Emma Who Saved My Life (13 page)

Well it didn't stay that way for long.

The NYCTC was tossed out and Schmeen, shamelessly, set up his own Children's Theater Project, which he let his untalented son, Arnie Jr., direct. On the basis of the theater-brat profits, the Schmeens, father and son, decided to produce some new material, important new playwrights and radical theater, anything to improve the standing of the Venice among its fellow off-Broadway trendsetting neighbors. The 1974 season included
The Revolution Is Now,
which was being produced at the same time as another modern drama,
There Is No Now,
and curiously these titles ran together on a sign in front of the theater for a week before Joyce pointed it out. Weekends belonged to the kids and
Peter Cottontail,
featuring variable casts of kid actors and variable audiences of kid actors' mothers. It played for three years, on Saturday and Wednesday afternoons. Alternately the theater staged
Burn It Down
(an unsuccessful Black Rage play not as good as the others on off-Broadway that season) and
Fuck,
which was the height of MODERNITY and AVANTGARDE and SOCIAL RELEVANCE of the mid-'70s.
Fuck
never made it to the stage—not because of bad publicity (no one cared, despite every attempt to court controversy)—but because there was an ad in the
Village Voice
that advertised
Peter Cottontail
on weekends and
Fuck
during the week and some of the mothers complained, so it was canned and the playwright threatened to sue before seething off somewhere, his vision, his art suppressed by filthy bourgeois interests …

Speaking of Black Theater, the Venice tried real hard but never could get it right. When I first joined, working nights at the Venice, there was a musical running called
Truckload of Dreams
which was all-black, a musical where a young wiry multitalented teenage girl who could sing, dance and act (1975 population of young, gifted and black teenage actresses was upward of 100,000, I think—where did they all go?) wanted to break off from her father's ministry and her mother's gospel choir to pursue her truckload of dreams in New York. The set was amazing: sort of a
Porgy and Bess
ghetto shack, somewhere in the South, and at the end of the play a truck came out onstage (let the props designer bore you stiff one day telling you how they assembled a fake truck on the second-floor shop of the Venice), and the truck was loaded up with all her belongings, and the boyfriend wouldn't forgive her for leaving Shacktown, and her father wasn't going to reconcile with her, only Mama knew she was pursuing her truckload of dreams, and they had this tearful denouement … “GO baby, go into that big world and pursue your … your
truckload of dreams
…” and then young, gifted daughter got in the truck and went away, and Mama had the show-stopper blues number where she wailed and rolled about and emoted. Our first Mama left after a month because she got a better offer from
The Wiz,
and the Schmeens turned up a popular nightclub artist from the Village who had a bit of a drinking problem. She would take a nip backstage, passing the bottle around to all of us, all of us gladly accepting, sick to death of this stupid musical. And one night before her big number, Roberta (the new Mama) got to laughing and couldn't stop. We asked her what it was, and she said no, she was going to go out onstage and laugh if she discussed it, so we didn't ask her, but she didn't stop laughing. “Truckload of dreams,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Have you ever heard anything more dumb in your life than
truckload of dreams?
Lord help me, I can't do it tonight.” But she straightened up and went out there. “Mama,” said the young, gifted and black musical actress of the moment, “I know you understand, I know you know I have to go to the City. Try to tell Papa that it has nothin' to do with him.” And Roberta swept the actress up into her ample bosom, “I know baby, I know you gotta leave Shacktown…” And then she started smiling, fighting it, almost losing, no she was going to make it, nope, too late … “Go baby, go into that big world and pursue your … good God, I can't say it, your truck … your truckload of…” And she let up this tremendous whooping laugh, and in a minute the whole audience (a full house, all there to see her) knew that Roberta had lost it and this wasn't the real play, and soon watching this big woman laugh and laugh and try to say “Go baby, go after your truckload of dreams,” they started laughing too, and soon everyone backstage was gone, and I swear, I never have seen such unity, such conspiracy in the theater, such mutual abject JOY at the idiocy of a production. She never lost it again like that, but that was the immortal performance, and I had the luck to run into someone at a boring theater-lobby opening party one time who mentioned Roberta's act downtown and I asked if he saw her in
Truckload of Dreams
and he said yes, suppressing a smile, and we both caught each other's eyes—YOU WERE THERE THAT NIGHT, we said simultaneously. At least I can't say there weren't some good moments at the Venice.

Oh wait. You gotta hear this one. As a promotion drive for the theater, Arnold Schmeen, Sr., decided to throw a big party, create a Friends of the Venice Society (for contributions, grants, sponsors who would get credit in the playbill) which was just one more scheme to sell season tickets and rake in money, and the cause of this party was to be the 100th Anniversary of the Venice. Now this was typical of Schmeen in that the 50th Anniversary (which was virtually true) would have been a worthy event and something no one would have questioned, but NO, he had to exaggerate and put together a program full of misinformation, wishful thinking, bald lies, that was supposed to impress the New York Theater World with the importance of the Venice. He spent hundreds with art people and advertising people and researchers preparing a souvenir program which had playbills and old ticket stubs and good reviews (it displayed six because that's all they could find), finding photos of Lucille Lamont, old snapshots from the vaudeville days, the Follies days—a complete whitewash. This came to a spectacular end when one of the unrelentingly savage theater critics, who knew damn well what had become of the Venice, rewrote Schmeen's souvenir program, lampooned him nationally, ridiculed the whole affair (including a fundraising $100-a-throw cocktail party) under the headline:
TO FORGET VENICE.
Another magazine did a retrospective as well, citing bomb after bomb with the headline
DEATH IN VENICE.
There was a time, I vaguely recall, during which I could hardly wait to put the Venice Theater on my
ŕ
esu
ḿ
e …

Now if someone had told me in those first days: “This is the Venice Theater and it is barely theater, and you will come to realize that no one here has any talent and that nothing that is done here is any good and that before it's all over, you will be jumping around in a bunny suit (
Peter Cottontail,
'77 season, summer, Sat. and Sun. matinees),” I don't think it would have mattered. Even knowing that now, it doesn't matter because it was important to learn and understand that the Theater is 5% (if that) Glory and Applause and Long-Running Hits, and 95% Bunny Suit. And I remember when I had a part-time job as a dresser and there I was helping chorus boys slip in and out of tuxes and top hats in a show called
Deluxe
(a short-lived musical on the life of Busby Berkeley; the whole play was supposed to be a dream of Berkeley's but it wasn't clever or lavish enough to be anything but an insult to Berkeley) and there, in this flop, was Brenda Simpson, who had won a Tony for
Table for Five,
who was on the cast albums for half the Rodgers and Hammerstein ingenue roles, who was by anyone's standards an Established Presence on Broadway—mind you, not a household name across America, but a bona fide Theater Person—and here she was in this drivel, and I asked her why, very tactfully, during the show's intermission over coffee, and she smiled and said, “The object in the theater, if you love the theater, want to make your life in it, is not to become famous or only play roles that flatter you or be the Star of the World, or to become a Legend in Your Own Time. The goal is to
work,
simply and consistently work, and do good work when you work, do creditable work with bad parts, create a moment or two worth remembering, be the name in the program that the week-in week-out theatergoer sees and goes, ‘Well thank god, she's in it; it won't be a total waste.'” And as Brenda Simpson told me that, I knew it was wise and good and true, and then she got up to run back out and sing “Busby, You Never Write Your Mother,” and I sat there thinking that there must be shortcuts and there must be fame and glory and Tony acceptance speeches—I wanted the 5% Greatness and not the 95% Bunny Suit. Are there words enough to tell you how much in the theater, in New York, in love and in life, you get the Bunny Suit?

And so I began my Illustrious Career, doing all the things one does when one is Nobody Yet in the theater, the four mainstays of the bottom rung …

1. Office and Clerical Work.

Joyce made this tolerable. Basically all we did was drink coffee, listen to her reminisce, and chain-smoke. A pack a day, with ten little Styrofoam cups of instant coffee. “Smoking will do you good, kid,” she said. “Lower your voice. You'll get the manly roles.” Still waiting, Joyce babe.

2. Working Props.

I loved working props. Any fool could work props. I was always immensely relieved to see the weekly assignment sheet and see that I got to do the Easiest Job in the Theaterworld, and I was confident … until I forgot, one night, to put out an ashtray on a certain table for Garner Fuskins, our fifty-five-year-old prima donna, who played most of our stately gentleman roles. He was furious—he rampaged backstage, an elephant crashing through the underbrush, “Where is he, where is he, wait 'til I get my hands on him…” and although friends tried to lie and protect me, he found me, took me by the collar and snorted, “You little shit. I had my cigarette lit and I reached over to put it out and, what? Huh? There was NO ashtray.” Here his voice got strained and intensely quiet. “Do you think a gentleman like Ashley DeCamp would put out his cigarette on the table, maybe stomp it on the carpet? Throw it out the window? Do you know what kind of
business
I had to invent to put out that lousy cigarette? Hm?”

I was terrified after that. I psyched myself out completely, showing up twenty minutes before I had to, double-and triple-checking the prop list. Later, I learned it was common to torture the actors who treated the underlings like garbage by removing their key props—it rarely got back to anyone important, and if your conspiracies did reach the ears of directors, they shrugged it off as tantrums of temperamental actors (that is, unless you
really
went and mangled the play). Let us review some of the favorites. Oldies, I admit, but goodies …

A. Absence of Actor's Favorite Piece of Business.

All ham actors create lots of business for themselves, dramatically smoking cigarettes, adjusting the cravat, reading a magazine with exaggerated interest—there is no end to what people will create to lengthen their time onstage, turn a small role into something the audience will remember. The trick here is to sabotage the piece of business. Fuskins elegantly pulls out his cigarette case, opens it with a flourish … and there's nothing inside, ha ha. One time Tim, one of my drinking buddies there, noticed that Fuskins was dragging out his time onstage by riffling through magazines on a table, so he put a
Penthouse
face down so that when Fuskins picked it up the audience could see what this turn-of-the-century gentleman was reading.

B. Shifting the Subject of a Key Line.

I.e., slightly moving something directly referred to every night by an actor. “Don't those flowers look nice, Reginald, under father's portrait … Ha ha ha, oh I mean, how nice the flowers
would
look under father's portrait. I'll move them right now … from this … table…”

C. The “They Can See It, the Audience Cannot” Gambit.

I.e., “Veronica, I swear to you, she looks just like little Albertine. Can't you see it in her eyes?” The actor pulls out a wallet to show a picture where the prop person has replaced it with a photo of Hitler, the actor's
ŕ
esu
ḿ
e photo, Arnold Schmeen, a cutting from
Blueboy
magazine … lots of possibilities, all of them good for getting the unbeloved victim to flub the next line. A corollary to this is the ever-popular quinine-and-Dr. Pepper in the Scotch bottle, or even better, real vodka in the decanter usually filled with water for the “I better fix myself a double” scene where the actor has to drink the shot straight.

You often hear from actors how worthless and menial and inessential the techies are, but of course, this is wrong. They hold all the power. Moral to this story, if you're an actor, is to remember that or else face unending conspiracies …

3. The Dresser.

This, I think, is the worst heart-attack work, therefore higher in the Backstage Hierarchy. Example: Thirty seconds. The actor runs offstage, throwing off his tear-away clothes—you are there with his next costume. He steps into it, you tie his tie, you fasten his pants … Fifteen seconds. The sole comes off the shoe, the zipper is stuck, the shirt won't button, the amulet (he has to look at meaningfully in Act Two) snaps at the chain-clasp—suddenly, he panics: “What's my line? I can't remember my fucking line—good god, help me Gil, what is it?” You give it to him … or was that his entrance line for Act Three?… Five, four, three, two, one, he's on. And in a musical with lots of numbers, it is not unusual to have this fun experience ten times a night—all of this misery compounded by the mind-numbing, embalming
boredom
of having to hang on the cues and lines of the same play every night. The dresser can recite the play by memory, unfailingly.