Starry-Eyed (42 page)
Authors: Ted Michael
I would never be the same. I'd never be Beatrice again.
I made it through acts one through four without crying over it, but around Act Five, Scene Three, I started to lose it backstage. Which was bad, because I was going to mess up my face.
“Oh, sweetie,” Alicia whispered when she saw me. “It's like this every time for me too. That's the beauty of it. It's fleeting. But there will be other shows.”
She floated away into the darkness of backstage, and I wiped carefully at my face with a tissue. When I looked up again, Eric was standing across from me.
“I have something I need to say,” he whispered. “Before we go out there.”
“Is it going to make me cry?” I asked in a whisper back to him. “Because I'm trying to pull myself together here.”
“I like you,” he whispered.
“I like you too.”
“No. I
like
you. You're gorgeous, and smart, and you make me laugh, and . . .”
“Verisimilitude,” I interrupted.
“What?”
“Maybe you like me because Benedick likes Beatrice.”
He shook his head. “No way. I like you for you, Jo Dalley. I liked you the minute I saw you get up onstage all brave during auditions. I
loved
your British accent,” he admitted, chuckling. Then he sobered. “What I'm saying here, or what I'm ineffectively trying to say is, I don't want this to end. You and me, I mean. So . . . will you go out with me, Jo?” he asked, his blue
eyes all vulnerable and sweet and hopeful.
I believed him.
“Yes,” I whispered, and he grinned, and I grinned, but we didn't have time to hug or anything, because then we had to be onstage. It didn't matter that we didn't seem to have that kissing chemistry in the play. This was real life, and I liked him, and he liked me. For me.
But let me tell you, when we got to the end, after Benedick and Beatrice admit in their silly way that they truly do love each other, Eric gazed at me in a way that had nothing to do with verisimilitude. I put my hand up to his cheek and felt the scratch of his stubble under my palm, and looked up into his twinkly eyes.
“
Peace,
” he said softly. “
I will stop your mouth
.”
We kissed.
This time, the world spun around us, our friends watching, our family, the stage lights beating down on us, Eric's lips moving gently on mine and then not so gently, our breath mixing, our hands pulling each other closer, and when we came apart he whispered in my ear:
“Now
that
was a first kiss.”
My knees wobbled, and he caught me by the waist and held me. The crowd got to its feet, and all around us there was thunderous applause.
With all due respect to the Buckeye State, growing up in Ohio in the seventies supplied precious few chances to be directly influenced by creative artists and working actors.
Looking back, the odds were stacked against me that my life's passion to be onstage and the drive to be a successful working actor would spring from sitting in an audience in Ohio watching a pro work and thinking to myself, “I can do that!” There were very few productions at my disposal, and as one of eleven kids, money was tight in our household.
At the time, Cleveland's Ohio and State Theatres were about to be razed. A thriving theater district during the Golden Age of musicals, Playhouse Square was and is the second largest complex of theaters (New York City's Lincoln Center being the first). As the neglect and vandalism of the downtown Cleveland area in the late sixties collided with the onset of midseventies economic inflation, Playhouse Square was shut down.
It is a shame that when there are budget cuts to be made, the first slash is often to the arts, the heart and soul of a community. It is perplexing to me when people take art for granted or see the arts as disposable. Almost everyone in Cleveland could afford a television, so that is where many audiences were, including myself, seated in front of
I Dream of Jeannie
and
Bonanza
, instead of
A Chorus Line
. The plan was to swing the wrecking ball, destroy Playhouse Square, and build a parking lot. Yep.
I received a silver metallic wall hanging of
A Chorus Line
as a gift once, and I hung it on my wall. I stared at it for years wondering what the show was like, and even though I had never heard the score, let alone seen itâor any other musicalâlive, I pretended I understood when someone would notice the poster and say “I saw
A Chorus Line
in New York, and it
was absolutely incredible. Did you see
Pippin
?”
On my fourteenth birthday, my stepfather, Bill Richard, took my mother and me to Playhouse Square to see a passionate production of
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
. I had already decided I was going to be an actor and singer before that night. Being the middle child of a family shattered by divorce, I was struggling to attach meaning to my heartbreak. I had begun acting classes at Lakewood Little Theatre and had found an alternate family: an ever-changing brazen band of mix-and-match outcasts who rallied around each other for the sake of self-expression, also known as live theater.
Jacques Brel
. . . was performed concert-style, in the lobby area, with the audience arranged around cabaret tables, close to the stage. What I witnessed stunned me, and a spark caught fire inside my trampled heart. As I watched the ensemble company perform one dynamic song after another, I found myself caught up in the theatricality of the score, the somewhat daring lyrics, and the awe-inspiring performances. I remember saying to myself, “I bet I can pull that off. I can do that.”
Many years later after I won a Tony for my performance in the Pulitzer Prizeâwinning
Next to Normal
, I received a congratulatory letter from the director of this particular version of
Jacques Brel
. . . (the production of which was so fantastically successful it rescued Playhouse Square from demolition as it extended from a mere two week scheduled run into two years of packed crowds). The letter I received from director Joseph J. Garry Jr. read, “You most likely have never heard of my work, but I know you are from Cleveland . . .” and the letter continued, as he thanked me for my contribution to the lifeline that connects all of us to the grander stage of life and its players. Little did Mr. Garry know that by reading his words I was coming full circle with my own true savior: live theater and its imaginative, daring creators.
Alice Ripley
received a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as Diana Goodman in the Pulitzer Prizeâwinning
Next to Normal
. This performance also garnered her a Helen Hayes Award, a Drama Desk Award nomination, and an Outer Critics Circle nomination. Other Broadway credits include
Side Show
(Tony Award and Drama Desk Awards nominations),
The Rocky Horror Show
, James Joyce's
The Dead, King David, Sunset Boulevard, Les Misérables
, and the Who's
Tommy
. Her off-Broadway credits include
Wild Animals You Should Know, Five Flights, Vagina Monologues
, and
Li'l Abner
(Encores!). She has also received Helen Hayes Award nominations for her work in
Tell Me on a Sunday, Company
(both at the Kennedy Center), and
Shakespeare in Hollywood
. Alice has starred in the feature film
Isn't It Delicious
and the pilot
Modern Love
. She has written a hundred songs and records and performs regularly.
1. Food, Glorious Food
“Good mooorrrrnning, campers! Today is a very, very,
very
special day!”
The chipper voice bleated out of the loudspeaker, startling me awake in my bottom bunk. Through the fog of half sleep, I struggled to comprehend what I'd just heard. A very special day? Was it the Fourth of July? No. We were in early August. Blinking against the sunlight, I sat up and scanned a fuzzy mental calendar. Veteran's Day? Arbor Day? Was that even a thing?
“Today,” continued our camp director, a frustrated actor who spoke extra-loud, in case Broadway was listening, “is Naaaational Cheese Day!”
Oh
.
“Yes, that's right!” our fearless leader crowed. “Cheese for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! You'll need your strength for rehearsals, so don't miss out!” And . . . curtain.
I wanted to cry. I hated cheese. Pizza didn't countâeveryone loves pizza. But I pictured the cafeteria taken over by oozing orange glop, and my stomach turned.
I could hear my psychotic roommate, Stephanie, moving around in the adjoining bathroom. Every morning, Stephanie roused herself from her top bunk before the loudspeaker wake-up, as if spurred on by some
freakish internal alarm clock.
Reluctantly, I swung my legs off the side of the bed, my feet landing on the thin green carpet. Camp Backstage didn't truck with rustic cabins; we stayed, two to a room, in white-brick “dormitories” named after musical theater legends. I was eleven, so I was in the Liza Minnelli Dorm, which housed girls aged ten to twelve. As I padded over to the rickety chest of drawers, I imagined all the other campers getting ready in their tiny, airless rooms. I wondered if any of them felt the same dread I did.
I'd been at Backstage for four weeks; it was my first time at summer camp, and I wasn't adjusting too well. Mainly I missed the creature comforts of home. My soft bed, with no lunatic sleeping above me. The warm bath I took each night, as opposed to the freezing spittle that passed for a shower here. And most of all, I missed the food. My mother's roast chicken with crackly skin, the hunks of country bread we bought at Zabar's on Broadway, and the hot cocoa my dad prepared with a roof of foam on top.
With a sigh, I pulled on a black
CAMP BACKSTAGE
T-shirt and stepped into my denim shorts without having to undo the button or unzip the fly. I'd been a twig-thin kid to start with, but had gotten even skinnier since my arrival at Backstage. I twisted my dark curls up in a sloppy bun, and frowned into the mirror.
Yesterday, Theoâthe gelled-hair, gleaming-braces prince of the boys' dorm across the lawn, who'd been cast as Conrad in
Bye Bye Birdie
(a rare feat for a twelve-year-old)âhad smiled at me after lunch, and my empty belly had fluttered with hope. Theo had supposedly “made out” (I was fuzzy on the precise definition of that term) with Hannah, who lived next door,
and
with a fourteen-year-old girl who had the lead in
A Chorus Line
. Theo was something of a rarity at Backstage. It was increasingly clear that most of the other boys here were not remotely interested in girls.
“Ruthie!” my roommate shrieked. “Did you use my grease paint?”
Stephanie stormed out of the bathroom, wearing full-face clown makeup. This was a common sight at Backstage. Kids in all manner of sequins, wigs, prosthetics, and, as I'd seen yesterday, furry bodysuits (for the
production of
Cats
) roamed the lush green grounds.
“No,” I replied in the gentle voice one might use around a rabid Doberman. “I wouldn't need toâI'm not taking Stage Makeup, remember?”
Each camper had to take two “Theater Arts” classes for the summer. I had signed up for Dance and Stage Makeup, but Stage Makeup had been overcrowded, so I'd been moved to the least likely choice for a coward like me: Stunt Fighting. I'd been surviving that class by inventing headaches, backaches, and toothaches, sitting out while our instructor gleefully demonstrated fake karate chops.