Starry-Eyed

by Ted Michael

  “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.

  ANECDOTE: ALICE RIPLEY

  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 it—or any other musical—live, 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 Prize—winning 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 Prize—winning 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.

  THE ARTFUL DODGER

  Aimee Friedman

  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 count—everyone 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 B
ackstage 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, Theo—the 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)—had 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 to—I’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.

  The good news was that I got to avoid Stephanie entirely during the day; her other class was Voice, and her assigned musical was Oklahoma! Mine was Oliver! (Apparently exclamation points were as crucial to the theater arts as stunt fighting.)

  “Whatever,” Stephanie snarled as she charged past me toward our closet. “I’m not going to let you ruin things for me, Ruthie.” Her menacing tone was somewhat undermined by the cheerful red circles on her cheeks.

  The first night at camp, Stephanie had accused me of swiping her sleep mask and mocked me for not knowing what a “callback” was. After she’d commenced snoring, I’d sobbed into my pillow, feeling friendless and frightened.

  Now, I still flinched at the sight of her, but I was beginning to understand that her fits of stress had little to do with me. This was Stephanie’s second summer at Backstage. Many celebrities—movie and TV stars, winners of Tonys and Obies—had attended the camp, and she was determined to follow in their footsteps. She had an agent, had starred in a traveling production of Annie, and was on track, I supposed, to fame and fortune. This wasn’t a fun getaway for her; this was a job. The fact that she had to room with me—an “amateur” (her word) who might have been from New York City but rarely went to Broadway shows—was clearly an insult from the theater gods.

  Eager to escape Stephanie, I hurried into the pink-tiled bathroom. Hannah (of Theo-make-out-renown) and Tara were washing up at the sinks.

  Hannah and Tara lived next door, and shared the bathroom with me and Stephanie. The two girls were kinder than Stephanie, though no less accomplished. Hannah was ridiculously beautiful, did modeling, and had the lead in Oklahoma!, which made Stephanie gnash her teeth. (Stephanie had been cast as the spinster-y Aunt Eller, and was wearing her clown makeup to rehearsals in some kind of twisted protest.) Tara was in my Dance class, and made my pirouettes and arabesques look like a clumsy toddler’s first attempts at walking.

  Tara and Hannah smiled at me as we exited Liza Minnelli together, the crisp, piney air of a Connecticut morning cool on our faces. But then the two of them linked arms and hurried ahead, no doubt whispering about their exciting professional futures.

  What was I doing here? I wondered for the umpteenth time as I joined the masses streaming toward the cafeteria. I glanced around at the wooded campus that was dotted with other dorms, classroom buildings, and small theaters. No one had forced me to come. My parents were content with me spending the summer as I usually did—reading library books by the stack, scribbling stories in my bedroom, taking the crosstown bus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  I’d been the one to read an enticing article about Backstage in an issue of Seventeen. It had sounded glamorous: a performing arts camp built on the old grounds of a former resort hotel. I’ve always had a big imagination—a blessing and a curse—so I daydreamed about attending. I’d gazed longingly at the glossy photos of kids ranging in age from ten to fifteen, all laughing in the sunshine and wearing elaborate costumes onstage.

  I was the opposite of outdoorsy, a city kid through and through. I couldn’t swim or ride a bike, and nature seemed like an enemy to be conquered. So the idea of regular summer camp—hiking, building fires, encountering bugs—terrified me. But I was envious of all my friends being away for the summer, maybe kissing boys, coming back with stories and suntans.

  Camp Backstage seemed like the perfect solution. I fancied myself pretty artsy—I loved to write, dance, look at paintings, and yes, even act and sing. I’d starred in my elementary school’s production of Pinocchio, belting out the showstopper: our drama teacher’s original composition, “A Real Boy (And Not Just a Toy).” By God, I’d played a male puppet with a fake nose, and I’d gotten a standing ovation! I was going to take Backstage by storm.

  I snorted at this memory while getting in the breakfast line. The cafeteria always smelled like old socks and microwaved soup. Today, eau de processed cheese was added into the mix. Everyone here complained about the food, as was surely the case at every camp, ever. But I was a scared, picky eater who refused to try new things. I lived off toast, juice, and the candy bars Tara would get in her illicit care packages from home.

  A stony-faced counselor stood behind the glass partition, slopping curdled white mush that I assumed was mac and cheese onto plates. As I passed him my tray, I squeaked, “Do you have anything else?”

  “Sure,” he replied dryly. He was British, like the counselor on my hall, Julianne. But Julianne was lovely and soft-spoken, and she called me “angel drawers,” which made zero sense to me, but sounded very nice.

  This counselor lifted the lid off a chafing dish to reveal undercooked pink strips of meat.

  “For kids who’re allergic to cheese,” he groused.

  “What is it?” I asked, worried.

  The counselor smirked. “Electrocuted cow!” he snapped, then burst out laughing. Tormenting children was probably how he livened up his day.

  I backed away, horrified. “I’ll—I’ll just get some juice,” I stammered. My stomach growled as I pushed through the crowd, and his cackling echoed behind me.

  There were two more weeks of camp to go. I wasn’t sure I could make it.

  2. I’d Do Anything

  Post breakfast came rehearsal. The Oliver! group met in the Julie Andrews Theater, which was narrow, dimly lit, and perpetually dusty. I held back a sneeze as us cast members gathered onstage under the watchful eye of our director, Brad.

  Brad was short, stocky, and stern. He seemed about my parents’ age and had once acted in Shakespeare plays, which he mentioned regularly. He also liked to start off every day with a different warm-up ritual. Yesterday, we’d had to do jumping jacks and scream. Today, thankfully, it was just breathing exercises.

  “In and out—expand your diaphragm!” Brad shouted, which made me want to laugh, since I knew the word also had a different meanin
g, but I didn’t know what it was, exactly. Everyone around me was inhaling and exhaling with great seriousness.

  The first day of camp, each camper had stood onstage in a different, bigger theater—the Judy Garland—and auditioned. Out in the blackness, the camp director, the voice teacher, and the dance teacher had sat at a table, judging us. I’d been nervous but uncharacteristically brave, singing “I Whistle a Happy Tune” from The King and I into the silent cavern. The next morning, cast lists had been posted in the cafeteria. We’d all been divided up into seven different musicals—A Chorus Line, Cats, Pippin, Bye Bye Birdie, Oklahoma!, Oliver!, and The Fantasticks. After much elbowing, I’d finally found my name on the Oliver! list. Under CHORUS.

  Chorus! My spirits had plummeted. I was nothing special, one of the masses. What about my shining moment in Pinocchio? What about the fact that I adored watching movie musicals, and had memorized every line of The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Mary Poppins, and My Fair Lady? I had even seen the movie version of Oliver! and knew the story well: a plucky orphan boy in a nineteenth-century London workhouse asks for more food and is cast out onto the streets, only to take up with a band of pickpockets.

  Why hadn’t I gotten a juicier role? I wasn’t so arrogant as to assume I’d get Oliver himself. And the “grown-up” roles of saucy Nancy, scheming Fagin, and cruel Bill Sikes clearly went to older kids here. But couldn’t I have been at least cast as Oliver’s fun buddy, the pickpocket ringleader known as the Artful Dodger?

  That role had gone to a pudgy, smug, redheaded boy named Josh, who had been in a movie! Or so the whispers went. On day one of rehearsals, I’d scowled at Josh as we sat in a circle and listened to Brad talk about the bleak Charles Dickens novel on which the musical was based. But later, when Josh performed “Consider Yourself,” a cold understanding had washed over me. He was good, very good—he sang with a pure, clear voice that could tremble or thunder as needed. He strutted across the stage, all confidence and bravado. I wanted to be his pickpocketing friend, too (even though I hated him).