Unnaturally Green (16 page)

In minutes we reached Boogaloos, recurring site of my many breakfast bonanzas. Before entering, I dialed Ann on my cell.

“Hello!” she yelled.

Oh, how I have missed the decisively unpleasant though well-meaning sound of her voice!

“Ann! Hi! I’m, uh, just returning your call!”

“So, I take it you’re ready for your trip?” Ann replied.

Was that a metaphor? As was my custom when translating Annglish, I held for clarification. But there was only silence.

“Ha ha,” I said. “What do you mean?”

“Your trip tomorrow. To New York. Or is this news to you?”

My eyes must have been bugging out, because I saw Marshall mouthing,

What’s wrong?

I’m not sure
, I mouthed back, following up to Ann in actual words,

“Is everything okay?”

“Well, pack your sack and come home to Mama! ’Cause you’ve got another audition to get to.”

“Really? For what?”

“For
Wicked!
”

“Um…”

Was Ann in her right mind?

“I’m already
in
Wicked
,” I said, wondering if this was less a real scene from my life than a prank reality show, or a Marx Brothers’ bit disguised as a conversation.

Ann cackled.

“Darling, no. You’re getting another shot! They want to audition you to be the new Elphaba standby.”

More bug-eyes. Marshall’s face morphed into an actual question mark.

“Oh, wow!” I said, mouthing,
I have to fly to New York.
Then, to Ann, “And this is all happening tomorrow?”

“Yep. Same packet as your audition and callback. Do you need me to re-send the materials?”

“Nope, I’ve got them,” I said, patting my catchall tote, inside which I’d placed my Elphaba binder. I brought it with me everywhere, since I’d been studying my lines and music on the train and during my ensemble performances.

News of the audition felt like I was suddenly getting thrust into the future—where I would be held accountable for my Elphaba work so far. At the same time, it was like a journey into the past—back to New York, where it had all started.

In both scenarios, I was being tested. Again.

And I was woefully unprepared.

(
GREEN. 5.
not fully developed or perfected in growth or condition; unripe; not properly aged:
a green actress.
)

“You need to figure out flights with management. Talk to…what’s his name? Tanaka?”

“Sure, I will.”

“Well, away we go—right, darling?”

“Tanaka” was Annglish for Tanase,
Wicked
San Francisco’s company manager. He was the local liaison to the
Wicked
Powers-That-Be, the committee of fates that was apparently orchestrating my next cross-continental adventure.

Who were these mysterious fates?

I wondered if Tanase dealt with them on a regular basis, what with their long beards, bauble staffs, and elixir-filled chalices. (That’s how I pictured them, anyway.) How did the lot of them communicate? Telepathy? Smoke signals? Skype?

The weirdest part about these fates? If it were up to me, I’d never have cast myself, let alone invited me to re-audition. As I shook from nerves, I realized that they had more faith in me than I ever could.

Seriously. What were they thinking?

I knocked on Tanase’s door, craning in to see him sitting at his desk, unflinching. He waved his hand for me to come in. Tanase was much younger than I expected a company manager to be, with clean good looks and a manicured sheen that would make Tim Gunn proud. While always helpful, Tanase gave the distinct impression that his mind orbited his mouth: as he spoke about one thing, he collected far-out idea-bits and thought-satellites in the stratosphere. Maybe it was all in my imagination, but I got the distinct impression that sometimes he was
actually on an international space station, way out on a neighboring planet, while his body operated remotely. (Maybe Neptune. Or Uranus.) The Tanase who sat at his desk was a surrogate; the real Tanase was doing something more important for mankind.

I crept onto the thin blue carpet, and we started chatting about my trip.

“Here are some flight options,” Tanase said. “You would be excused from Thursday and Friday’s performances, then due back for the matinee Saturday.”

Leaning over his shoulder to see the computer, I decided on a flight that would leave the next evening and return Friday, which meant I would stay in New York City overnight. Since I had sublet my Hell’s Kitchen apartment,
Wicked
would be housing me at the Mayfair Hotel, a happy six blocks from where the audition would take place.

As Tanase typed, I looked around. His desk was immaculate, with neatly arranged penholders and a few framed photos of him wearing zipper sweaters in front of strange mountainscapes.
(Was that Uranus? I wondered.) If
Wicked
’s theater contained a tug-of-war between fantasy and reality, the company management office was the epicenter of reality—the perfect contrast to what went on onstage.

Outside was Oz. In here were forms, logistics, rules, and practicalities.

“So, looks like we’re all set,” said Tanase’s mouth, while his mind was steering him through an intergalactic hailstorm. “I’ll bring you the confirmation details by tonight’s performance. And be sure to save your receipts—checked baggage, taxi from the airport, that sort of thing.”

I thanked him, then darted out of the room to try to find Bryan, the conductor and music director. I’d crammed for tons of tests in college—learning a semester’s worth of material in the final hours—and this standby audition would be no different.

Not if I had anything to do with it.

Bryan was like a distant, power-suit-wearing father. No matter how much he scared me, I just wanted him to love me. And then come to my soccer game.

At 6:30 p.m. I swung by the vocal rehearsal room, whose door was propped open, and caught Bryan sitting on the miniature couch, eating a dinner of what looked like falafel and French fries.

“Come in!” he said, not looking up—even though I was already in the room, at which point I considered walking out then coming back in, so as not to upset him.

Instead, I boldly took to the center of the room, a mere foot from where he was sitting, and set my binder on the music stand.

“Thanks for coaching me,” I said, as Bryan glided over to the piano bench.

Without a moment to spare, he started to play the familiar vamp of rolling chords—the ones I’d heard at my audition, my callback, then every night through the dressing room monitors, over which Teal Wicks, our Elphaba, would sing:

“Unlimited…”

“STOP!” Bryan spun around on the bench to face me. He frowned at me like I had mustard, or boils, on my face. “You weren’t thinking, were you?”

“Uh—” I shook my head and shrugged.

“What were you thinking?”

I am so scared of you,
that is what I was thinking.

“Uh, I guess,” I stalled, “I was focusing on my notes and breathing, just trying to focus, for now.”

“Yes, I could tell. I know because you
inhaled
way too early.”

At this he closed his eyes and looked down, pausing before an open casket—showing due respect for the death of talent and reason.

“Your breath should come
with
the sound, directly before you phonate. If you’re present, this happens naturally. If not, your breathing is totally off.”

“Oh, okay. Right. Thank you,” I said, wondering if he’d learned this subtle giveaway in the guidebook of
Evil Music Director Detectivery.

“Again!”

Rolling cords. Steeled mind.

Think of something, anything!

“Unlimited…”

“STOP!”

Motherfu—

“What were you thinking?” said Bryan, this time not even turning to face me. Without waiting for me to answer, he asked, “What does it mean to see that something is ‘unlimited’?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Uh…”

Unlimited
. What did a word that was so unspecific mean to Elphaba, specifically?

I was learning the hard way that singing wasn’t just breath, posture, or vowel placement; singing was
acting
. And acting wasn’t black turtlenecks and berets—acting was
specificity
.
Specificity
was the imagination, channeled concretely. Imagination was risky, because it involved decision-making, deciding what a character—a person—might think, feel, believe, experience.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and inched onto the ledge of my imagination.

Time to take a risk.

“Elphaba sees, uh, a giant statue of herself. With people all around, cheering. That’s the celebration that’s ‘all to do with her.’ You know? That’s what she’s singing about.”

I held my breath.

Bryan cocked his head to the side and, this time, spun around to look me in the face.

“Really? Is that
really
how Elphaba sees her future? As a giant statue?”

“Well, no.” Clearly I’d failed the quiz. This was
hard
.

Then, I thought: I couldn’t think about Elphaba as some abstract, green alien. I needed to think of myself first. And ask, “What would
I
want?”

What is an unlimited future?

Not bound by conventional strictures, by the shackles that have always held me back.

I closed my eyes. The lyrics mentioned that all of Oz would be celebrating something about Elphaba. Everyone, together.

“We’re holding hands,” I said.

“Who?”

“A huge circle of people. Hundreds of people. Outside. In a field.”

“What else?” coaxed Bryan.

“We’re all…green.”

“Better,” said Bryan. “Let’s take it again.”

I took a breath.

As I began my pin curls that evening before the performance, I wondered why I’d been given this second opportunity. What did the long-bearded
Wicked
fates see in me? Was it timing? Was it convenient? Was it that they wouldn’t have to pay me much? Or had I, in just a week of rehearsal, made a good enough impression that others saw in me something that I couldn’t see in myself?

Or was it that I was so similar to Elphaba—a near-match for the hotheaded green protagonist?

I didn’t know whether to be flattered, or offended.

One by one the rest of the ensemble girls trickled in, greeting me and each other. It occurred to me that over the past month I’d become part of something great: a member of
Wicked
’s ensemble. One of the gang—a group of friends.

If I got promoted to standby, I wondered, would that change everything?  In a sense, all this ensemble work would have been for nothing, and I would have to defect from the community—going it alone once again, an apparent theme in my social life.

Maybe Libby, the new Glinda standby, would be my compatriot?

As if on cue, the door swung open and in flounced Libby, wearing a strapless dress patterned with a bunch of mini pink dogs—a textile that must have been woven on Barbie’s dream loom.