Places, Please!: Becoming a Jersey Boy (10 page)

And, to be brutally honest, my salary will not be as much as I expected. Granted, it is still more money than I have ever made from a theatre in my life, but their initial offer is not quite as dramatic a number as I would have hoped for. Know that the amount per week is much more than the union’s minimum, but it still isn’t life changing money, and much of it will be sequestered by the airlines when I fly home as often as possible in an attempt to maintain some semblance of family life. I shouldn’t be complaining; it is a very generous number. I guess I was just dreaming too big.

I am writing this while waiting for three loads of laundry to dry. I figure I should wash everything now before things get even busier. I also need to make sure that I have lots of dance rehearsal clothes to sweat in. I haven’t had a sweaty dance rehearsal in quite a long time. Oh! And I need to buy new sneakers. I will probably be wearing sneakers in rehearsal and my running shoes are so old that there’s a good chance my baby toe might pop out of them any day now.

May 1st, 2009

Contract negotiations finish and it all becomes official. Truth be told, there weren’t too many negotiations to be had. What am I going to do, say “No” if they don’t give me enough money? They could pay me minimum wage and I would still find a way to make it work. (Of course, I don’t tell them this.)

The contract says the producers will give me a place to live in Toronto for a month, but after that I will be on my own. I know this may become tax deductible, but renting a place will still make my salary drop even further. However, some minor perks in my first big contract: my own dressing room, a plane ticket for my wife to come up for my opening night, a small raise after six months, and four free tickets. That’s four free tickets, period. Not four per show or four per month or four per year. Four. Period.

And my contract is for a year. This is just starting to set in. One year. I’m sure my family will be able to join me for the summer, but the school year is a different story. If I think too long about this right now I will start to get really sad. Traveling out of town for a theatre job is something that I think most actors would agree is inherently detrimental to a relationship. I have met very few couples that can survive it for long. Cara and I are very proactive in working to keep our relationship strong (so is our therapist), but it will not be easy to manage this separation. I’m already thinking too much about it.

Momentarily taking my mind off the long distance, I speak to a great guy at the Dodger’s production office. Jeff sets up my rehearsal schedule (so scary) and tells me I will be his job for the next month. I’ve never been anybody’s job for more than an hour (the dentist), so being somebody’s job for an entire month seems a bit ridiculous. He will work with me on flight reservations, rehearsal locations, rental cars, and the like for all the cities to which I will be traveling. I think his job title is “Assistant Production Coordinator,” and he is my first
Jersey Boys
friend.

Tomorrow, I get to go to the August Wilson Theatre to see the Broadway Company’s wardrobe supervisor and try on some shirts. The bulk of my clothes, however, will be custom made by a tailor. And that, my friends, is awesome. I have never had a tailor-made suit before, and now I think I am going to have at least four!

Oh, and I chose the hotel near Disney World after all. How can I turn that down? I love Disney World.

May 2nd, 2009

Today is all about the clothes. I stop by the August Wilson and check in at the stage management office just like I had while seeing the show last year. I should be feeling more secure this time around, seeing as I have now booked the job, but I must admit I’m feeling just as intimidated as the first time. I have zero confidence when it comes to anything related to Broadway. I have a great work ethic, and I can convince people by faking confidence, but there is usually nothing genuine behind it.

The production stage manager gives me directions on how to get to the wardrobe room, directions that include four left turns, three right turns, a staircase, a tunnel, and a revolving bookcase. Needless to say, I get lost in the basement of the theatre. It is a maze down there. For anyone who might imagine Broadway dressing rooms, hair rooms, and wardrobe rooms to be glamorous, I can attest that they most certainly are not. They are basement rooms, musty, damp, and lit with the same type of fluorescent tubes that Tom Wingfield rails against. I find my way thanks to a small group of stagehands watching TV, and I introduce myself to the wardrobe department.

“Hello. I’m Daniel Robert Sullivan. Is this the wardrobe department?”

“Yes, it is. You’re Daniel?”

“Yes. I’m Daniel.”

“You’re blond.”

Are there no blond Italians? And is it really possible to tell a person’s heritage based on their hair anyway? Aren’t Irish guys and Italian guys the same on the inside? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

My visit here, it turns out, is quite simple. I have to try on some white shirts from Express to find the correct size. They are then going to buy a few of the shirts and dye them to the light purple color the Four Seasons wear through much of Act One. Also, I have to be measured for the only suit worn that is purchased off the rack. The suit is a black Calvin Klein, and I will wear it for “Rag Doll” and “Who Loves You.”

Next, I have to go to be measured for the rest of my suits. In addition to the Calvin Klein, I will wear four other suits, all of which will be made by the famous St. Laurie Merchant Tailors on 32nd Street in Manhattan. This place is, quite literally, steps from my apartment—so I arrive for my appointment nice and early. I am greeted by the owner and his son, and am asked to wait just a few minutes while they get their paperwork together. While waiting, I check out their wall of photographs. In addition to
Jersey Boys
photos, there are pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road, Denzel Washington in Malcolm X, and other stars that I would like to be friends with. These tailors are the real deal.

When the owner returns, he tells me that I am the first fair-haired Tommy he has seen. (Really, this again?) I ask him how many Tommys he has built suits for and he can’t even count. Building for
Jersey Boys
, he says, has been a full-time business since 2006. Let’s do some math; there are four lead characters, each with four suits. Each lead character has two understudies, and there is an additional actor who plays Frankie Valli for the matinees. That makes thirteen sets of four suits apiece, for a total of fifty-two suits per company. There are now seven companies throughout the world. That makes three hundred and sixty-four suits for the original lead actors in each company. But there have also been replacement actors in each company, like me. I’m guessing here, but I think about twenty-five replacement guys came into the show in the last couple of years. That makes another hundred suits, for a total of four hundred and sixty-four. And guess what? That doesn’t take into account the ensemble.

Now the cost: if each suit for the lead actors costs, conservatively, $4000 to make from scratch, then St. Laurie Merchant Tailors has brought in $1,856,000 from
Jersey Boys
alone. And again, that is just for the lead actors. There are ensemble actors that need suits, too. And more companies opening soon. Unbelievable.

The father-son team taking my measurements is extremely well dressed; in fact, every employee in the place looks impeccable. I guess you have to if you work in a fancy suit-shop, but this is all new to me. The best suit I ever bought was from Men’s Wearhouse. (They said I would like the way I looked, and they guaranteed it.) I bought my wedding suit online, another off the rack at Macy’s, and have a hand-me-down winter suit from my uncle, which was given to me when I was a sophomore in high school and is still very much a part of my wardrobe.

After taking measurements, the gentleman helping asks me to try on a mock-up pair of pants. I go into the small dressing area, remove my shoes, and realize that both of my socks have holes in them. Big holes. Like, each big toe is sticking completely out of the sock. I am too embarrassed to come out of the dressing room like that, so I try to pull the holes down underneath my feet. Arranging the sock in a way that would look somewhat normal takes some time, far more time than I should have been taking just to try on a pair of pants. One of the employees asks if I am ok in there, I say I am fine, and I shuffle out. I have to shuffle, of course, because if I lift my feet at all then the sock will flip out and expose my little trick.

I am rescued a moment later, thank goodness. They notice that I am not wearing shoes and ask if I could go back and put them on. They like to see how the pants fall on the shoes. Nice. I should have known that.

Michael Lomenda, Jeff Madden, Quinn VanAntwerp, Daniel Robert Sullivan

©Joan Marcus

May 3rd, 2009

I’ve been at home nearly all day learning lines from that big ol’ picture book again. The print is small and impossible to highlight, so the memorizing job proves more difficult than I am used to. But it is still nice to know I am getting a jump-start on things.

I am a firm believer in knowing all, or at least most, of my lines before beginning rehearsals. Every actor differs in this regard, but because I rely so much on the physical side of acting (like how a character moves and speaks) I find I cannot dive into the work until the script is out of my hand. It will be some time before I know the lines cold, but it is nice going into the first set of rehearsals with some idea of what words to say.

Learning lines is a skill that takes practice, but I believe that non-actors often place too much emphasis on the task. “I don’t know how you guys remember all of those lines!” is a comment actors hear often. But it is really no different than knowing the words to hundreds of songs that you sing along with in your car. Both scripts and sing-a-longs require repetition, nothing more.

I sit with the
Jersey Boys
script for a total of seven hours today, and I probably only learn about three new scenes. I speak the words a hundred times or more, talking back to the book while my hand covers the next line. But still, only three new scenes are in my brain. There is no mystery to the skill of memorizing lines. It just takes time.

Whenever I start getting sleepy, as is bound to happen when sitting in one place staring at the same five pages of a book, I try to do something to wake myself up. I make a quick trip to the gym this morning to do just that, and come back with fresh eyes. The next time I begin nodding, I remember reading that while in rehearsals John Lloyd Young, the original and Tony Award-winning Frankie Valli, used to swim every day just to keep up his stamina for the draining hours of choreography and singing. Immediately, I decide that I should do the same. But I don’t have a pool. So I grab my new sneakers and go for a run, and I come back again with fresh eyes and a brain that is ready to remember. I think I should vow to do this every day until I open the show, if only so I can be like Tony Award-winning John Lloyd Young. Who wouldn’t want to be like Tony Award-winning John Lloyd Young?

Even though I have been busy working on lines, it is very nice to be home with Cara. She sits silently by my side while I study; building up time together before I head out, I guess. (She remains by my side as I pause to write today’s entry.) Late in the afternoon, she tries to work out some plans for her and the kids this summer. It is a frustrating puzzle for her, what with grandparent visits, summer camp, and school letting out late this year for one child and starting earlier next year for the other. And Cara feels, as I do, that we won’t be able to start dealing with our separation until we know exactly where everyone will be for the next six months or so, and the time span of each separation.

May 4th, 2009

Crunch time. Rehearsals start tomorrow morning.

Today, I go to the Dodger’s office to get a dramaturgy packet, a script (finally!), a vocal score, dialect recordings, a CD of the Seasons original recordings, a packet with pictures and names of the National Tour cast, a packet with pictures and names of the Toronto cast, and a list of doublings.

Doublings, you ask? Yes! One of the stylistic techniques Frankie Valli used in his original recordings was a doubling of his and other voices. In other words, there was always more than one voice singing each vocal line. While you hear Frankie Valli in the foreground, you also hear another voice (usually Frankie Valli again) in the background singing the exact same thing.
Jersey Boys
mimics this technique by fully utilizing its large cast. According to the score I received today, there are always two people doubling nearly every word I sing. And there are two or three doubling what Frankie sings, two doubling what Nick sings, and two doubling what Bob sings. What an amazing thing! Broadway shows have often used singers in the orchestra pit to augment the sound, but I can’t recall a show using live, onstage doubling before. This proves to me that, even in the ensemble tracks, nobody in the cast of
Jersey Boys
has any time to relax.