by Anthony Rapp
“Thanks,” Michael said when I was finished. “That was great.”
Flushed from my singing and sparked by Michael’s response, I glanced over at Tim, who quietly but forcefully nodded, his eyes wide and knowing and happy. I jumped off the stage and headed up the aisle.
“Good job,” Jonathan said as I passed him. He was also nodding and smiling, again folded up in his seat, a notepad in his lap, his eyes intense and delighted.
“Bye,” I replied, waving to everyone as I opened the door and walked into the lobby. I stood there for a moment, chewing my lip. As exhilarated as I always was after a good audition, I also always wanted the casting people to tell me right then and there whether I had the job. That rarely happened, though. While I walked home, disappointment lurked around the edges of my excitement, but I did my best to push it aside and coast on my adrenaline for a little while longer. So I had to wait, as usual. That was okay. This one felt good. This one felt like it was going to happen.
II.
At ten in the morning a week later, I shuffled into the tiny, airless rehearsal room in the tiny, airless offices of the New York Theatre Workshop (surprisingly located in Times Square, the opposite end of the earth from the East Village) for my first day of rehearsal. A dozen or so other actors milled around, sipping coffee and murmuring hellos to one another, their faces bleary. First days of rehearsal were like that: a lot of sleepy people wandering around, not really expressing how happy they were to be there, especially when no one knew one another from previous jobs. In the center of the room a semicircle of metal folding chairs curved around a small upright piano, so I staked out one for myself on the end and sat, quietly watching everyone else. Michael and Tim and Jonathan stood off to the side, conversing.
The day after my callback, my agent, Paul, had phoned, his voice smooth and level and matter-of-fact. “You got it,” he said. It was my first audition through his office—he had just become an agent—and he could barely disguise his pride.
“Great!”
“The contract is only for four weeks, it’s a workshop. So the pay’s not much.”
“How much is not much?”
“Three hundred dollars a week.”
That wasn’t much. But it was better than nothing, and better than seven dollars an hour slinging coffee. And it was a show. It was work. “That’s fine, I can handle that.”
“So is this a yes?”
I was grinning so widely I could hardly move my mouth. I was thrilled that my gut had been right, and I was relieved that I finally had another paying gig, that I was a working actor once again. “Uh, yes, this is a yes.”
“Great. Congratulations.”
That day I steamed my last milk and called out my last order at Starbucks. I tried to be sensitive in sharing my good news with my fellow out-of-work actors on the staff, downplaying my excitement—“It’s just a small show. No big deal.”—but they all were happy for me. One in particular, a many-freckled redhead named Steven, a devoted musical theatre performer, kept sidling up to me as I worked the register. He asked me lots of questions about the show—the answers to most of which I didn’t know—and kept saying, “That’s so cool. That’s so cool.” I was grateful for the response and surprised at his and the others’ generosity. Maybe they now had that much more hope for their own escape.
I called my mom and told her the good news. It had been a while since I’d been able to call her on such a happy occasion.
“Oh, that’s wonderful, Tonio,” she said, her mellow, midwestern voice brightened by a smile I could hear over the phone.
“Yeah, I’m very excited.”
“I’m so happy you get to sing again.” She had often told me over the years how much she wanted me to do more musicals; it was how I’d started performing when I was six, but I hadn’t been in one since getting out of high school. She had often flattered and embarrassed me by waxing nostalgic about my “angelic” rendition of “Where Is Love?” in the title role of Oliver! (a role I played in four different productions), and reminding me of the awards I had won in junior high school for my singing.
“Yeah, I’m happy I get to sing again, too,” I said. Although I was unsure that my voice would hold up in a demanding rehearsal situation, especially one in which I was singing a rock score.
“You have such a beautiful voice.”
“Well, I haven’t really sung in a while, so we’ll see.”
“No, you do. I love when you sing—”
“Okay, Momma, I’ve gotta go. I’ll talk to you soon. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Break a leg. I’ll be thinking of you.”
In the rehearsal room, a young woman approached me, her arms full of manuscripts. She handed me a thick rubber-banded libretto and a tape, and then repeated this with the other actors, who by now were making their way to their seats. They were all young, in their twenties, about half of them black and half white, with one young woman who looked like she could be a Latina. I hoped I could hold my own with them; it was beginning to scare me that it had been over six years since I’d sung this much. I had not been cast in a musical since my junior year of high school, eight years ago. I flipped through my libretto, happy (and intimidated) to see that there were many lines devoted to Mark.
“Okay, everybody, let’s begin,” a voice called out. I looked up from my libretto to see a bunch of new people filtering into the room. They stood by the door in a clump, most of them holding paper coffee cups. The last of the cast members took their seats, and the man who had been at my auditions stepped forward. He looked to be in his mid-30s, and his voice was mild and genial, his manner shy but friendly. He cleared his throat several times as he spoke.
“Hello, everybody, my name is Jim Nicola, and I’m the artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop.” Okay, that explained why he’d been at my audition. “We’re all so glad you’re here, and we’re very excited to be doing this studio production of Jonathan Larson’s wonderful piece.” He put his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder as he said this, and Jonathan grinned and bashfully lowered his gaze. “The other thing I wanted to say is that our offices are right across the hall, and if you ever need anything, if you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to come in. We truly have an open-door policy here at the Workshop.” I had worked at several nonprofit theatres in New York, and I had never heard an artistic director extend that kind of invitation.
He then had everybody go around the room and introduce themselves and announce their roles in the production or in the offices, a normal first-day-of-rehearsal custom. Of course, there were always far too many names uttered too quickly to possibly remember, but it was always done. As my turn approached, I felt a familiar pang of embarrassment looming around my throat, a leftover from grade school, and I concentrated on saying my name evenly and confidently and sweetly.
“Well,” Jim said when the last name was announced, “we’ll let you all get to work. Have fun.” He and the rest of the artistic and administrative staff moseyed on out. Tim sat down at the piano, banged out a few chords, trilled some random notes, and Michael stepped out in front of the group of actors. Jonathan sat off to the side behind a table, his big eyes roaming expectantly around our faces, his hands folded in front of him.
“Welcome, everyone,” Michael said. “I’m really looking forward, as I know Jonathan and Tim are, to getting to work. I don’t want to say too much at this point, since you’ll be hearing me talk a lot over the next couple of weeks. Because this is a musical, and really more accurately, an opera, I’d just like to start out by having you all sing together. So I’ll give you over to Tim.”
Tim poked his head over the top of his piano. “Hey everybody. Morning.” He hit some chords and grinned. As in my auditions, he was preternaturally jovial and energetic. “Everybody awake yet?” We all murmured a version of “yes,” and Tim chuckled. “Yeah, I thought so.” He struck some more chords. “Tell you what. Let’s do a little group warm-up, just to get a sense of o
urselves, listen to each other, get ourselves all in the same room. Sound good?” More murmurs and another chuckle from Tim. “Great. All right. Here we go.”
As he guided us through our warm-ups, I looked around at the other cast members, who in turn looked around at me and the others. The sound in the room, even with just mm’s and ah’s and oh’s, was huge and resonant.
“You guys sound great,” Tim said when he had brought us through our final arpeggios. “Really great.” He turned to Michael. “All yours.”
“Thanks, Tim,” Michael said and stood in front of the piano. “I want to start by learning a song. It’s the song that opens the second act, and it’s called ‘Seasons of Love.’” Our stage manager got up from her seat and handed us all sheet music. “It’s a beautiful song that Jonathan’s written, and even though it essentially takes place at a funeral, it’s very much about celebration. I just want you to bear that in mind as you’re learning it and singing it. I think it’s pretty self-evident what’s going on in the song, but I just wanted to plant that seed, to let that inform you as you go.”
“Okay,” Tim said. “Cool cool cool. Check it out. This is the basic groove. I’m just gonna play this a couple of times through so you can feel it. And—” His head swung in time against the syncopation of the several simple, beautiful chords that descended and ascended, the pattern repeating and repeating. He played it through several times, and then spoke over the music. “Okay, now here we go. Here’s the tune.” And he sang:
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure—measure a year?
Chills shot up my arms and spine and the back of my head. I had never heard a song like it, especially in a musical; there was a directness and a simplicity and a groove to it that were thrillingly new to my ears. I felt everyone in the room lean forward into the music.
“Okay, let’s just loop that bit.” And tentatively, we sang back what he had just sung for us, and then again, with more confidence, and then again, once more, nailing it. “Great,” Tim said. “Moving on.” He sang:
In daylights—in sunsets
In midnights—in cups of coffee
In inches—in miles
In laughter—in strife
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?
More chills tingled up my back. This song was so much more beautiful and evocative than the song I had heard on my audition tape. I couldn’t believe it was written by the same person. I glanced over at Jonathan, who was listening with intense concentration and a pleased glint in his eye.
“Okay, let’s loop that chunk,” Tim said. And we did, stumbling on the rhythm of “cups of coffee” and “in miles” and “in laughter—in strife.” Tim guided us through those bits a couple more times, until we had more or less gotten it, and then we sang through the whole section of the song.
“Great. Moving on. This is the chorus.” And he sang:
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Measure in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love
Even more chills spread themselves around my body. Everyone in the room nodded and grooved to the music, and to the gorgeous melody of the loves, suspended and rising and falling and ringing out.
“Okay, let’s try that much.” And we all dove into the chorus, our voices soaring and blending, the sound fantastic and full and exhilarating. “Wow. You guys sound great,” Tim said. “I wish you could be sitting where I’m sitting. It’s enormous.” He jolted his head back as if he’d been hit with a giant splash of cold water, his eyes wide, his eyebrows just about reaching the ceiling. “Really great.” He nodded decisively, and played the opening chords again. “Okay, let’s put it all together. From the top.”
And we sang, our bodies pulsing to the rhythm of the song, our voices hushed and rich. The progression of the song felt perfect, with the short, syncopated phrases of the verse releasing into the open, flying notes of the chorus. When we finished the chorus we all applauded.
“That’s great,” Tim said. “Really great.”
I peeked back over at Jonathan, and he was now grinning one of the hugest, most delightful, satisfied grins I’d ever seen.
“So,” Tim said, “that’s the basic tune. There’s another verse, and solo bits, and you break into parts in the chorus—the first verse is all in unison—but that’s the gist of it.” Well, if that was the basic gist of the song, it was already extraordinary. I could only imagine how amazing it would be with the rest of it in place.
That night after rehearsal I sat on my bed and played through my songs on the demo tape, reading along with the libretto. I didn’t hear anything quite as stirringly beautiful as “Seasons of Love” in the rest of the music, but there was melody and heart in all of it. There was also the occasional lyrical clunker: in “Cool/Fool,” a catchy, rhythmically inventive song between Roger and Mark, they needle each other by saying, “For someone cool, you’re a fool,” and Mark berates Roger by calling him “Mr. Negative ’cause he’s HIV-positive.” I cringed when I heard those bits, but I played on.
I took an immediate interest in the relationship between Mark and Roger, which reminded me in some ways of my relationship with my brother, Adam: Mark is always trying to get Roger to open himself up (in this case by bringing him to an AIDS support group), and Roger adamantly resists, preferring to stay shut down. While the specifics were not the same (Adam is not HIV-positive, for one), Mark and Roger’s dynamics were similar to those between Adam and me, and I was instantly able to hook myself into them, to begin to mesh myself with Mark.
In the next song, Mark and Roger’s friend Collins shows up at their apartment with his new boyfriend, a drag queen named Angel, and they also invite Roger out to the support group. He declines, and an argument between Roger and Mark follows, which gets particularly heated, with Mark pushing and pushing and Roger resisting and resisting, until at last Roger hauls off and punches Mark in the stomach (I wondered if that punch would work onstage). Mark then sings a plaintive, elegantly melodic song, “He Says,” which features this exchange:
Mark: He says he doesn’t need support groups
Roger: I say he’ll bring his camera
Mark: He doesn’t know why I go when I’m not sick or queer
Roger: Footage to make a career
I loved the economy of the music and the fullness of the moment—it revealed so much about the mutual resentments that had been building up between two good friends and gave valid voice to both at once. Happy to have such a rich moment to play, encouraged by it, I plowed on through the score, listening to chunks of everyone else’s songs, but mostly concentrating on my stuff.
Nothing else of mine jumped out at me until the end of the first act, when I discovered I got to lead the way in a rousing number called “La Vie Boheme.” Mark starts it out by toasting:
To days of inspiration
Playing hooky, making something
Out of nothing
It was my kind of song: fast and fun and exuberant, the lyrics tumbling out almost faster than my ears could follow them, sometimes rhyming, sometimes not, all percolating above a funky bass line reminiscent of Vince Guaraldi’s famous theme for the Peanuts cartoons. I leaned forward into the speakers to keep up.
After Mark’s opening verse (a whole verse to myself!), the rest of the company joins in, escalating in intensity and harmony, throwing out lists of famous bohemians in cleverly rhymed couplets and triplets:
To Uta
To Buddha
Pablo Neruda, too
A true party atmosphere erupted out of my tiny boom box speakers, and I found myself bobbing my head in time to the music. I loved this line:
To faggots, lezzies, dykes, cross-dre
ssers too
This was a musical? You wouldn’t hear that sentiment in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s shows. Or Sondheim’s, for that matter. Nor this:
To people living with, living with, living with
Not dying from disease
I had to shake my head a little to diffuse the jolt that hit me with that line. It was so joyful, so true, and it expressed exactly how I felt. In 1994 this was still a revolutionary idea—that it was possible to live a full life in the face of AIDS or cancer, that being ill didn’t mean being dead. Jonathan proclaiming that in a musical, in a song that was all about celebrating life on the fringes, was unprecedented in my experience. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to express all of this myself; I couldn’t wait to be in the rehearsal room with the rest of the cast and revel in the shouting out of those words.
Rehearsals soon moved from Times Square to East Fourth Street, to the top floor of the brownstone next door to the theatre. There was much more air and light in this room (it even featured a skylight), and it was much closer to my apartment, so I couldn’t have been happier. The days zoomed by, crammed full of music learning and quick, inspired staging; we had to get the whole production on its feet in only two and a half weeks. Michael and Tim worked efficiently and improvisationally, giving us tons of room for input, while Jonathan silently soaked it all up, occasionally interjecting his support when Tim got stuck teaching one of Jonathan’s particularly complex rhythmic or melodic phrases.
Toward the end of the first week, Jonathan brought in a new song, “Over It,” for me to sing with Sarah Knowlton, who played my ex-girlfriend-
turned-lesbian, Maureen.
“This is great,” Tim said as he handed us the music. “It’s kind of Donnie-and-Marie-ish, but not in a bad way, just really fun, and very pop.” Jonathan sat off to the side, beaming, as Tim set about teaching us the song.
The joke of the song was that I was telling Maureen she was going to get over being a lesbian (“You never even wore flannel shirts” was one of my arguments), and she was telling me that I was going to get over being in love with her. I was happy to have this whole other set of issues to bite into in Mark’s story, and to get to come at Maureen with such fun lines as:
