Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Part One

As I’m writing this, I feel the urge to push things along a bit. I’ve matched the energy of my New York days – sluggish and depressing. Career-wise, the going was good. One small production led to another… Inside, I felt like I was going upstream.

Each day, I rode the subway to my job in Manhattan. I was hired because being a writer made me qualified to answer the phone. “We don’t want someone who wants something more. You’re a writer? Good. All we need you to do is answer the phone. We don’t want someone in this job who wants to move up.”

The job was adequate. The people were friendly. During the day, I surfed the net. Sometimes, coworkers would ask me about my background. “You have two college degrees? Why are you in a job like this?”

Such a question led to explanations of the “playwriting scenerio.” I’m working a boring day job so I can save brain cells for my real work.

“Oh, you’re waiting to sell a play?”

“No, we don’t sell plays. We rent them.”

A good friend of mine suggested once that I must not be a very good writer, since I wasn’t earning a living at it. He was like a father to me. Too bad the comment ended the friendship. Later on, he told people I was too sensitive. But it’s important to have supportive relationships. Being a writer can feel like a perilous path. I didn’t need people who doubted my abilities.

When that door closed, another opened in the way of a chance meeting. It involved a production, a bear raping an actress, exploratory surgery, and rats on the Lower East Side.

If I hadn’t met Miss Musing, I might not have written War. I definitely would not have come back to theater. I could’ve moved to Austin without her acquaintance, but I don’t know what I would’ve done there.

It all started when I answered an ad for writers and actors. I showed up at the theater surrounded by men and women who were willing to do anything for a role. I was the only writer in the group.

I’ll call the woman who instigated this event Twinkletoes. There’s no meaning behind the name. It just feels appropriate.

Twinkletoes asked us to stand in a circle. The gathering commenced with those God-awful actor warm-up exercises. Have I mentioned that one of the primary reasons I quit acting is because I didn’t want to play actor games? I don’t want to stand around in a circle and make stupid faces at other actors. Directors love this shit, but it strikes me as the Disney version of sadomasochism. I’m a writer. My version of vocal exercises is cracking my knuckles.

But I did them because I didn’t want to appear difficult. After we were finished humiliating ourselves, she said that she was planning a production and we were going to have to come back if we were interested in a role. The first half of the evening would be a workshop. The second half would be auditions and rehearsals. And if we wanted to do all this, we would be charged $5 a week.

It brought new meaning to the words “Paying your dues.”

At the end of the meeting, she told me that I should bring monologues to read for next week. I shoved my resume in her hand and left. To be honest, it never occurred to me not to come back. I regarded this experience as one more networking opportunity. Five dollars was a small price to pay for meeting new people.

The next session began with those horrible exercises again. It took us an hour to go through them. The next hour was spent auditioning. The only thing I remember about the audition is that my monologues were very well received, and I witnessed the worst audition I had ever seen in my life.

Twinkletoes wanted us to audition in front of each other. It was an interesting idea since it fostered a community atmosphere among the actors. I think they bonded over their collective discomfort. Anyway, the actress stood in front of us and began her monologue. I don’t know which monologue it was, because after the first sentence, she blanked. The monologue was gone from memory. She looked down at the floor and giggled, then said something like, “Wait, wait, I can get this…” Occasionally, a fragment of the monologue would flash in sparks, only to be crushed with “Uh, no that’s not it.”

After the auditions, Twinkletoes chatted with me on the sidewalk. Would I be interested in writing bit parts of the play? Of course, I responded. She told me that her work was experimental. Did I have a problem with that? I assured her I didn’t.

She whispered the topic of the play to me, and asked me not to tell the actors. I wondered why she didn’t want the actors to know. Perhaps she would never tell the actors what the play was about. But then, it never occurred to me that she hadn’t actually written the play yet. Not even a rough draft. There was no way for the actors to audition because she didn’t have roles to fill.

Very experimental.

Five dollars a week was a small price to pay for the potential clusterfuck, but everyone likes to watch a car crash. And I guess it goes without saying that the woman who performed the worst audition ever got to perform in the play. Unfortunately, it was in the part I wrote.

Oh, but wait… It gets worse….