I heard someone say, "Mr. Dimitri," jarring the mood. I turned, still reveling in that voice. It was Cynthia, who I had pegged as a secondary role, maybe an understudy for Rosalind. "I have to say I think this is totally unfair that we have to do this like this?"
I don't blame her. The proverbial hard act to follow. "How would you like to do it?"
Grace answered for her. "We should be given time to practice. It's unreasonable for you to assume that everyone is comfortable just singing just like that."
"You seem to feel pretty strongly about this, Miss Manning." Up in arms with a verbose argument.
"We all do," Grace said, looking around. There were nods. And it was getting late. There were a lot of auditions to go through.
"Fair enough," I said. "I'm not a complete sadist. Yet. Okay. Those of you who get called back should be prepared to sing one of these songs. Those of you who don't get called back should learn these songs regardless, for your own enrichment." Weak laughter. "Okay. Callbacks will be posted… Wednesday. Thanks everybody."
***
At dinner that night I talked about the try-outs, and Chris made set suggestions. I asked her about her important news. She changed the subject, then said her gallery had been selected for the city's gallery tour – great publicity. But that wasn't what she had called to tell me. I knew her.
It was while I was directing a play that I first met Chris. We became caffeine buddies while working on a production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead. My favorite of all his plays, because of that Shakespeare connection. I was directing and she was designing sets, and we saw eye to eye from the start. There certainly was a flirtation there, but we were both involved with other people then, and play productions are laden with flirtations onstage and off – you never know what's real. And we were only 20, 21.
We worked on other plays together, graduated, went separate ways and wrote or called periodically -- stayed in touch through my books, through her stint at the Design School, mine in India, and reconnected after not having seen each other for six years, when I came back to Chicago for my teaching certificate and she came to be assistant curator of decorative arts at the Museum. And ended up in bed that night. "We should have done this a long time ago," I remember saying, and she grinned and rolled on top of me. We moved in together less than a month later.
Were we happy? There were long stretches of bliss. I thought she was It. She was one of the few people I knew who got my obscure literary references and had read all of Shakespeare's works for fun. "I might have missed a few sonnets," she'd say. For a couple years I could be oblivious and ignore the fact that she ignored some of my questions. Like marriage. And children. I wanted to get married, settle down, have kids, the way my parents had. Here I was, pushing 37, with only a glint in my eye.
"Why get married? Were fine with each other!" Chris would say. "A piece of paper's not going to change anything!"
"What about children?"
And always she'd put off the topic of children. "Did I tell you I got that job with Second City?" she'd deflect. Finally, when I kept switching the conversation back, she came out with it.
"What do you need children for? You've got all those kids in high school. That's plenty of children."
"It's not the same as little Chrises and Augusts crawling around underfoot," I pushed her further.
"Gus," she said, the only one who could ever call me that. "I don't want kids. I really don't. I know I'm a woman, I'm supposed to want children, but I don't. I don't want to adopt them, I don't want to give birth to them. I love you, and I want to spend my life with you, but if you want kids so much, it's not going to be with me."
I moved out gradually. Found the house near the school – I could bike there in warmer weather. And that was that. Though we still saw each other, and occasionally slept together; in three years, neither of us had found someone else. At least, I hadn't. I had the feeling, lately, that Chris had, but was avoiding telling me. I was avoiding her telling me too. Although our arrangement wasn't ideal, it was better than nothing. And I thought, how ironic it was; we broke up so I could find someone to have children with, and three years later my only progeny would still be the books I sired before I was 25.
***
After dinner, Chris invited me back to her condo. She poured us each a scotch, then came and sat next to me on the couch. We sipped Bowman's 21 year – she always had the good stuff. "So the gallery's doing well," I said, waiting to hear what she wanted to say.
"Very well. Supplemented by the set designs, of course." She turned and took my glass from me and put it on the coffee table. "Gus," she began, then leaned over and kissed me, her lips smoky from the scotch. I responded warmly – it had been at least three months since we last spent the night together. She began to unbutton my shirt. I leaned forward and kissed her neck She caressed my shoulders.
"I'm getting married," I heard her above me, voice muffled through her throat. I pulled back and she leaned down and tried to kiss my lips again. "Gus?"
I reached past her for my scotch, gulped the burning liquid.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I was kissing your neck. I thought I heard you say you're getting married."
"I did." She moved back to sit next to me, her thigh still pressed against mine.
"Married."
"Married."
"So…?" I touched her lips, then mine.
"I don't know. I'm confused. You've been part of my life for so long, I just thought I needed to be with you again to be sure."
"Sure?"
"That Barry's the right one. That I'm making the right decision."
I shifted my leg away. "This seems rather sudden. "
She sipped her scotch. "It's not. I've known Barry for a while – he's one of my regular artists."
"Barry Bruno? That abstract expressionist whose opening I went to last month?" I remembered him now, arm around Chris, but her exhibiting artists always had their arms around her – she was showing their art, they all loved her. "Were you with him the last time we…?"
"Three months ago. Not exactly. We hadn't fallen in love yet."
"So were you making sure then, too?"
"Gus, why does it matter to you? We're not dating."
"Because, I guess I believe in monogamy, Chris. Like right now. If you need to be with me to be sure about this guy, it doesn't say much about you and him."
"You don't understand."
"No, I guess I don't. Anyway, why get married? What happened to 'It's just a piece of paper'?"
"I'm 41, August. Barry says he'll leave if we don't get married. And I don't want him to leave."
"So you didn't care if I left."
"You never said you would."
"Isn't he, well, kind of young?" A dig. Chris looks a good ten years younger than she is, and the gallery crowd is younger, so she tends not to broadcast her age.
"He's 34. That's not so young. We're both consenting adults."
I felt empty, and odd, disconcerted. It's not like I wanted to be back together with Chris, I'd come to see that over the past three years, though I savored our friendship, since she now was one of my oldest friends and knew me almost as well as my sisters. I enjoyed sleeping with her periodically, but maybe it was too convenient – didn't have to make the effort toward developing a relationship with anyone, even if theoretically I wanted to. But Chris marrying someone would definitely affect us.
"Sorry. I guess I'm just, I don't know. Jealous?"
"Jealous? Of Barry?"
"No… of you. You've found someone. At least you think so." I picked up her hand, turned it over, traced her love line. "You know things will change with us, don't you?"
"I don't want them to."
"But they will. Just – do me a favor."
"What?"
"I don't want to be this kind of part of you 'making sure.' I don't want to be the 'other' man in somebody's relationship, on any level. So, let's still meet for meals, see plays, whatever. But not… this."
"Fair enough. Friends, though?
"Always." I downed the last half inch of scotch and got up, my head spinning slightly. I felt too lightheaded to drive, and walked around Chris's darkened neighborhood, feeling braced by the cold wind that came swirling through the empty streets off the lake. I must have walked an hour, thinking about nothing, when a line from one of my student's papers filtered into my head. Grace's journal. Sometimes the thing I think I want isn't the thing at all. I know that, but I don't know where to look, and I want to want something. These years since Chris had been a limbo. I thought I wanted children, but maybe I wanted something else altogether. And then, words… A poem unbidden came to me/ as I walked deserted streets at dawn./ You need me now, she said to me./ I don't, I said. I need the dawn. I was at my car. I got in, took a pen, wrote the words down on the back of an envelope, not sure where they were going, but they kept coming until they stopped. Without reading what I had written, I put the key in the ignition and drove home.