Bit Players, Has-Been Actors and Other Posers: A Must-Read for Fans of Glee, High School Musical and Twilight (5 page)

After crying myself to sleep for a week, I buckled down again and gave Yente every ounce of tragicomic passion I could muster.

This year, though, had to be different. This had to be my year. I had worked intensely on my vocal range and power at summer theatre camp, and the director told me I made huge progress. I deserved a lead by this time.

I snapped my attention back to the auditorium when I heard Mr. Ellison say something about this year’s show. He made his annual half-hearted plug for a straight drama, knowing we would argue against it. We quickly convinced him that as a relatively new program, we still needed to rake in the money, and tickets for musicals sold much better than contemporary existential drama or even Shakespeare. To placate him, I suggested we do a second show in the spring, a drama.

As we’d done the past two years, we trawled through the list of standard shows performed by high schools across America:
Seussical, Anything Goes!, Anne of Green Gables, Bye Bye Birdie, My Fair Lady,
and
You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.
Nothing got universal support.

More modern musicals like
Hairspray
were tossed around, with Jason and Foster arguing over which of them would be the mother, since Jason had the girth but Foster the personality. Mr. Ellison interjected that we didn’t have enough cast members to carry off the separate social classes integral to the plot, which really meant that other than Foster and a sprinkling of Asian and African-American kids, we didn’t have any minority students.
Hairspray
was eliminated.

 The show couldn’t have a lot of male leads because other than Lindsay, Foster and Ben, we were short on male talent. But, as Adrienne suggested, if we did
The Wizard of Oz
, girls could play the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion. That show was shot down as too juvenile.

As happened every year, the talk turned to recruiting other students to CDC, to beef up our options.

“I know a guy who will do it,” Lucey purred, like the cat that swallowed the canary.

“Don’t torment us, Miss Landau, just tell us who you have in mind,” Mr. Ellison said drily.

“Nigel Leightly, the AFS student,” she said proudly, getting the desired gasps in reaction.

“No way, Lucey, do you really think he’d do it?” Kristina asked breathlessly.

“Kris, I know he will,” she smiled, “if I ask him.”

While I pondered how the hell she had wrapped Nigel around her pinkie finger in three short days, the others talked excitedly about the thrill of adding another male to the cast, and one with a cool accent at that. Even the guys were into it, because the better our cast, the more choices of show we had.

“That would be good,” I said loudly, cutting across the chatter, “since Alex ditched us this year.”

Blank faces turned toward me. “He’s not doing the show? I figured he just couldn’t come today. Won’t he be here next week?” Adrienne asked.

“I don’t think so. He’s a serious jock now, didn’t you know?” Adrienne’s jaw dropped at my sarcastic tone, but everyone else resumed talking, unfazed by my report of Alex’s defection.

Mr. Ellison soon interrupted the conversations, even though we hadn’t accomplished anything, because it was getting late.

“We’ll pick this up again at next week’s meeting. Same time, same place.”

“And kids,” interjected Mr. Lord, “bring some new ideas for a show next time. Think outside the box. Maybe we don’t do a straight musical, but a revue of some kind. Or maybe, maybe we even write our own show.” He smiled an enticing smile I bet he’d used on a hundred casting directors.

Mr. Ellison made a hmph noise and walked out, but I thought Lord was onto something.

4: Troy and Gabriella Redux

T
HE FIRST FEW WEEKS OF SCHOOL were always surreal, like you landed on an alien planet with strange teachers and unfamiliar classrooms even though lots of other things
seemed
familiar, but I felt extra disconnected because of the Alex situation. Everything was different without him at my side, literally and figuratively. The traitor took his campaign of infamy into the cafeteria, where he sat with the rest of the soccer team instead of me and our CDC friends. Okay, maybe I scared him away the time he tried to sit with us, Friday of the first week.

“Tired of your jock friends already?” I had spat out with a fake smile. Alex, well used to my sarcasm, made a face, put his tray on the table across from me, and sat down beside Foster. “I figured they’d run out of intelligent conversation soon, but this was record time.”

Adrienne flicked her elbow at me. “Sadie, chill. Hey, Alex. How’s soccer going?”

“It’s good, Adrienne, thanks for asking,” he said, emphasizing the gratitude as if Adrienne were the only one who cared about his happiness.

“Alex, how’d you get so buff anyway?” Foster drooled. “Weights on the beach out in California? Surfing the big waves?”

Alex scooched his chair a few inches away from Foster.

“I don’t know, dude, it just happened.”

“Just happened? Things don’t ‘just happen’ Alex, admit it,” I said. “We all make conscious choices in life. We shape our own destinies. You chose to play sports all summer. You chose to be in the sun. You chose to go out for the soccer team. You chose to desert your CDC friends. You even chose to use that fancy zit cream.” I was a hideous, unstoppable force of nature.

Everyone stared at me. Alex broke his gaze first, looking down at his tray while standing up, his chair making a horrendous screech as he pushed it back with his foot.

“You know, guys,” he said to everyone at the table except me. “I haven’t deserted you. I still support CDC all the way, you know that. I’ll help out with the show, even if I’m not in the cast. Hey, Adrienne, maybe I can help with stage crew, huh?” He tried to sound cheery. Adrienne nodded glumly.

“Okay, then, so you guys won’t take it personally that I’m going to leave for a friendlier table.” I felt his eyes on me for that last part, but I was too busy making a pattern out of the bits of chicken product on my tray to look up.

“Phew, that was awkward,” I said mock dramatically as he walked away. The table was quiet until Foster started warbling the chorus of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” with boys inserted for girls, cracking everyone up.

Unlike Alex, Adrienne came through for me on the friend front. Her extreme good nature meant she had considered me a friend all these years, even though I never invited her over after Alex moved in next door. It wasn’t in her constitution to hold a grudge. She insisted we’d always been good friends even as we slowly re-discovered the basics about each other, like favorite bands and foods, which we did between classes and while studying after school. If it weren’t for Adrienne, I would have lost it without Alex.

*

W
ITH OR WITHOUT HIM, CDC was happening, and we needed to pick a show in order to hold performances before Christmas. The mood at the second meeting was optimistic.

“Okay, who’s got ideas for this year’s show?” started Mr. Ellison as Mr. Lord leaned against the stage, arms folded, looking slightly smug as if he chose to defer to the English teacher.

“I know what we should do,” I said, having thought about this for a few days. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of this last week.” I waited, allowing dramatic tension to build. “
Grease
. Let’s do
Grease
. It’s got great songs, a story people know and love, and you don’t need a huge cast. Three people is enough to make a gang, especially on our tiny stage.”

My suggestion got the desired nods from several others.

“I bet I can get some of the other guys on the soccer team to come out if we do
Grease
,” Lindsay offered.

Mr. Lord’s deep voice burrowed through the building excitement. “Kids, listen. Sorry to burst your bubble, and it was a great idea, Sadie,” he turned his headshot-perfect smile on me, “but I heard Sutton High is doing
Grease
this year, and the company that owns the rights won’t let two neighboring towns do the same show the same year.”

Dumb stares met his pronouncement.

“Really?” I asked for the group. “I’ve never heard of that rule.”

“Those of us in the theatre world know how it works, trust me.”

Mr. Ellison looked away but not before I saw him roll his eyes.

Mr. Lord continued. “You guys aren’t expected to know this sort of thing, so don’t worry about it. That’s why you have me now.” Mr. Ellison shrunk into his sweater vest.

“Oh come on,” Foster said. “We’re Crudup High, for God’s sake. Is anyone really going to care if we put on the same show as Sutton? The only people who come to our shows are our parents, anyway. It’s not like we’re competition for the biggest school in the region.”

“It’s not Sutton making that decision. But, you’re right. They probably couldn’t care less what we do.” Ben and Lindsay glared as Mr. Lord confirmed our inferior status. “It’s the company that owns the performance rights that cares. And they won’t budge. So let’s think about other options.”

“Like what?” Lindsay asked, sounding deflated.

 “A revue, for example. The principal’s on board with the idea.” Mr. Lord glanced at Mr. Ellison, who was studying his loafers. “Think of the possibilities,” he encouraged.

Jocelyn and Lucey nodded enthusiastically, which I found funny since they probably didn’t even know what he meant, but it urged the teacher on.

“We pick the best of the best -- Broadway songs and dances from throughout the years. Songs that everyone knows and loves.” Mr. Lord’s voice rose and his movements got more animated as he tried to pump up the energy in the room, reminding me of Professor Harold Hill selling clarinets to naïve families in
The Music Man
.

“Oh, please. These young men and women have worked too hard the past few years to settle for a glorified talent show. No show is better than a weak show.” I wasn’t sure I agreed with Mr. Ellison, but the disdain in his voice and on his face reinforced his opinion.

“Obviously you’ve never been in any kind of theatrical environment, Donald, or you wouldn’t make such obscure comments.”

(STUNNED SILENCE FROM THE CAST. THE TWO LEADS SQUARE OFF AS IF PREPARING FOR A DUEL.)

 “If you’d ever been in any kind of educational environment, Tony, you would be able to use ‘obscure’ in a sentence properly,” Mr. Ellison fumed. “And don’t pretend to know what’s best for this group. You just got here, remember?” This was getting bad. Lord would never win against Ellison on his own turf, be that CDC history or basic vocabulary. But something told me Mr. Lord was our key to a great year in CDC. I had to stop them fighting before their inability to get along threatened our entire program. Even worse, the students looked uncomfortable and I heard Lindsay mutter something to Ben that included “lame” and “quit”.

Lucey interrupted the teachers’ argument. “I have the answer,” she said smugly, as if we’d all been waiting for her to jump in with a plan to save the show. “HSM 2.” She crossed her legs, making the fringe on her suede boots swing back and forth.

“HS-what?” Lindsay asked.

“
High School Musical 2
,” Lucey said in her best Sharpay imitation, re-crossing her legs in the other direction. “It’s perfect. The natural follow-up to our debut production of two years ago.
High School Musical 1
,” she tacked on, as if we were all idiots. Other than Alex, the cast of CDC hadn’t changed in three years – we were all here for the first HSM.

“Ugh, no way. I’ve had enough Troy and what’s-her-name,” groaned Lindsay. He pretended to pull out his hair in horror but couldn’t get hold of the super short pieces of blonde hair.

“Really, don’t you think we’ve outgrown
High School Musical
?” asked Ben, who was disappointed with the role of Chad last time.

I was mute, painfully flashing back to the perfect casting of our original HSM production, which was unlikely to change if we did the sequel.

For once, Lucey and I were thinking similar thoughts. She ignored Ben and addressed Lindsay. “Maybe you wouldn’t be Troy again. It’s not guaranteed, you know.”

“Yeah right. I’m the only one who can spin a basketball on my finger, for one thing, and I’m the only jock in CDC,” Lindsay laughed, and as an afterthought said to Foster and Ben, “No offense, dudes.”

“None taken,” Foster sang. Ben nodded. Everyone loved happy-go-lucky Lindsay.

Lucey wasn’t to be sidetracked. “No really, it would be better to shake up the casting, right Mr. Ellison? I, for example, could be Gabriella even though I’m blonde, and Nigel could be Troy.”

“Nigel? I don’t see any British boy candy here, Lucey,” Foster pointed out.

“What do you think, Miss Perkins? About casting against type?” Mr. Ellison’s question shocked me out of my contemplation of how to derail this idea.

My inner thespian took charge and I answered him without thinking through the ramifications. “True actors can play almost any role. Hair color, skin color, even age shouldn’t matter.” As my brain caught up with my mouth, I realized I was supporting Lucey’s desire to be the first blonde Gabriella. “Of course, you need a really skilled actor. Most of us couldn’t pull this off. So casting closer to the original character might be better in our case.”