Picture Perfect
Page 16
I have only a short bit of time between the curtain going down on act one and the curtain going up on act two, and I not only have to change, but I also have to do my vocal exercises and my meditation. While act one ends with my dramatic confession, act two is really where I put my dramatic skills to the test, so I need to be prepared. In the upcoming courtroom scene, I deliver a seven-minute monologue about what led me to kill Harriet. If I’m very quiet after my final line I can usually hear a few people in the audience crying. Once I heard a woman sobbing so loudly I was worried I wouldn’t be heard over her. The writer of Seesaw for One has done a brilliant job, and I am so honored that my performance has the ability to move the audience to tears. Isn’t that what any artist wants—to move people?
“Isabel, that was amazing. Your best performance yet,” Alan Jackson says to me as I make my way backstage towards my dressing room on the upstairs balcony. Mr. Jackson is the director and selected me to play the role of Kimberly. He is the recipient of two Tony nominations and debuted his one-man show at Lincoln Center to standing ovations a few years ago. I respect him very much and I’m very grateful he believes in me.
“Thank you, Mr. Jackson,” I tell him. “I’ve learned so much from you as a director.” He walks next to me, and on the way to the dressing room we pass the curtains that kept the actors hidden from the audience.
“Well, I hope you will continue to learn,” he says.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Before he can answer, Hilda, the woman who coordinates the costumes, hair, and makeup for everyone interrupts us. “Sorry, Mr. Jackson, I just need to put her hair in a bun for the opening of act two in the courtroom.”
“Oh, of course,” Mr. Jackson says. “Isabel, I probably shouldn’t tell you anything until after tonight’s performance anyway. Closing night nerves, I guess. Go ahead, Hilda.” There is not enough time during intermission to sit in a proper hair and makeup chair and be done up. Hilda just grabs an actor where she can and does what she needs to do. Backstage is always chaos, but it is an organized chaos that I love.
Hilda steps behind me and starts brushing my hair, but I can’t help wondering what Mr. Jackson meant.
“Is everything okay, Mr. Jackson?” I ask. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Oh heavens, no. Everything is fine,” he says, and strokes his gray beard with his hand. During rehearsals I noticed he strokes his beard like this when he is in deep thought about something important. An actor has to be aware of every behavior she encounters in case she wants to use it for a character at some point in the future. I realize it’s unlikely that I’ll play a character with a gray beard in the near future, but still it is important to be observant.
“You haven’t done anything wrong at all. In fact, you’ve been doing everything right. Quite right indeed.”
Hilda takes one last sweep with her hand, pulls my hair into one long piece, and then wraps it around into a tight bun that she fastens with a few bobby pins before lightly spraying the back of my head with some hairspray. Mr. Jackson quietly watches the transformation.
“You’re all set, Isabel. Knock ’em dead.” She pauses and adds, “Oh, wait. You already did that.” She laughs at her own joke and Mr. Jackson and I join in. Everyone is in a playful mood on closing night.
“Thanks, Hilda,” I say, and she rushes off to get another actor changed or coifed for act two. “Great work,” Mr. Jackson adds.
Mr. Jackson and I quickly climb the stairs to my dressing room. Once we are at the top, I look down at the stage and see that the army of a stage crew is in the middle of its orchestrated set change. A few men attach ropes to the walls of the classroom, and with a quick signal the walls suddenly float straight up past the balcony area where the dressing rooms are to the rafters of the theater, as the walls of the courtroom slowly descend from their perch above the stage. The crew on the ground holds their arms out, waiting for the arrival of the new scenery, prepared to safely secure it into place. I know actors work with precise timing, but sometimes I think we should keep the curtain up during intermission so the audience could see just how much work goes into the set change. In my opinion, it is just as precise and challenging as everything else that happens onstage, and as my father says, “Where there is beauty, there is art.”
I walk into my dressing room and, Sean, the stage manager, who I think was born with a walkie-talkie headset attached to him, walks by, knocks on the doorframe, and without missing a step says, “We are at ten minutes until the opening of act two, Miss Isabel.”
“Ten minutes, thank you,” I say. It’s protocol in the theater to acknowledge any time cue from the stage manager.
“Isabel, I should let you prepare,” says Mr. Jackson from the doorway, “but I just want you to know that there are some very important people in the audience tonight. Very important.” He scrunches his eyebrows together when he says the second very important, and I think maybe this eyebrow scrunching is a behavior I should also make note of.
“Thank you for letting me know” I say. Since we’ve gotten such good press, we have had a steady stream of celebrities at the show, from Hollywood A-listers to politicians. Last week we had the winner of some superpopular reality-TV game show in the audience, and Ruth Punjabi, who plays Harriet Conners’s mother, was so excited she could barely remember her lines. When she asked me if it made me nervous, I just told her no. The truth is my family doesn’t even own a TV, so I had absolutely no idea who this guy was. Even if I did know, it doesn’t matter who is sitting out there in the dark. An audience is an audience, and my job is simply to give the best performance I can no matter who is out there.
I remind Mr. Jackson about this since I don’t want him to think he has thrown off my performance. “It doesn’t matter to me, Mr. Jackson. I’m totally focused tonight.”
“That’s what I was expecting you to say. I know you have to get ready for act two and I should not have disturbed your, preparation. I know you take it very seriously.”
“I do,” I say.
“Just meet me at the stage door after the performance tonight when you’re out of wardrobe and makeup. All I’ll say is that there is someone I would like you to meet.”
“Okay. I’ll be there,” I say, and he tells me to break a leg in act two and heads back down the steps. I close the door to my dressing room so that I can do my preparations. I look at the clock over the bouquet of perfect daisies my parents sent me and see that I have just enough time.
I know I have to stay focused, but sometimes the serious actor inside me collides with the thirteen-year-old girl inside me. I wonder who Mr. Jackson wants me to meet that is so important that he decided to come backstage during intermission to tell me. Is it a celebrity? A personal friend? A theater critic? I shuffle through the possibilities in my mind for about eight seconds.
“We are at five until the opening of act two, Miss Isabel,” Sean says as he raps his knuckles on my dressing room door.
“Five minutes, thank you,” I say loud enough so he can here me on the other side of the door.
I shake the possibilities of who Mr. Jackson wants me to meet out of my head. It’s time for my two-minute meditation exercise and short vocal warm-up before act two. It doesn’t matter who he wants me to meet, because from now until the final curtain falls, I’m not Isabel Marak Flores. I’m Kimberly Ann Fortunato, and I’m about to go on trial for murder. . . .
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P. G. Kain has been on hundreds and hundreds of commercial auditions for everything from a talking taco to a mad cupcake scientist. He has even booked a few spots. He is on faculty at New York University, where he is the chair of Contemporary Culture and Creative Production in Global Liberal Studies. As a Faculty Fellow in Residence at NYU, P. G. lives among nine hundred undergraduate students in a residence hall near Gramercy Park. You can reach P. G. and get commercial tips at www.TweenInk.com.
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