Broadway Tails (3 page)

My girlfriend, Jude, who also worked in the props department, said, “He needs a bath, maybe that’ll help.” I agreed, so we got some dish soap and brought him up to the paint sink on the second floor of the scenic shop. He struggled and fought, but as the dirt was washed away, I could see a beautiful sandy coat.

“What are you going to call him?”

Up until that point, I hadn’t thought about a name. It dawned on me that it would probably make sense to call him by his character name so he wouldn’t be confused. I said, “How about Sandy?”

Toweling Sandy dry made us realize how thin he actually was. I took some money out of the prop fund and we went to buy dog food and a bowl. By now, even though he was terrified of everything and everyone, he was starting to stick by me. By the end of that first day he had met twenty or thirty people, had a bath, gone to the Feed & Green store, and come back to the scenic shop. I tied him up in the back of the prop shop, where it was nice and quiet, with a bowl of water and a blanket so that I could get to work building scenery. I would go and visit him whenever I could. He spent the day watching every move I made in the shop.

The next morning I tied him up to the same place where he could see me while I worked. He was a little less frightened, and the crew was great about going slow around him and trying to make friends. About the middle of the afternoon, I took Sandy over to the theater and tied him to the front of the stage while we did some repair work. I turned around to check on him, and there was Martin Charnin—who had conceived the show, written the lyrics, and was directing—gently petting him. I started to blurt out, “Mr. Charnin, this is …”

Martin looked at me and said, “He’s perfect. This is our Sandy.” Without even asking, I had the director’s okay.

*   *   *

The next task was training Sandy to be in the show. In his big scene, all he had to do was come onstage to Annie, lie down while she was questioned by a policeman, then come when Annie called his name. Pretty simple
stuff—until you remember that he had to do it onstage in front of hundreds of people.

There were no books about training an animal for the stage that I could read. All I had to go on was my own experience. I remembered growing up with my collie, Rexie. He did a lot of things without any training. Some of it was instinct—he was a herding dog, so when I was little, he naturally followed me around and made sure I stayed in the yard. Some of it was being part of our family—he loved us, he trusted us, he learned from our daily routine. He knew when I got home from school and would meet me at the bus. And he knew that the sound of the can opener meant dinner.

So, to me, it seemed like those were the two keys to training a dog. The first part would be easier—building on what Sandy did naturally. The second part, particularly with a dog like Sandy who had been abused, was more difficult. He had to learn to trust us, particularly me. He had to learn that he was safe with us, particularly when he was onstage. He had to know that we wouldn’t let him be hurt again. If I could make Sandy think that the theater was his home and we were his family, maybe he could learn to follow our routine, just like Rexie had. That’s what I set out to do.

Sandy became my shadow—wherever I went, he went. Anyone I met, he met, too. He came to the shop every day, and little by little he got used to the loud noises and banging. Little by
little, he got used to all the people in the crew. Every night I would bring him over to the theater and keep him in the green room, where all the actors hang out and take their breaks. He became a regular. During scene changes and intermission, I would bring him up onstage and he would lie there, or he’d stay next to me in the wings, watching the work.

Things were going really well. Over the next few weeks, I made my debut as a professional actor in a small role in the second show of the season. Sandy was making great progress. And we began work on
Annie
—we were building the sets, and the cast came up to East Haddam to begin rehearsals.

Annie was being played by a young actress named Kristen Vigard, who was living in the actors’ house, next door to the tech house where I lived. I changed my routine so that each morning and each evening I would walk Sandy over to Kristen’s room, where she would feed him and pet him. During rehearsals we would get time together to go over our big scene. It would start when I’d say, “Go see Kristen,” and she’d give him a treat. I’d have Sandy lie down while Kristen and I read the lines of dialogue. On cue, he was supposed to run over, jump up, and put his paws on Kristen’s shoulders. As Sandy became more outgoing, he would jump up on people as he greeted them, so all we had to do was encourage this. Little by little I saw a real connection growing between Kristen and Sandy, and I saw him fall into the pattern we wanted. Now all we had to do was make sure he got used to the audience and wasn’t frightened by them.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had already done that. By bringing Sandy to the shop every day and to the theater every night, he’d already become completely comfortable with the noise and action of a live performance.

*   *   *

Two weeks before
Annie
opened, the shop was buzzing as the scenery was being assembled. While I was working in the back, Sandy got in a bit of trouble when he managed to walk across a freshly painted backdrop. The scenic artist got very upset and insisted that Jude get Sandy out of the way. Since the shop was getting more and more hectic, she knew that was the
best thing to do. She took Sandy and tied him out under a shade tree with a bowl of water.

It was a hot, sticky July day. Instead of staying under the tree, Sandy tried to find a place where it was even cooler, in the dirt under one of our trucks. No one knew he was there until my roommate, John Camp, tried to take the truck to make a delivery. As he pulled away, he heard a dog scream. He had run Sandy over. Within seconds, I was running out of the shop. Sandy dragged himself toward me with his front paws, unable to stand, screaming in pain. I picked him up, carried him into the truck, and rushed him to the vet. The doctor saw him immediately, sedated him because he was in so much pain, and said we wouldn’t know anything until he took some X-rays.

About forty-five minutes later, the vet showed us the X-rays. We had gotten lucky. Because the dirt in the parking lot was so soft, it had given way under Sandy as the truck rolled over him. As a result, nothing was broken, although one rear leg had been dislocated. The vet had put it back into place and said there should be no permanent damage. But, he told us, Sandy was going to need to be on cage rest for two weeks before the bandages could come off.

We were twelve days away from opening night.

The vet said it was unlikely he’d be able to walk by then. Before I left, I visited Sandy in the recovery area. He was still groggy from the anesthesia. I opened the cage door and gently petted his head. He opened his eyes and tried to stick his tongue out to lick me. I sat there petting him and crying. I was glad he was alive and would get better, but I didn’t know how to break the news to the cast and crew that we had lost our dog. When I got back to the theater, I reported to Michael Price and Martin Charnin. They were extremely upset. I was told to find another dog—quick. Adding to the pressure, Michael said he was holding Jude and John responsible and would fire them if we didn’t have a dog for the show.

The next day the vet allowed Sandy to come home. We made a soft bed for him in the tech house and another in the shop, so he could lie down and
watch us. Four or five times a day I would pick him up and carry him outside so that he could relieve himself, then bring him back to his pillow.

I began the depressing process of revisiting all the local pounds, but there were no sandy-colored dogs available. Meanwhile, Sandy was getting restless. Four days after the accident, we were having a hard time keeping him on the bed. It seemed obvious to me that he missed his routine and he missed being with his family. Finally, six days after the accident, I decided Sandy knew best—if he felt well enough to walk, I would let him walk. He was able to limp around on three legs and made it clear he was ready to run and play, even while I was trying to keep him calm. That’s how Martin Charnin found us one day. He couldn’t believe Sandy was walking. I pointed out that he was still bandaged.

“That’s okay, that’s okay,” he said. “We can leave the bandage on. We can even write it into the script! The audience will really feel sorry for him.” Which they did.

A week after the accident, the vet examined Sandy again. He called his recovery a miracle. “The only way he could get better this fast is because he really
wants
to get better,” he told me. “And he wants to get better because of you. This dog really loves you.” He gave me a new Ace bandage and told me to take it off at night when Sandy was sleeping, but to keep it on during the day when he was walking.

So Sandy went back into rehearsal, limping, but incredibly happy to get back to Kristen and the crew, who were more than happy to make a fuss over him. Every day he got a little stronger, even as things got crazier with opening night approaching. He was perfect during rehearsals, even trying to jump up on Kristen, though we tried to stop him.

At a summer stock theater like Goodspeed, the most hectic time is the changeover between two shows. You give the final performance of one show on Sunday night, and then the crew works most of the night to take down the old set and build the new one. Monday afternoon, there’s a tech rehearsal, where the actors come onstage and we move the scenery cue by cue, focusing the lights and making adjustments. Dress rehearsal is
Monday night. On Tuesday afternoon you have your last rehearsal, and the new show opens that night.

The changeover for
Annie
did not go well. We had trouble getting the set into the theater and trouble getting it to work. We worked on it all day Monday with hardly a break. The tech rehearsal didn’t start until Monday night—and even after five hours, the complicated set changes still weren’t working right. In fact, we didn’t even finish because it was past midnight and we had to get the kids to bed. After working for thirty-six straight hours, they let us get some sleep, but we had to be back at 8:00
A.M.
on Tuesday to prepare for dress rehearsal.

We worked all that morning on the set. The dress rehearsal didn’t start until Tuesday afternoon, just hours before the show opened. Between the kids not knowing their lines and the set not working, it was one of the worst dress rehearsals we had ever had. But Sandy went out there in his Ace bandage and did his scene. Then, as we took our dinner break, we heard there were severe storm warnings for the area.

The theater was probably half full for the first performance of
Annie
. As the overture started, I took the Ace bandage off of Sandy’s leg so the audience wouldn’t see it. When it was time for his scene, Sandy saw Kristen onstage and went to her just like he had in all of the rehearsals. The audience let out a collective, “Awww.” This was new, so Sandy stopped to take a look at the people. Then he went over and lay down next to Kristen while she sang her big song, “Tomorrow.” When his cue came, he trotted
over to Kristen, and before she could grab his leash, he jumped up and put his paws on her shoulders. I was astounded. He had remembered what we wanted him to do. He did it for us even though he was hurting. He looked over at me offstage as if to say, “It’s okay, Bill.”

Unfortunately, the rest of the show did not go as well. A hurricane hit at intermission, and half the audience left. We lost power and had to start the second act using a generator, which lit up only a few lights. The show was going slowly—the curtain didn’t come down till 11:30. We hadn’t even finished building the supports for sets for the last scene, so the stagehands had to hold up the walls. But I was smiling. Sandy had come through for me. The dog no one wanted. The dog that was hours away from being put to sleep. The dog that everybody thought couldn’t do it. The dog that had been run over by a truck just twelve days earlier. He had done everything we had asked him to do.