It was 2002...I think...coulda been aught-one, I'm too lazy to do the maths. Yes, "maths". Damn Brits and their correct English.
Anyway, yeah, it was a few years back and I was working with the company I'd been with since 98. A little history:
When I got out of college and was nursing a broken heart, (as usual), I started taking some acting classes to supplement the training I got in college. After my sessions there, one of the instructors decided to break out on her own and I was one of the students who came with her. Thus, the birth of my career at AH. I was young. At 23 I was a wide eyed girl with delusions of changing the world type grandeur. I was a perfect candidate for an up-start theatre company.
Ok, so after a couple years, and not that much main-stage time..."You just look too young" "You're just too strong for this role" "I need contrast in hair color" were the excuses du jour, du mois, de l'anneé... I landed a role. Now, mind you, when I got the script before auditions I KNEW there was no goddamned way I was getting this part. She was weak-willed, innocent, and naive. With piss-poor instincts. Based on this analyzation, and based on the training I was receiving which bordered on Method but teetered on FUCKING CRAZY, I knew that this character just wasn't me.
I know, I know. It's ACTING. But, when you're dealing in Method, and you're dealing in Meisner-Based technique, you are coming from a place of imagined-reality. In other words, what you feel, your character feels, and vice-versa. It's what makes theatre exciting because a scene could change from night to night based on how one actor reacts to another actor that night. Or a piece of clothing or the music. Whatever. I could have some personal issue going on- so that for some reason a line that I've heard every single night suddenly socks me in the stomach and brings me to tears. As long as it's still within the perameters of the direction and message of the scene, anything goes. (It's why nearly every class I took found me hitting someone, getting hit, getting thrown through doors, spat on, and cowering in the corner in a fetal position...it was fucking cool ass shit.) So, based on what I knew about me, the character, the play..everything.. I was sure I wa'nt gettin' this part.
I was wrong.
I was cast. In my first lead role in a professional theatre. I was thrilled. I was scared shitless. The plot:
Chrisy, a young girl from south Philly just wants a normal life. She can't figure out why she's so unhappy or why she can't get it together. Persuing a career in dance, she lands a job at a Go-Go bar where she meets Al and his buddy...whose name escapes me right now. They follow her home and for all intents and purposes rape her (she'd say she never said no, but there was no WAY she wanted to) and then she and Al start dating. All this time there's this other guy who's also obsessed with her and has been stalking her. She can't say no to him either and THEY end up fucking (more on this scene later). THEN the woman she works for at the club hits on her-destroying any faith she had in HER friendship. Add the gay neighbor upstairs and the revelation that her dad molested her. Sprinkle it with a dash of her mother having tried to abort her (and doesn't believe the molestation story...she says if it happened it was Chrissy's fault) and your have a recipe for the MOST FUCKED UP PLAY EVER that ends with Chrissy getting the shit kicked out of her by her now husband Al. Aaaaaand then she's on stage topless in a mask to hide the damage done to her face in a new club dancing to ...get this... "I'm a Believer" by the fucking Monkees. Lovely.
We start rehearsal. At the time, I was dating a Chicago cop. While that story is for another day, suffice it to say that I'm convinced this play was the final nail in the coffin sealing the doom of that relationship. I knew that most, if not ALL the issues in the play would bug him. He couldn't handle seeing me get pushed down by John Proctor in a staged reading of the Crucible for Christ's sake. I didn't think he'd be happy with me A. being topless and B. watching another guy beat the living fuck out of me. So, I gave him the script to read to prepare him for what was coming. He left me 2 weeks later.
So, absofuckinglutely heartbroken, I continue rehearsal. At this point, I wasn't on any medication to balance out my depression and anxiety, so one can only imagine how much of an absolute mess I was half the time.
Then rehearsals really started to suck.
First of all, my director, for reasons then unknown, decided NOT to DIRECT me. She'd have notes for everybody under the sun at the end of the day, but none for me. I had no idea if what I was doing was right, or good, or bad. There was nothing. Gone was the caring, nurturing teacher who had helped me achieve vulnerability I never dreamed possible. Here was a cold, disinterested taskmaster. Then NO notes became nothing but negative notes. It only got worse. Remember that "other guy" who was stalking Chrissy and ends up in bed with her? Possibly the most awful rehearsal ever.
Here's what she wanted. She wanted me to be on top. Fucking him. While delivering one of the weirdest monologues ever about some tv show and watching people through windows. It made absolutely no goddamned sense. Worse, I had NEVER been comfortable being on top during REAL sex, much less stage sex. (I wasn't the sexual dynamo who feels the need to give up sex for Lent that sits here today. I was still relatively green. And not very adventurous.) I was, in short, a missionary girl. I'd have practiced, but, whoops! Too bad, I didn't have a boyfriend anymore because of this fucking play so what in the FUCK did she want me to do? Well, fuck, I suppose but, she was on me about not looking comfortable. And not getting the rhythm down. And in frustration, I turned to her and said,
"Listen, here's the deal. In real life, I'm NEVER on top. I don't really even know how to do it. Seriously. That's why this is so hard."
Her response:
"Yeah, that's way too much information. Don't get so personal. Ew."
Wait. What??? "Don't get so personal???" This was the woman who at every turn during class was CONSTANTLY telling me: Take things more personally. Stop hiding behind walls! Expose yourself!! There was a moment in rehearsal when I said "I really want to hit him. My instincts are telling me to hit him. THAT's my impulse. To punch him in the fucking jaw." I was told I couldn't do that. Yeah. So, slowly, I started to go insane.
I stopped having fun. I started having anxiety attacks before every rehearsal. I worried about not being off-book. I can't TELL you how much I obsessed about that small thing..that I knew wouldn't be an issue come opening. The lines ALWAYS come. ALWAYS. But I was so fucking turned around inside I didn't even trust that.
Every rehearsal became another excercise hoping I was doing things right. Cutting myself up on the inside to get to the place where Chrissy would be crawling on all fours towards her father begging him to tell her why he did what he did and crawling back to her mother asking her to forgive her. There were times I was sobbing so hard I couldn't even GET the lines out much less worry about whether the lines were memorized. Only to be told to do it again. Better this time. More vulnerable. "You're still not getting it!"
One day, my director pulled me aside and sat me down to ask me if I still wanted the role. She thought I was being resistant. I told her under no circumstances was I giving up the role. And that I promised to do better. I tried. I really did.
I started getting paranoid. I was convinced that everyone thought I was horrible and they were just waiting to fire me. That I was a shitty, shitty actor who was fucking up the whole show. Then, a miracle.
A good friend came back from St. Louis. He had been someone I looked up to so much at AH. And he was cute to boot. But we had worked together before and I had so much respect for his work. He watched a run of the first act and he took me aside and said:
"LC, you are on the edge of brilliance. Really. All you need to do is trust yourself and let go, and you are going to be. fucking. amazing." It was a little of what I had been aching to hear all along...we were about 2 1/2 weeks out from Opening. Those words became my mantra during every anxiety attack before every rehearsal. I thought things were starting to get easier.
Fuckin' calm before the storm...
So, it was a Friday night rehearsal. Al and I went to the director to ask her about some blocking for the big fight at the end. We had an idea about how to make it look more real ("You're not selling that fight LC"), and she fliiiiipped out. She accused us of "bucking her off" - like a horse I guess, I don't fucking know, and we were at a complete loss as to what to do next, so we just let it drop. And started rehearsal. It felt good overall. I had my lines down for the most part, I felt like I was connecting to the characters on stage, I was "in the moment", I felt good. Apparently, the director didn't think so. What followed was quite possibly the most traumatic note session I've ever sat through. It essentially culminated thusly:
Her: LC, I don't know how many times I have to give you the same note, but it's just unacceptable. You're not taking
direction, you're NOT getting the rhythm of the sex scene and we've been over that time and time again...I just don't know what else to DO with you.
Me: (IN CHOKING TEARS) I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT FROM ME!! I'M DOING THE BEST I CAN! I'M ONLY TRYING TO DO WHAT YOU TELL ME TO DO. I CAN'T DO ANY MORE THAN THAT.
If I had had the energy to pass out, I probably would have. We all went home quietly.
I was to report to the theater the next day for a private note session before rehearsal. I pulled up and saw my understudy standing at the door.
"This is it. They're firing me."
And fire me she did. She told me that she had been mistaken in casting me and that for the most part I shouldn't feel too bad about it because it was her mistake. Not mine. But not before she berated me for my lack of discipline and professionalism. Then she saw the look on my face and back peddalled profusely. She saw a couple of things.
1. Relief. I was never going to have to say any of those lines again. Ever.
2. Despair. I failed. But more than that, every bit of torture I had endured would be for nothing. No opening night. No applause. No fucking validation for destroying myself.
Then in what can only be described as a moment of searing shame and guilt, she asked me to stay on as Assistant Director. And I, because I felt so bad about how bad she felt.. she worked up some tears to match my "can't breathe sobs", agreed.
I lasted 15 minutes. Watching someone else do my part was like watching my boyfriend fuck another woman and tell me how much better she was.
I got into my car and drove to Leslie's. It was, to date, if I had a top 5 worst days of my life, one of the top 5 worst days of my life. I've never been the same since. Where once I was fearless on stage, I found myself stunted and doubting my skill. I'd lost the key to what could have been a brilliant career at 25 years old. Well, truth be told.. I felt like it was stolen from me.
In the years to come, I would discover that I wasn't the only person who experienced something like this. And it wasn't that I wasn't good enough. It was a myriad different reasons that eventually led me to leave the company.
So, I suppose this is a cautionary tale. Don't all ow yourself to feel less that you are. Don't doubt your instincts.
Had I been a little older, wiser, I would have taken better care of myself. And stood up for myself. On top. While talking about a bag of doritos.
The End.
