Life Is Like a Musical

by Tim Federle

  Put your phone on airplane mode and choose the margarita. Have one for me.

  I promise you that weeks or perhaps months after your friend has picked up the check, it’ll be your turn for the competition to be envious. And you’ll have gotten there with hard work, years of good karma, and the luck of a little stardust.

  I don’t care who you are: We could all use some magic on our way to making our mark.

  4 IT’S CALLED A “PLAY” FOR A REASON

  If you’ve ever seen a group of kids dominate a playground (or inhabit a pillow fort) for hours on end, then maybe you’ve marveled at their limitless imaginations. My theory is that they haven’t been told their fantasies are silly, yet, so they flex them at full force. And nowhere is a child’s sense of wonder more apparent than at play practice—the word is, after all, play.

  Recently, my parents moved out of my childhood house, from Pittsburgh to Palo Alto. In doing so, they uncovered a diary I kept when I was twelve years old, at a sleepaway camp in the Poconos for the first time. The camp’s focus was both sports and arts, and we campers had to choose a focus on day one (any guess as to my major?). In my ancient leather journal, I painstakingly detailed the process of auditioning for the camp’s production of Annie. As a much younger boy, I’d been heartbroken that Annie contained no orphan roles for boys, as there are only so many productions of Oliver! your hometown theater can put on at a time. So I was over-the-moon excited when I learned that this time, not only had I landed a plum role in the camp’s production of Annie, but I wasn’t even going to have to shave my head to play the part. Yes, I was a prepubescent Daddy Warbucks.

  The best part about reading my diary was rediscovering how wide-eyed and delighted I was at the prospect of rehearsing, for hours on end, in an un-air-conditioned multipurpose rec room in the middle of the woods. Man, was I young. Over time, I’ve learned that the minute you start paying people to do something they’d always previously adored is the moment they start checking their watch to see when their next union-required break is.

  But, ah, to pull back the curtain on the unjaded me—hungry to put in extra hours rehearsing lines with my fellow tween thespians—was to be reminded how it was to be a kid. To put on a musical. In a barn! For free! To try on costumes and have your voice amplified by a microphone and feel like one of the big kids, just because a whole room full of people had to sit quietly while you cracked your way through a song. (Never mind that we kids were tragically under-rehearsed, and thus I accidentally skipped an entire four pages of dialogue during the one campwide performance, thereby killing half the plot on what would be both our opening and closing nights. Annie never played so fast, or so full of plot holes.)

  How can you bring a childlike approach to your own life? How can you ease up on your own kids, or maybe even your own partner, about all the “annoying” ways they mess up the house, or your plans? When did all of us lose our “hide-and-seek” approach to long, lazy summer breaks, and get so self-righteous that a group of noisy kids at a restaurant drives us crazy? Check yourself. Those screechy kids are probably enjoying their lives a lot more than you are. They’re unburdened by the realities that come with the territory of being a grown-up, yes—but we frequently bring a lot of that rigidity on ourselves. What if grown-ups didn’t have to be so stuffy? What if you’re still the same, happy-to-be-alive kid you always were, but you just got taller?

  There’s a reason it’s called play practice. Whenever possible, try to practice playing. And never get so self-serious that you turn down the chance to break into song.

  5 RAISE YOUR VOICE

  Speak up. Literally. Theater people know how to make an entrance and make their voices heard. And when people can hear you, truly hear you, they’re more likely to listen.

  There is perhaps nothing more exciting as a writer than hearing a brilliant actor interpret your lines. A document that has existed in the mysterious space between your mind and your laptop comes fully to life when somebody sharp and professional, like Andrew Keenan-Bolger, star of Tuck Everlasting, breathes life into it.

  The first time I ever heard twelve hundred Broadway audience members laugh at a joke I’d written was one of the highlights of my life. But they wouldn’t have laughed if they hadn’t heard it—and, look, if the soundman forgets to bring “up” the volume on a certain actor’s punch line, you can kiss that laugh good-bye. Have you ever thought of the perfect comeback or retort while lying in bed, approximately three hours after it would have been useful to employ? That’s what it’s like to hear an actor’s microphone sputter out right on the laugh line. In art, as in your day-to-day life, you’ve got to be heard to make your point.

  This isn’t just about volume, cadets. When you mumble, or end every sentence? With an up inflection? As if it’s a question, even though it’s a statement? You’re sending a signal that your words don’t matter, and, thus, that your feelings don’t—but they do. Feelings are, in fact, the lifeblood of every great work of art. But you can’t hear the song if the volume is off or the melody feels uncertain.

  For any marginalized reader out there who has ever felt voiceless, please keep telling your story, however you can. Keep speaking your truth, at full blast. And for my more privileged readers—those folks born into bodies or families that have allowed them to skip many of life’s longest lines—please lift up those undervalued voices around you. Be a megaphone, not a megalomaniac.

  You have to be heard to be hired. You have to be amplified to be understood. Practice making noise, taking up space, and—especially for my theater kids out there—not backing down. When people bristle at you, call you a loudmouth, or don’t understand why you’re speaking out, point them to Sister Act, the musical—especially the song “Raise Your Voice.”

  If you don’t know the musical, it was lovingly inspired by the Whoopi Goldberg star vehicle. The book writer of the musical—that is, the person writing the script, who generally gets the first pass at the structure of the story—often leaves a space in the libretto for the songwriters to later come in and work their magic. Thus, the scriptwriter will frequently draft a short description of the type of song she envisions in a particular scene—the mood, the tone, the overall “hook” of an idea.

  When I was the associate director of Sister Act in London, I learned that Cheri Steinkellner, who co-wrote the libretto with her TV-writer husband Bill, came up with the idea of “Raise Your Voice,” the roof-raising number toward the end of Act One. In it, Patina Miller, in the Whoopi role of Deloris, encourages all the nuns to stand up and be heard—to sing out, dammit. And this song was inspired by Cheri, herself, who’d been told as a child in choir class to move her lips but not make a noise. She never forgot that, the feeling of white-hot mortification that she just couldn’t blend. (Folks, blending is overrated.) So all those years later, Cheri inspired the renowned songwriting team of Alan Menken and Glenn Slater to write a rambunctious group number, in which every lady onstage is encouraged to find her voice—and raise it. That song stops the show cold, every time it’s performed, in theaters across the world. Noise cuts through language barriers—and bullshit, too. (Take that, childhood choir teacher.)

  Do whatever you can to stop being silenced. Find your way to express your reality, your dreams, the birthright you have to own your feelings. Sing that tune to the rafters. You might be off-key, but you’ll never go off path.

  6 TURN YOUR WEAKNESSES INTO STRENGTHS

  The irony in how much I hated being a middle schooler is that everything that got me picked on as a kid gets me paid now. The stuff that matters, that’s for sure. My obsession with theater; my sassy perspective on life; my ability to churn out fanciful stories, quickly: these things made me a target as a kid. They’re my bread and butter (and wine) now.

  Theater history is packed full of people who took a perceived weakness and spun it into a strength. The reason so many dance numbers in Bob Fosse’s shows involve bowler hats (go look up “Steam Heat” on YouTube; I’ll wait) is b
ecause Fosse himself wore a hat, constantly—in order to cover up an embarrassing bald spot. He turned an obvious imperfection into a signature step.

  It took me a long time to realize the hidden power of flaws, those things other people think are goofy about you—like, ya know, being the only boy in seventh grade who knew every lyric to Sunday in the Park with George (in particular the Bernadette Peters solos). I had a whole checklist of weirdness going on, like how I recognized I was probably going to grow up to be gay, when I was twelve years old. Heck, just being below average in height, and seeing myself as a lesser version of a more evolved self I wished I could be? These things added up to my being ostracized. There were days I got chased home from the school bus by bigger kids who hated my guts. They made junior high school a waking hell, two years that felt like a life sentence. I want to reach back through time and put a protective cocoon around myself.

  But there’s a catch to the tough years, of course. A flip side.

  A major study demonstrated that those kids who peak in middle school—that is, those children who were voted “most popular” at thirteen—generally plateau, and go on to reach fewer milestones in life. It’s as if those things that can make a kid popular on a playground turn out to be relatively hollow in adulthood. Guess what happens to a lot of outsiders, though? If you felt like an alien in your own hometown or school, you’ve very likely gone on to have an even richer, more empathetic outlook than a version of yourself who simply breezed through the acne years.

  Make a list of the reasons people didn’t “get” you when you were younger. Look back at that off-kilter thing you were smitten with in middle school. The oddball person you were, back when you had braces, and outgrew your shoes every other day? Notice that kid. Interview him. Ask him what he knew about his future self that you may be ignoring now.

  I spent a lot of my teens in my guidance counselor’s office. Dr. Marian Orr sort of saved my life (and, to this day, texts me photos of her dog wearing holiday-themed outfits). Back then she said to me, “Tim, let’s make a deal. You’re into the arts, right?” I was probably wearing a Cats sweatshirt, so, yes, I was. “And you spend a lot of time outside of school doing shows, right?” Yep. “So, I’m going to make a plan with your teachers. And the plan is: We’re all going to help you get through these years, as long as you aren’t overly disruptive in class.”

  We shook hands on it. See, I was the class clown who liked to poke fun at authority—a trait I eventually learned to whittle down until I could use those sharp observations to my advantage. I wouldn’t have those tools at my disposal now if I hadn’t spent so many of those years feeling as if I was speaking a foreign language in my own country, secretly, urgently studying my surroundings until I felt like I understood the world, and my place in it, in a deeper way.

  I now look back and see the naïve wisdom in my youth. I was never going to be the straight-A student who didn’t question people in a position of power. It wasn’t in my bones. But, as a result, I became quick on my feet and a fighter for my fellow underdogs. My entire writing career became inspired by the past. I could now tell fictional stories of people who don’t always have voices.

  Make a list of your own “weaknesses,” those things that have long hounded you. Is there a surprise B-side to the list? If you’re a grown-up, congrats, and sorry: You’re probably stuck with certain characteristics that will never change. For me, it’s impatience—but that’s also why I write so quickly. I can’t stand to see a blank page.

  When Bob Fosse had a bald spot, he put on a stylish hat. Where’s your bald spot? Or blind spot? Or thing that you can barely accept about yourself? Go put a hat on it, and make it something beautiful.

  7 DANCE LIKE EVERYONE’S WATCHING

  Look, I get it. I understand the cleverness of the phrase “Dance like nobody’s watching.” For a time, I even had it on a magnet on my fridge. Because I suppose, theoretically, if nobody’s watching, you can really let loose. But guess what? That’s bullshit. And I wish that fifteen-year-old me had known that.

  My high school self yearned to plant himself center stage for the whole world to admire—just as long as nobody watched him doing it. During a sophomore year production of Godspell (in which I was completely in love with the hopelessly straight boy playing Jesus), my own mother had to pull me aside after the show to ask me if I was feeling well. “What do you mean,” I said, panicked. “Well,” she said, “You sort of… danced like you were under the weather.”

  I was so dang mad at her. But it was true, and she was right. As a gawky, in-the-closet teenager, I’d chosen to keep my brightest self set to “dim.” I was afraid that if I really went for it, and wore my heart on my apostle-costume sleeve, somehow people would see the “real” me—the gay kid, in every embarrassing color. It’s that funny thing about being a young performer, or a young person, period: You want to become your most astonishing self as long as nobody sees you stumble along the way. And so I’d slinked my way through Godspell as if I were apologizing for dancing in the back row. For being alive, really. That’s no way to live, and no way to dance, either.

  If you dance like everyone’s watching—if you start moving through life as if your actions matter, and not only that they matter but that they’re worth revering—then you get to own it when you accomplish something tough, or scary. Like, when you nail a triple pirouette for the first time. Or give an incredible PowerPoint presentation. Or walk into a final job interview and don’t downplay whatever is special about you, but rather fully broadcast what you’re going to bring to the room. It’s harder to do that when you’re busy not accepting a compliment, or demurring so delicately that you barely make a dent. Leave the humility, fake or otherwise, back at home.

  To dance like everyone’s watching is not to wait for your best self to show up. It’s to say, instead: “Look, I might not be perfect, but I’m here—and you might as well watch me take up space.”

  Please, friends, take up space.

  You don’t have to be a professional dancer with an Equity card and a pair of tights to dance. Putting your whole self out there means stepping out of line and showing how you move, think, and talk like the unique person you are. This isn’t about pumping up your ego. It’s about recognizing your place in the world.

  The good news is: Once you dance like everyone’s watching, soon they actually will.

  8 REMEMBER: THE SHOW MUST GO ON

  There’s something powerful and enduring in the notion that the show must go on. New York has endured terrorist attacks, record snowfall, and financial crises. But at 7:30 p.m., six nights a week between 41st and 52nd Streets, about a thousand people are putting on fake eyelashes backstage, and humming along to Beyoncé as a dressing room warm-up. (And that’s usually just the chorus boys.)

  Not for nothing, showfolk do all of this whether they “feel” like it or not. This concept—that no matter how achy or disinterested we are—we show up and “put on the play,” has been tested on every show I’ve ever done. There was the infamous rehearsal for my Super Bowl halftime show appearance, where one of our fellow dancers, in a freak accident, fell from such a height that the production company hired a grief counselor for the rest of the cast. We cried it out. We debated pulling out of the production. Still, the show went on. (And the injured dancer lived.)

  There was the first national tour of Spamalot where I, as an offstage dance cover, got thrown onstage for our very first preview in Boston, because one of the regular dancers had fallen off a table and twisted his ankle, fooling around on a break. The show went on. (And I gave him hell for, like, a week.)

  There was the second week of Broadway previews during Gypsy when our above-the-title star Bernadette Peters missed performances owing to a nasty cold. Imagine being her understudy. You don’t come to see Gypsy starring the understudy—and yet the show went on. (And Maureen Moore got a standing ovation every night, by the way.)

  And in every last summer stock production I’ve ever appeared in, fro
m Annie to Zorba, we performed the entire show for the first time, from overture to curtain call, in front of a paying audience—because we’d run out of rehearsal time and never got to run the whole thing straight through. Not without stopping for a costume malfunction or a missed cue, anyway. And yet, and always: The show must go on.

  Lastly, in The Little Mermaid, we had a forty-foot-tall, technically complex set piece that would frequently and unexpectedly “freeze” in the wrong onstage position, during the middle of “Under the Sea”—thereby forcing thirty adult fish to rechoreograph the number around it, in front of the audience’s unknowing eyes. You don’t stop the show on Broadway. If you stop, the orchestra gets overtime, the crew gets cranky, and the audience gets restless. Once they turn on their phones, you can never get them back. It’s better to keep pushing. The show must go on.

  Of course, before the show even happens, first you have to show up. Simply arriving at the starting line is the biggest hurdle for most people. Once you’re there, calamity is bound to strike, sooner or later, but at least you’re on-site and in the game, able to react and rejigger, even if at first you stumble.

  Is it any surprise that the quote “I can’t go on, I’ll go on” came from noted theater person Samuel Beckett? “I can’t go on,” people say all the time—at funerals, after breakups, when they don’t get into their dream college—and yet they do. They must. We must.

  When you adopt the strategy of “The show must go on,” you’ll immediately see that instead of an audience that’s waiting for you, it’s your future—the one in which you march bravely forward, even when it is, at times, more of a crawl. Even when you don’t know how to. Showing up is what it’s all about. Now take a bow.