Tomorrow a Penthouse: Quest for Stardom in NYC – Day 2

Sadly sitting on my pull-out bed at 7pm, mourning the loss of my free wi-fi connection, I await confirmation that coming to New York was really a good idea at all. Yes, I love this city and cannot wait to live here someday. But, no, I do not enjoy the lonely confines of my aunt’s apartment with the two cats and bedtime around 10pm. I also do not enjoy waiting beside my blackberry for some form of communication from (a) my world at home or (b) a job opportunity.

I am not a patient person. Supposedly this is a hallmark of stage managers but when I am outside the realm of my job, I am just that bitch who can’t handle being a minute off schedule. I have come to terms with this aspect of my personality but I am not sure how it will affect my future endeavors in the theatrical world. In one way, it may help me because, well, stage managers are hired to keep things running smoothly and on schedule in a very artistic and often ill managed business.

In another way, it may hinder me because most theater people are artists and artists tend to avoid the concept of time. They are the first people to complain about people not getting in touch with them and the last people to return an important phone call while the information is still prevalent.

Tomorrow, apparently, I will show up at the Ohio Theater to work on god knows what with some woman I have only exchanged one email with. The lack of communication was not due to me not trying. I sent her approximately four emails to her one response and then appeared on the door step of the theater and begged for information.

Overall, I felt as though I was a starving actress, waiting for a casting agent to give me the time of day. And I didn't like it one bit.

Tonight, The Y: Quest for Stardom in NYC - Day 1

I am on a train right now headed to New York City. All I know is that I need to get to the City and then, bam, I will be in the cradle of my dreams. I’ll be so close to having my name up in lights that all I’ll have to do is reach my arm out and…

This is my pre-college attempt at making it in the biz. Every person who has seriously considered show business as a career has also considered packing up everything and heading to New York or LA to see their dream realized. I’ve been told that there are two ways to make it. Option A: Go to college and get a B.F.A. in your area of study, check out Grad School and then use the connections you’ve made over that period of time to get a job. Option B: Go to New York, start working as a waitress by day and apply to every theater in the city by night.

I chose option A because God knows that in this economy even getting a job at a diner isn’t the easiest thing in the world. But this mini adventure to New York, this is my one shot to see if I can make connections in the city that makes stars before I go off to Cincinnati.

Maybe I’ll discover that this is the way to go, leaving everything and everyone behind to pursue my dreams with a little less than $300 to my name. Because there is this nagging feeling inside me saying that once I graduate my BFA will do nothing more than be a wall ornament in my first apartment.

Going to a conservatory gets you jobs. Everyone who is anyone in the business looks to conservatories for the newest rising talent because that is where the best go to train. So who is to say that those connections aren’t all you going to get out of 4 years of college tuition.

When I interviewed at Cincinnati, my interviewer casually admitted that she would look at my transcript once she dug through the mail pile. I wasn’t too astounded that my admission to CCM had nothing to do with how well I did in math freshman year but it did slightly suck to know that I had a very good GPA that no one really cared about.

And I am all too certain that the same thing rings true for getting jobs in show business. Theaters just want to know that, yes, you do have an education in the field. Then it comes down to who they think can handle the job or looks right for the part. Your BFA is sitting in the pile of resumes and headshots that some producer will eventually dig through.

There's No Business Like Show Business

After being a part of theatrical productions since before I can remember, I have discovered what show business is all about. Being a stage manager, theater has never been about the applause from the adoring fans or the flowers after the show. If it was all about those things, the theatrical world would be a bunch of productions on a bare stage, in the dark, that no one can hear. What show business is all about has to be more universal. Something equally appreciated by the opera diva and the master electrician.

As I sat on my computer in the middle of the night after the closing show of L'Incoronazione di Poppea, I started to piece together the mystery of the theater people's lifestyle choice. I spent the night jotting down upcoming shows in the Boston area and the numbers I could call to plead for a job, an internship or just a spot to sit backstage. Mind you, it was 3 o'clock in the morning and I had to be at church at 8:30 the next morning. I should have been in bed, sleeping soundly, dreaming of misplaced props and actors who missed their cue. But, instead, against my conscious self's protests, I sat jotting down the information that would consume the only free days I have this summer.

Why you may ask? And at that moment, I could not have told you. I was consumed by some Freudian subconscious being who couldn't stop looking for the next show, the next big thing. As the next morning rolled around and I could feel myself drooping from exhaustion, I got a FB message from my new friend Ellie. She told me that the Poppea withdrawal would be over soon and the next show was on its way. After Ellie said exactly what I was subconsciously repressing, I realized what show business was truly about...

Broadway thrives because shows end. As obvious as that sounds, it goes a lot deeper than that surface statement. A show begins and you have a group of a hundred odd people working to produce it. And then they produce it and it runs and it runs and, in Rent's case, it keeps running. Then, as all things in life do, it comes to an end and all of those people are no longer invested in it. There's a void, a post-production withdrawal. The only thing that seems to fill that void is working through the pain by finding another production to consume your soul. You have no time to grieve a loss if you have something else to fill its place.

But that's only a piece of the puzzle. If finding another production was all that mattered, there would be Broadway professionals doing community theater shows out of the nearest YMCA. You have to move on and you have to keep moving up. Never being satisfied is a hallmark of the theater. No dance routine will ever achieve perfection in the eye of the choreographer. No set will ever live up to what the set designer envisioned. No actor says, "I only want to do community theater". They shoot for Broadway. Every show could be the big break so actors and designers keep working, thriving off of what is to come. And if you do make it, who says that you can't become the best in the biz?

So Poppea did come to an end. I left with a new appreciation for the term diva and a few friends that I hope to keep forever. I left with more knowledge on opera and people and the biz. I left with a thirst for more work, more professionalism, more theater. But most importantly I left the cast party telling everyone that I'd see them at the MET.

Regardless of where we are in our careers, whether it be just going into school or just retiring from one's day job, the dream is still the same and we'll all keep doing shows because, to quote the little red haired Annie, "Tomorrow a penthouse./ That's way up high/ Tonight/ The "Y"".

Another Opening, Another Show

Allow me to begin this like I do most things in my life:

Please turn off your cell phones, the performance is about to start. (Cue house lights).

There is nothing quite like the opening of a show. Your pulse is racing a mile a minute. You can feel the audience's excitement as the curtain rises. You can sense the nerves of the leading lady as she takes her first steps on the set. And the best part is? Hopefully, you get to do this every night for the rest of your life.

Welcome to the theater. Everything that is good, holy, bad, unholy, emotional, insane, stressful takes place in or around these walls. An exaggerated, dramatic form of life takes place upon the stage for millions to scrutinize, be baffled by and maybe even enjoy.

But the theater is also a place of hurt and self-loathing. A place where you may be perfect at what you do but not the type of perfect that a director is looking for. A place where you need to fit into the same costume every night regardless of how many brownies you ate. A place where creating an alternate reality means selling yourself to that alternate reality.

I have sold myself to that alternate reality. An undergrad stage manager at one of the top conservatories in the nation, I will spend my college nights making a prop keg out of styrofoam rather than drinking out of one. I look forward to perfecting my craft and eventually taking it to the MET. As a stage manager, I am always Switzerland; the conscious observer taking note of the moves the other player's make without making myself a part of the game.

This blog is part diary, part expose and part therapy. I will tell you what I see from the unbiased shadows of the lighting booth. I will probably rant about one actress or another and about how she is ruining my life even though her quest for stardom is hopeless. I will most definitely attempt to explain my alternate reality and why I love living in it.

So just as Hamlet tossed about a skull, debating whether it was nobler to live or die, I now leave you with another of life's eternally unanswered and completely overdramatized questions: To read or not to read. I suppose that that is the question.

-ABos.