by Federle, Tim
“So,” Garret says, finally wrapping up his own soliloquy, turning from me and pulling a single leaf of lettuce from his salad back on the table, “I’d suggest you collect your music unless you’re willing to show us the Elliott side of you.” He sits. “Collect your music and head back to mummy.”
And then, just like that, something breaks in me, or snaps.
“Funny you should ask about my mom, sir,” I shout, and Garret stops whatever he’s whispering to Monica, who is, clearly, about to cross my name off her list. “I figured you might do that, figured this might be the first thing you bring up when somebody as little as me—as little looking as me—walks up to your Greyhound ticket counter, a counter you’re doing one heck of a job manning, to request a ticket out of here. It’s downright ludicrous, I’ll admit as much, but on the topic of my mom: She’s just in the bathroom. And I’m sure she’ll be out in just a moment, but she’s going through a bit of a stomach ailment and asked that I please take care of my ticket, alone, before she gets out.” Mark and Marc stare at me, their jaws collectively dropped to the floor, the grime of a thousand New York auditions blowing into their little bearded mouths. “Because it could take quite a while.” And then I go for it, risking my worst talent with an improvised, final zinger: “It’s a tough thing to have a mom with a stomach ailment, when you barely have a dad at all.”
Silence. God, I stink. I need to get back to my bookbag—where is my bookbag—and swipe some deodor—
“Could you take a look at these sides?” Rex Rollins says, creeping over to me like I’m some sort of contagious. “Take a look at script pages one to three, and we’ll bring you back in about ten minutes.” He hands me a stapled packet of pages, ELLIOTT written across the top.
My face must split into two smiling moons, because Garret Charles stands, skittering the plastic folding table out from underneath the team, and whispers: “Wipe that smile away, Anthony.” And I do. “Wipe that smile away and be prepared to keep the attitude of that gift of a monologue you just gave us. That is the emotion we are looking for.”
“Can I just add,” Calvin says, the clean-shaven assistant director at the end of the table, “that you should feel really good about that. That was really nice, Anthony.”
“It’s N-n-nate, actually,” I say, now that I’m getting compliments. “Anthony’s just my stage name.”
Calvin smiles. “And by the way, what play was your dramatic monologue from, Nate?”
My speech about Mom in the bathroom, cowritten by my best friend. “It’s from Libby Jones Saves the Day, which is unpublished.”
And as Beckany holds the door open for me, handing back my bookbag, Monica shouts out, “When you come back in, make sure your legs are warm. Especially your knees.” Garret Charles is beside her, nodding. “We want to see those famous special-skill knee crawls, now that you’ve got shorts.”
And she winks at me just as the door is clicking shut.
Learning Lines
Back in the hallway, I run from person to person, asking if anyone has a Nokia charger. It doesn’t go well. I guess in New York everyone’s got an iPhone, like it’s a birthright.
“Does anyone at least,” I say, lugging my bookbag around, the packet of sides in my hand, “know the time?” And when another little boy looks up from his set of sides and says, “It’s a quarter past three,” my heart basically jumps out of my throat and beats him up. Or at least that’s the look of horror he’s giving me, probably in reaction to my own.
Well, it’s official.
Mom and Dad are probably leaving the resort now, arguing over who’s going to drive home (Mom is the more aggressive driver—we’ve had to replace the mailbox three times in as many years—but Dad has been known to drive so slowly, you’d think he were double his age.)
God, I hope Dad’s driving them home tonight, wheeling into the side yard sometime between now and the next school year.
I look down at the script. Sides are, according to Libby, selections given to actors at an audition so they don’t have to read the whole script.
The little boy with the time, number forty-five, gets called to the audition room, and I watch him take in a library’s worth of sheet music, and a hula hoop and a DVD. I must be staring, because his mother leans over to me and says, “That’s a video of the duet he sang with Audra McDonald at Carnegie Hall last fall.”
“Wow, did he win a contest or something?”
You’d think this lady’d be smiling, but she looks angry or out to prove something, like when Mom comes to me with a broken cereal bowl, or my report card. “No,” number forty-five’s mother says, “he’s just exceptionally talented.”
From behind the walls, a tremendous glissando trumps forth from Sammy’s piano, and I turn to number forty-five’s mom and say, “Wow, what a dramatic audition song. What’s he singing?”
“This is how he starts every audition. He’s not singing yet. He’s playing his recital piece on the piano.”
Whoa.
Back to the sides. Stapled, as a cover page, is something called a cast breakdown, with the following:
ELLIOTT – Seeking an ethereal, emotionally intelligent child with an uncommonly clear and beautiful boy soprano voice. Must be comfortable with heights for flying-bike sequence. STARRING ROLE
MICHAEL – ROLE CAST/U.S. ONLY – Elliott’s older brother, 16, the quintessential jock. Looking for athletic young adult to play teen. Must be comfortable with heights and driving. Ability to keep close doo-wop harmonies essential. Rock tenor.
GERTIE – Elliott’s younger sister, 6 years old. Must stop show cold with “OK, But Where Does This Leave Me?” her plaintive ballad about being stuck as the youngest child in a new household that now includes an alien. Girl soprano.
MARY – Seeking star names (think: country music/Trisha Yearwood era), late 30s to late 40s, Elliott’s mother; world weary but a fighter; must exude an Every-mother quality; seeking a thrilling, roaring belt. High alto.
KEYS – ROLE CAST – late 40s to late 60s. Sheriff-type in guise of government agent. Real-butch and not theater-butch; no singing required as of this draft.
GREG, STEVE, and TYLER – MICHAEL’s best friends, 16-18. Seeking all ethnic types; must have experience keeping close barbershop harmonies. Open to actors with handicaps. All must be comfortable with heights and must “read” high school. A recurring bit includes one of them choking on French fries; commedia dell’arte experience helpful.
ENSEMBLE – tweens to 50s to understudy lead roles and appear in various bits throughout show, from news anchors to students. Must be comfortable with heights; all must be accomplished tap dancers for the finale. Ability to play tuba a plus for female ensemble.
E.T. – the most famous alien of our time; seeking a very small woman or accomplished professional midget performer. Histrionic vocal displays essential.
Gracious me, this packet is thick; I’ve got less than ten minutes to prepare all the scenes and I’ve barely made it past the character descriptions.
Sweating, I flip the page and see “ELLIOTT, Scene 1” scrawled in photocopied Magic Marker. It looks like Elliott’s family is having a pretty boring argument over pizza. Standard set-up. But then? Drama.
I live for this stuff.
“Gertie, did you hear somethin’ out back?” That’s Elliott’s line, with his brother Michael going, “God-darned coyotes again, Ma.”
Man, that’s a dynamic exchange. Classic Broadway.
And actually . . . there are a lot of dynamic exchanges in this scene. There are a lot of exchanges, period. But forget how many words there are; speed-reading ahead, I need to figure out how to deliver stuff like “we’re a crummy family that ain’t worth loving” like a boy. And not a cowboy.
Shaking it off, I sink into a seat and keep studying, diving into scene two. Luckily, this one is just between Elliott and E.T.; I think there’s less of a chance I’ll be expected to cry in the audition if there’s, like, fewer people in the scene. Zoomi
ng through the (endless) text, and ignoring my queasy stomach, I land on E.T.’s brilliant last line. “Gurrrrr gurrrrrrr,” it goes, with a description just next to it: Contentment; if a kitten and an apple pie mated, this is what it would sound and smell like.
Gosh, I totally get why Elliott would be friends with E.T.
What I don’t get is how I’m supposed to memorize all of these pages. Sweet Lord almighty, this is longer than my oral report on irrigation.
And just as I’m starting to read the third sequence in the packet—lyrics to what looks like Elliott’s act two song about getting sicker, called “Whitest Boy Ever,” Beckany taps me on the shoulder: “You ready, champ?”
That’s nice, at least. The only champ in my life is usually Anthony.
“Oh, I—I was just getting to the third side, and haven’t—”
“It’s okay,” she says, literally lifting me from the wicker hallway chair, “they’re only asking people to read sides one and two, anyway, and you’re the last kid to go.”
And I’m whisked back into the room. Rex Rollins, behind the table, is finishing a hamburger (where did that hamburger come from?) and has moved on to nursing a liter of Diet Pepsi, having now exhausted New York City of its Coke products.
I set my bookbag by the door and slide the rabbit foot deep within my new mesh pockets, keeping it close by for good luck. I’m not particularly superstitious, but I don’t like the number thirteen or black cats or opened umbrellas when it’s not raining—speaking of which, that storm just won’t let up outside—and I’m not afraid to rub a little rabbit for luck. I’ll give it one more chance.
“Okay, Nate,” Rex says, “let’s just take a quick look at side number one, and then we can be on our way.” Actual bits of hamburger meat cascade from his mouth. Sammy is closing the lid to the piano and putting his jacket on, and, if I’m not mistaken, beginning to open his umbrella.
“Okay. Thank you,” I say, stopping to cough, “thank you for seeing me today, and I just want to warn you that I haven’t memorized these wonderful scenes yet.”
Mark and Marc, organizing piles of headshots behind the table, giggle for some reason.
“No need to memorize those sides, Nate,” Rex says. “Just go ahead when you’re—
But I’m so excited that I cut him off, starting in on Elliott’s lines, working my way down the whole page.
“Gertie, did you hear somethin’ out back?” I turn and look to the door, deciding to make the Ripley-Grier hallway the “out back” of Elliott’s house in the script.
“No, sir,” I say as Gertie, pitching my voice into a lispy soprano, licking my fingers since she’s supposed to be “eating pizza” according to the sides.
For some reason Marc and Mark laugh harder now, and my eyes flit up to them. I simultaneously scold myself (an actor must never break the fourth wall and look at the audience, which I’m always hounding Libby about) and launch right back in: sticking my chest out, sitting into my left hip, putting on the persona of my mom, who is a distinctly perfect model for the role of Mary, Elliott’s mom.
“Elliott,” I say, wagging my finger at the air, “finish your dinner. I mean it.” I whip around and reassume the role of Elliott. “I just coulda sworn I heard a rustling in the garbage cans. I bet Michael didn’t put ’em away, neither.” God I hate that line.
I squint for two seconds and channel Anthony—“16, the quintessential jock”—basically he is Michael. “God-darn coyotes again, Ma,” I say, yawning, scratching my armpits. Anthony is always scratching his armpits.
“Watch your mouth, Michael,” I say, wringing my hands and sighing a lot. Mom always does those things when she’s staring out the window.
Garret Charles grunts, here, I think.
“Mom,” I say, heading to the door of the audition room, “I’m going to the bathroom. Make sure the dog doesn’t get to my plate.”
I glance at the page—I guess I’d memorized more of this than I realized—and drop to the floor, spinning around on my butt. “Plate, mate, fate, plate,” I say as Gertie, biting my lips, gurgling, playing not so much Elliott’s adorable younger sister but, like, an idiot monkey starved of nutrients. I think I might even pretend to pick an ant from my hair and eat it, but who can tell, the whole thing is going so fast.
At this point, the room is roaring. I can see out of the corner of my eye that Sammy has taken his coat off and is texting somebody furiously. Rex is waving his arms at me, but I can’t stop. My mouth is like a marble rolling down a hill.
“Stupid girl,” I say, jumping to my feet and loping around like a caveman. Like Anthony. “Rhyming all day long.”
“Watch your mouth, Michael,” and my voice cracks on mouth, a big over-the-top Mom-about-to-cry crack. And, my God, Calvin the assistant director is scribbling something on his notepad at the table.
“Would everybody just stop fighting,” I yell, standing by the audition door.
And then I remember a theory that I actually taught Libby: “Play the opposite.”
If a scene calls for screaming, don’t scream. When we did our basement workshop on Les Misérables, Libby studied the role of Eponine, and I made her practice the entire song, “A Little Fall of Rain,” as if it were the smiliest lullaby you ever heard. It’s actually about a young girl who gets shot in a war and is dying in the arms of her really hot friend, but if you smile through such a tragedy, it disarms the audience. Freaks them out. Makes them think you’re a little crazy.
Makes them keep looking at you.
“A little crazy,” I explained to Libby that day, “is a lot more interesting to watch than a girl who’s been shot.”
So I channel that day—that day of getting quiet when you’re supposed to be loud; about grinning when you get shot—and decide to read Elliott’s final monologue with jabs of crazy-person laughter, belying his breakdown at the dinner table.
“It’s enough—mwa-hahaha—that a kid can barely keep his thoughts straight. You—picking on our sister all day—hahahaha!—and you, Ma”—and I whisper this part—“waiting by the door for Pa to come home. Well, he’s not!” That part I yell. You’ve got to yell sometimes.
The last line is “He’s not, because we’re a crummy family that ain’t worth loving,” but that sounds like something from Little House on the Prairie or whatever. It doesn’t live up to E.T. It’s just not good enough. So I go for broke and rewrite on the spot.
“Dad’s not coming back because we’re not worth it. Because this is a house full of people, sure, but empty of anything worth loving. Especially me,” I say real slow, and then turn on myself, and open the door. And slam it shut behind me.
Because there’s only two ways to treat a door in a scene: Slam it shut or fling it open. The rest is amateur.
I take a deep breath in the hall, and then, glancing down again at the sides, blurry on account of my rapid-fire hand shuddering, make out the older brother’s last line of the script page. I shout through a crack in the door (in a stupid southern drawl—who knows why): “The bathroom’s the other way, turtle-brains. That’s out back to the yard!”
Three more quick breaths, and then a slow one, and I turn to see two pole-dance girls waiting for their class to start in the studio next door.
“That’s some real s__t, baby,” one of them says. “Whatever you all are doing in there, that’s some real s__t.” I think this is a compliment, actually, though anybody saying the S-word back home is usually using it as an example of what I’ve got for brains.
“Are you reading for the role of Michael?” a boy asks, and I turn to see Jordan Rylance sitting outside the door.
“No, I”—my voice is hoarse, battered at the edges, and my hand not holding the sides is still glued to the doorknob. “I just read all the parts to side number one. Because they gave me all the lines.”
On cue, the hallway around me bursts into laughter. The mean kind. The you’ve-got-toilet-paper-on-your-shoe kind. And I turn to the pole dancer, she of three teeth and a
tattoo of an alligator on her elbow, and she says, “You don’t worry about them, baby.”
But if she’s in my corner, that’s the opposite of a good thing.
I look back at the door and turn the knob, but it won’t budge. I’m locked out. My bookbag is inside, and my donuts and pride and dreams, too.
At once it swings back, knocking me over almost, and Rex Rollins looks me in the eye and is full of some kind of unreadable expression. Like he’s just been crying or throwing up.
“Nate,” he says, quiet, “could you calmly walk back into the room?”
“Nate!” Calvin the assistant director says, standing to greet me. “Come on back. That was really something.”
Everyone else is still sitting at the table, eyeing me like I might open fire.
I walk back to the x. “Would you mind, ladies and sirs”—shut up, Nate,—“giving me one more shot at side number one? Because I swear I won’t slip into a stupid southern accent on the Michael lines again.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Garret Charles says. I thought he was just the dance guy, but he sure has a lot to say about acting. I guess all British people are experts on acting and accents and scene-work and dramatic structure, or something.
“Nate, how tall are you?” Rex Rollins says.
“On your knees,” Garret says. “How tall are you when gliding across the floors on your knees, and are we ready to show that particular trick?”
But by the time he has said the words “are we ready,” I’m circling their table, channeling my Fiddler on the Roof bottle dancing, flying by like we’re at a racetrack, the team’s little greyhound.
Greyhound.
Buses.
Mom is going to kill me for all of this.
“Good God,” Monica says, by now having leapt upon Sammy’s piano lid. “Could I tie a towel to your knees and would you come over and mop my apartment?” Since she’s the only girl, this gets a big laugh from the team, so I yuk-yuk right alongside them and possibly even slap my knee.
