Curtain Up (7 page)

I typed:
U will totally win! I know U can do it.

She texted back:
Thnx, Anya. Hope the theater meeting goes gr8 tomorrow!! Will try to swing by if the meet ends early enough. :)

Then I got up and dragged my sister out of bed. She followed me downstairs, where I popped two bagels into the toaster oven.

“I'm going to make a list of the cleaning supplies we'll need to take to the clubhouse,” I said. “We'll have to use whatever Mom has here, but we're going to promise to replace them as soon as we have the dues money.”

“I'll go out to the garage and take an inventory of yard tools,” said Susan, opening the fridge and grabbing a tub of cream cheese, which she placed in front of me on the breakfast bar. “Did you get a look at those flower boxes under the clubhouse windows? Nightmare!” Then she marched out of the kitchen, calling, “Don't burn my breakfast!” over her shoulder.

I was halfway through my everything bagel and a quarter way through my list of cleaning products when the doorbell
rang at ten fifteen. I was so caught up in making my list that I just went and answered the door without thinking about what I was wearing. It wasn't until I saw the weird look on Austin's face that I remembered I was still wearing my pink polka dot pajama bottoms and a ratty old New York Giants T-shirt. Was it my imagination or was he blushing slightly at seeing me in my pj's? I'm sure I was blushing, and
way
more than slightly.

“Um, come on in,” I said, feeling like a total dork. “I'll . . . be right back.”

Then I bolted upstairs, quickly changed into cutoff shorts and a
Mama Mia
T-shirt, and whipped my hair into a high ponytail. I brushed my teeth and hurried back down to the living room, where Susan had joined Austin. They were seated on the sofa, looking at her phone and all the theater-related texts and tweets.

My sister grinned at me. “Austin here was just telling me he never knew you were a Giants fan.”

I would have slugged her, but that would have meant I'd be out one media specialist, so I let it slide.

Austin held out a neatly bound stack of papers. “Here's the script.”

My eyes scanned the cover page.

Talk about chills! Just seeing that phrase in print—
Directed by Anya Wallach
—literally gave me goose bumps. The first page was a list of the performance selections:

I flipped through the script. In addition to the lines from the actual plays, between each number Austin had written original dialogue that would serve to introduce and connect each individual performance. It had a fun new-millennium-vaudeville vibe, which was exactly what I'd imagined when
he first suggested it.

“I can't believe you already finished it,” I said. “You started only two days ago.”

“That's how the creative process is,” he reminded me with a grin. “Sometimes things just want to be written. And besides, I can't really take that much credit. Most of it—the music, the scenes—is stuff other people have already written. I just sort of cobbled it together.”

“Well, you're a great cobbler. You made excellent choices, and it has a really good flow. Perfect songs, awesome scenes . . .” I looked up from the pages to smile at him. “Austin, you're incredible!” Then I caught myself and clarified, “I mean, this
script
is incredible.”

“Thanks, Anya.”

“So . . . what's the closing song?”

He crooked a grin at me. “That's a surprise.”

Before I could press him for a clue, he hurried on.

“I have most of the sheet music for the songs I picked out,” he added, nodding toward a pile of music books he'd placed on the coffee table. “But not all of it.”

“I bet we have whatever you're missing,” I assured him, hurrying across the room to the piano. I held the script reverently, just as I would handle the antique crystal gravy boat my nana Adele uses only for Thanksgiving dinner—like it
was priceless. Because it was.

I opened the piano bench and began rifling through all the old sheet music tucked inside. Susan and Austin came over to help me.

We laughed when I pulled out our beginner books (Ugh! “Hot Cross Buns”! Why?), and Susan found a bunch of classical compositions (which I'd always found challenging, but Susan had breezed through them like a champ).

Things improved significantly when we found my beloved Marvin Hamlisch (best composer
ever
!
A Chorus Line
. . . enough said!). Lucky for our miniscule dues-only budget, we'd collected plenty of Broadway music over the years. Much of it was from what my dad would call the “old standards,” like
Guys and Dolls, Finian's Rainbow, The Fantasticks
, and
West Side Story
. Susan turned up her nose at the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff, but I confessed that I didn't mind
The Pirates of Penzance
, and this had us giggling as we belted out a few choruses of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.”

We also had an excellent cross section of newer songs from more contemporary shows like
Matilda, The Book of Mormon
, and
Hairspray
.

Austin was pleased with the haul; between our two collections we had music for every song in the show and plenty
of additional choices for the kids to audition with. We both agreed that the more recent shows would be our best bets for the audition songs. We picked “Popular” from
Wicked
and “Seize the Day” from
Newsies
, then threw in “Maybe” from
Annie
because . . . well, because it's
Annie
!

“Who's going to provide the musical accompaniment for the auditions?” Susan asked, making a big show of cracking her knuckles.

“I guess you and Austin could take turns,” I said.

“Good,” said Susan, sitting down and placing her fingers on the keys. “I'll practice.”

“What about the acting auditions?” I asked Austin. “Any ideas?”

“I've got a few things in mind,” he said. “I e-mailed them to you last night.”

“Cool. My laptop's in the kitchen. C'mon.”

We left her seated at the piano and headed for the kitchen. A few seconds later we heard “Seize the Day” wafting from the living room.

Austin and I each settled onto a counter stool at the breakfast bar, and I opened my computer. I logged in to my e-mail and found that Austin had really done his homework. He'd sent me a bunch of possibilities for the acting auditions, which we quickly narrowed down to two monologues
(one for girls, one for boys) and two scenes to be performed by partners. He'd picked out a perfect array of material. Dramatic, comedic, and just the right level of difficulty.

In the living room Susan had started singing along with her own accompaniment.

A chill raced up my spine as I suddenly realized that the Random Farms Kids' Theater really was my way of seizing the day! Me and all the other kids who loved to sing and act and dance, who wanted to share our talents and learn more about the incredible world of musical theater. I was grabbing my moment and making something happen. I was so lost in Susan's voice and my own thoughts that I almost didn't hear what Austin was saying.

“—dance?”

I snapped out of my reverie and looked at him, blinking. “You dance?”

He laughed. “Not at all. But I did include an ensemble dance number in the show, so I guess you're going to have to come up with some choreography for the dance audition.”

By now Susan had quit practicing and was standing in the kitchen doorway. “Did someone say choreography?”

I ignored her and kept my eyes on Austin. “Oh, you mean something big and flashy, like from
42nd Street
, or
A Chorus Line
?”

“Well, maybe not quite that complicated, but yeah.” Austin shrugged. “Something along those lines.”

“Okay,” I said, sliding down from my counter seat. “Let's get to it.”

“Maybe you didn't hear me,” said Austin pointedly. “I don't dance.”

Susan sighed, mimed her thumb and pinkie into a pretend phone, and held it her ear. “Hello? Radio City Musical Hall? Yeah, I was wondering, could I possibly rent the Rockettes for a couple of weeks? Thaaaaat's right . . . the whole kick line!”

Austin laughed as Susan “hung up” the phone.

“Radio City says no,” she reported wryly.

Personally, I didn't think it was funny. I had a moment of worry that maybe neither of my co-producers was taking things quite as seriously as I was. “Look,” I said, “I'm hoping Mackenzie is going to sign up for this theater, and once she does, we can ask her to be the official choreographer for the show. But if we're going to have the kids perform a dance combination at auditions, we're just gonna have to come up with something ourselves. Maybe we can get ideas for a dance routine from YouTube. If we find something that inspires us, then we can revise it to make it our own original choreography.”

Susan plopped herself onto the barstool, put her fingers
on the keys of my computer, and typed in “
YouTube.com
.” We only had to search for a few minutes to discover that our best resource would be videos of the dance numbers performed at the Tony awards over the years. There we could study entire dances featuring actual Broadway stars—with the glitzy bonus of seeing them in full costume.

By unanimous vote we chose the dance performed by the cast of
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
at the awards ceremony. The song was “Brotherhood of Man.” Susan swooned a little over Daniel Radcliffe (and who could blame her!).

We watched the dance through from start to finish twice, then began the process of creating our own steps to simulate the style. This required space, so we moved not only the barstools but the kitchen table as well.

“Instant dance studio,” I said. “Now, let's do the simplest sixteen counts.”

“Yes,” said Susan. “I think Austin will appreciate that.”

“Me?” Austin frowned. “Why do I have to learn it?”

“So you can help my sister demonstrate tomorrow.”

“Why can't you?”

“I'm the administrative arm of this organization,” Susan said haughtily. “I'm going to be busy.”

“Busy doing what?” Austin wanted to know.

To be honest, I was a little curious myself.

“Oh, ya know . . . counting the dues money . . .” She began ticking off a list on her fingers. “Filing paperwork, organizing the sheet music for the singing auditions, general crowd control . . .”

This was all news to me. Not that these weren't important tasks, but Susan and I had never discussed the fact that she'd be the one to handle them. And why would she just happen to be handling them during dance auditions?

Before I could mention this, my sister turned away from Austin and gave me a great big wink! Suddenly I knew exactly what she was doing—she was setting it up so that Austin and I would have to dance together.

For the second time that day I wanted to knock her out.

And, just the tiniest bit, I kind of wanted to hug her.

“Plus,” she continued, “I'll be making sure there are paper towels in the clubhouse bathrooms, planning ticket sales, making sure all the folding chairs are in good working order . . .”

Okay, now she was just making things up. Still, I had to admire her creativity.

“Fine, fine,” said Austin, cutting her off. “I'll do the dance demo.” He gave me a nervous smile. “Just don't expect too much. I'm not exactly light on my feet.”

“It's not difficult,” I promised. “Watch.”

I began to call out the steps as I did them. “Heel, heel, heel, twist, twist . . . and turn, heel, heel, heel . . . twist, twist, arms!”

I looked over at Austin, who tried to copy what I'd just done.

He took out a counter stool and the cookie jar.

“Don't worry about it,” Susan told him breezily. “There's never any cookies in there anyway.”

“Try it again,” I advised.