“the fantasticks,” prelude

Sophomore year in college. “The Fantasticks.”

Freshman year was, frankly, a waste. A mad blur of make-out sessions with a guy I had nothing in common with except these marathon make-out sessions. A guy whose face glowed eerie and pale, like the moon. A guy who’d gotten my phone number off the box I was forced to wear by the seniors on my dorm floor during Freshman Initiation Day. A guy who, by this time, sophomore year, was now my ex-fiance. Yes, that’s right, fiance. He had proposed one night in the dark of the dorm lounge, his moony face the only light source, giving me a swirly rhinestone cross necklace to seal our mismatched lust. When we broke up shortly thereafter, I returned the twinkly thing for a full cash refund of 69 whole dollars. (No questions asked — Phhhew!)

So in between exhausting, sweaty fondles with McMoony and occasional box-wearing and — let’s see — watching “The Exorcist” once, as I recall, there was no time for auditioning. I’d completely abandoned something I’d always loved for my temporary lust over a tall, glue-faced boy with bad taste and excess saliva issues.

Nevertheless, after this year of walking away from the theatre, this year overflowing with creative laziness and atrophy where I learned virtually nothing beyond the exact contours of each of McMoony’s teeth, when auditions rolled around for “The Fantasticks,” I STILL thought I was da shizzle.

This was not a consensus, however.

The Music Director, a Lebanese woman named Hadil, immediately thought I sucked. Hard.

She later became my private voice coach, but at our first music rehearsal for the show, she gazed at me over her glasses and told me bluntly, in a voice low and thick: “At auditions, I did not think you could sing. You were singing in this weird belting voice, like … a cow. When I heard you sing, I wanted to die, but the director really wanted you.”

But ….. um …. I’m da shizzle, lady!!

She was still talking:

“So. You are cast now and my job is to work with you. All right. Let me hear you sing.”

I opened my mouth and —

“Do NOT use that voice you used at auditions.”

Okay. Now I was completely petrified.

I’m supposed to sing? NOW?? In a voice other than my tried-and-true high school musical belt?? But … but … you don’t think I’m da shizzle! I don’t know what to DO! I can’t even breathe! I am shaking! I might cry! Death is so SO close!

But she didn’t care. She just gazed at me over those glasses, waiting while I wavered. Her eyes were dark licorice drops. There was a twinkle there, but I saw only my imminent death. I tried to look anywhere but there. Finally, she started playing a vocal exercise on the piano, waving me to sing along.

I obeyed. And sang. Just me.

When I stopped, she was silent for a moment.

“Hm. You actually CAN sing. Good.”

It sounded like “gooot” when she said it, clipped it off. “Gooot.”

So off we went, working, working, working. Here I was, thinking I was already so far down the theatrical road — “Hurry and catch up with me, people!” — when, really, I was arrogant, stupid, lazy, full of bad habits.

But that show, that woman, that director. It was really just the beginning of the road for me.

(more to come ….)