Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (2 page)

“Uh, let’s start again,” Tim said.

“Sorry.”

“No problem,” Michael called out from the audience. I could feel myself blushing, but if Michael wasn’t going to be overly fazed by my mistake, neither would I. So I concentrated on my breathing, trying to focus and channel the charge of my embarrassment into my performance; nervous energy was still energy, after all, and if I didn’t let it fuel me, it would wind up spinning me out of myself and ruining my audition. I breathed steadily in and out, and Tim plunked the correct note and began the song again. Its drive infected me, and I sang, my voice edgy as I bit into the words, the spite and frustration of the lyrics erupting out of me. It felt good to vent, and good to sing.

“Thanks,” Michael said when I was done. My heart pounded. He made his way down the steps of the theatre to the front of the stage, looking up at me as I crouched down to hear what he was saying. “That was fine, but I want you to try something.” I waited as he found the words to articulate his thoughts, his eyebrows arching, his hands groping the air. “I want you to think of this less as just an expression of angst and frustration, and more of an attempt to entertain yourself and your friend. You guys are freezing, and you’re dancing around to keep yourself warm. You’re sort of laughing at your own plight. You’re dancing on your grave. Does that make sense?”

I nodded and felt the twinge of wishing I had thought of that already. But at the same time I was grateful for the direction and the opportunity to try again. Too often at auditions directors say nothing at all, and I go home wondering if what I did was remotely close to what they were looking for. “Yeah,” I said.

“Great. Also, really ask the question: how are you going to pay the rent? Really ask it. Don’t just rant and complain about it.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Great. Let’s start again.”

He went back to his seat, and Tim played the opening chords. I sang, immediately feeling a lighter touch, and feeling how right that was. The whole song became more arch and sardonic, less nakedly angry, but without losing the inherent frustration that fueled it. I loved when good direction opened material up; it was always more interesting, more full, to have lots of layers to play with.

“Thanks,” Michael said when I was finished. “That was great.”

Flushed from my singing and sparked by Michael’s response, I glanced over at Tim, who quietly but forcefully nodded, his eyes wide and knowing and happy. I jumped off the stage and headed up the aisle.

“Good job,” Jonathan said as I passed him. He was also nodding and smiling, again folded up in his seat, a notepad in his lap, his eyes intense and delighted.

“Bye,” I replied, waving to everyone as I opened the door and walked into the lobby. I stood there for a moment, chewing my lip. As exhilarated as I always was after a good audition, I also always wanted the casting people to tell me right then and there whether I had the job. That rarely happened, though. While I walked home, disappointment lurked around the edges of my excitement, but I did my best to push it aside and coast on my adrenaline for a little while longer. So I had to wait, as usual. That was okay. This one felt good. This one felt like it was going to happen.

At ten in the morning a week later, I shuffled into the tiny, airless rehearsal room in the tiny, airless offices of the New York Theatre Workshop (surprisingly located in Times Square, the opposite end of the earth from the East Village) for my first day of rehearsal. A dozen or so other actors milled around, sipping coffee and murmuring hellos to one another, their faces bleary. First days of rehearsal were like that: a lot of sleepy people wandering around, not really expressing how happy they were to be there, especially when no one knew one another from previous jobs. In the center of the room a semicircle of metal folding chairs curved around a small upright piano, so I staked out one for myself on the end and sat, quietly watching everyone else. Michael and Tim and Jonathan stood off to the side, conversing.

The day after my callback, my agent, Paul, had phoned, his voice smooth and level and matter-of-fact. “You got it,” he said. It was my first audition through his office—he had just become an agent—and he could barely disguise his pride.

“Great!”

“The contract is only for four weeks, it’s a workshop. So the pay’s not much.”

“How much is not much?”

“Three hundred dollars a week.”

That wasn’t much. But it was better than nothing, and better than seven dollars an hour slinging coffee. And it was a show. It was
work.
“That’s fine, I can handle that.”

“So is this a yes?”

I was grinning so widely I could hardly move my mouth. I was thrilled that my gut had been right, and I was relieved that I finally had another paying gig, that I was a working actor once again. “Uh, yes, this is a yes.”

“Great. Congratulations.”

That day I steamed my last milk and called out my last order at Starbucks. I tried to be sensitive in sharing my good news with my fellow out-of-work actors on the staff, downplaying my excitement—“It’s just a small show. No big deal.”—but they all were happy for me. One in particular, a many-freckled redhead named Steven, a devoted musical theatre performer, kept sidling up to me as I worked the register. He asked me lots of questions about the show—the answers to most of which I didn’t know—and kept saying, “That’s so cool. That’s so cool.” I was grateful for the response and surprised at his and the others’ generosity. Maybe they now had that much more hope for their own escape.

I called my mom and told her the good news. It had been a while since I’d been able to call her on such a happy occasion.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Tonio,” she said, her mellow, midwestern voice brightened by a smile I could hear over the phone.

“Yeah, I’m very excited.”

“I’m so happy you get to sing again.” She had often told me over the years how much she wanted me to do more musicals; it was how I’d started performing when I was six, but I hadn’t been in one since getting out of high school. She had often flattered and embarrassed me by waxing nostalgic about my “angelic” rendition of “Where Is Love?” in the title role of
Oliver!
(a role I played in four different productions), and reminding me of the awards I had won in junior high school for my singing.

“Yeah, I’m happy I get to sing again, too,” I said. Although I was unsure that my voice would hold up in a demanding rehearsal situation, especially one in which I was singing a rock score.

“You have such a beautiful voice.”

“Well, I haven’t really sung in a while, so we’ll see.”

“No, you
do.
I love when you sing—”

“Okay, Momma, I’ve gotta go. I’ll talk to you soon. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Break a leg. I’ll be thinking of you.”

In the rehearsal room, a young woman approached me, her arms full of manuscripts. She handed me a thick rubber-banded libretto and a tape, and then repeated this with the other actors, who by now were making their way to their seats. They were all young, in their twenties, about half of them black and half white, with one young woman who looked like she could be a Latina. I hoped I could hold my own with them; it was beginning to scare me that it had been over six years since I’d sung this much. I had not been cast in a musical since my junior year of high school, eight years ago. I flipped through my libretto, happy (and intimidated) to see that there were many lines devoted to Mark.

“Okay, everybody, let’s begin,” a voice called out. I looked up from my libretto to see a bunch of new people filtering into the room. They stood by the door in a clump, most of them holding paper coffee cups. The last of the cast members took their seats, and the man who had been at my auditions stepped forward. He looked to be in his mid-30s, and his voice was mild and genial, his manner shy but friendly. He cleared his throat several times as he spoke.

“Hello, everybody, my name is Jim Nicola, and I’m the artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop.” Okay, that explained why he’d been at my audition. “We’re all so glad you’re here, and we’re very excited to be doing this studio production of Jonathan Larson’s wonderful piece.” He put his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder as he said this, and Jonathan grinned and bashfully lowered his gaze. “The other thing I wanted to say is that our offices are right across the hall, and if you ever need anything, if you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to come in. We truly have an open-door policy here at the Workshop.” I had worked at several nonprofit theatres in New York, and I had never heard an artistic director extend that kind of invitation.

He then had everybody go around the room and introduce themselves and announce their roles in the production or in the offices, a normal first-day-of-rehearsal custom. Of course, there were always far too many names uttered too quickly to possibly remember, but it was always done. As my turn approached, I felt a familiar pang of embarrassment looming around my throat, a leftover from grade school, and I concentrated on saying my name evenly and confidently and sweetly.

“Well,” Jim said when the last name was announced, “we’ll let you all get to work. Have fun.” He and the rest of the artistic and administrative staff moseyed on out. Tim sat down at the piano, banged out a few chords, trilled some random notes, and Michael stepped out in front of the group of actors. Jonathan sat off to the side behind a table, his big eyes roaming expectantly around our faces, his hands folded in front of him.

“Welcome, everyone,” Michael said. “I’m really looking forward, as I know Jonathan and Tim are, to getting to work. I don’t want to say too much at this point, since you’ll be hearing me talk a lot over the next couple of weeks. Because this is a musical, and really more accurately, an opera, I’d just like to start out by having you all sing together. So I’ll give you over to Tim.”

Tim poked his head over the top of his piano. “Hey everybody. Morning.” He hit some chords and grinned. As in my auditions, he was preternaturally jovial and energetic. “Everybody awake yet?” We all murmured a version of “yes,” and Tim chuckled. “Yeah, I thought so.” He struck some more chords. “Tell you what. Let’s do a little group warm-up, just to get a sense of ourselves, listen to each other, get ourselves all in the same room. Sound good?” More murmurs and another chuckle from Tim. “Great. All right. Here we go.”

As he guided us through our warm-ups, I looked around at the other cast members, who in turn looked around at me and the others. The sound in the room, even with just mm’s and ah’s and oh’s, was huge and resonant.

“You guys sound
great,”
Tim said when he had brought us through our final arpeggios. “Really great.” He turned to Michael. “All yours.”

“Thanks, Tim,” Michael said and stood in front of the piano. “I want to start by learning a song. It’s the song that opens the second act, and it’s called ‘Seasons of Love.’” Our stage manager got up from her seat and handed us all sheet music. “It’s a beautiful song that Jonathan’s written, and even though it essentially takes place at a funeral, it’s very much about celebration. I just want you to bear that in mind as you’re learning it and singing it. I think it’s pretty self-evident what’s going on in the song, but I just wanted to plant that seed, to let that inform you as you go.”

“Okay,” Tim said. “Cool cool cool. Check it out. This is the basic groove. I’m just gonna play this a couple of times through so you can feel it. And—” His head swung in time against the syncopation of the several simple, beautiful chords that descended and ascended, the pattern repeating and repeating. He played it through several times, and then spoke over the music. “Okay, now here we go. Here’s the tune.” And he sang:

Chills shot up my arms and spine and the back of my head. I had never heard a song like it, especially in a musical; there was a directness and a simplicity and a groove to it that were thrillingly new to my ears. I felt everyone in the room lean forward into the music.

“Okay, let’s just loop that bit.” And tentatively, we sang back what he had just sung for us, and then again, with more confidence, and then again, once more, nailing it. “Great,” Tim said. “Moving on.” He sang:

More chills tingled up my back. This song was so much more beautiful and evocative than the song I had heard on my audition tape. I couldn’t believe it was written by the same person. I glanced over at Jonathan, who was listening with intense concentration and a pleased glint in his eye.

“Okay, let’s loop that chunk,” Tim said. And we did, stumbling on the rhythm of
“cups of coffee”
and
“in miles”
and
“in laughter—in strife.”
Tim guided us through those bits a couple more times, until we had more or less gotten it, and then we sang through the whole section of the song.