Wake me for the miracle...

I attended a benefit concert tonight for the incredible Transport Group, the theatre company here that recently did See Rock City And Other Destinations (see below, AMAZING music and pretty great show all around, my brilliant voice teacher Sally Wilfert is the actress singing the song with her grandfather in the wheelchair).
They are also reviving Michael John LaChiusa's Hello Again this Spring.

The benefit was a tribute to LaChiusa and spanned much of his best-known work, though one point that the hilarious hostess Mary Testa kept making was that he is incredibly prolific. Entitled a "Boys' Night Out," performers included some of the best voices I've heard on one stage in the same night--Marc Kudisch, Malcolm Gets, Max Von Essen, Stephen Pasquale, Alexander Gemignani...and the list goes on. Their performances, though, weren't even the point of this blog. YES, the concert was incredible. YES, the performances were breathtaking (especially, I must add, from Marc Kudisch. LaChiusa pointed out that he wrote several characters forthe man, and it showed. His voice is ridiculous--range, musicality, power, you name it, and it seems LaChiusa is really the perfect man for writing something [many things] to showcase it.), but it was the material itself that left me brokenhearted at the end of the concert.

Rich and I were walking out and we saw a friend of mine from Cincinnati who's directing up here now. He had directed LaChiusa's See What I Wanna See a few years back, and I said "you know, I think I would kill a child to do that show."*

*not really.

**no, I might.

I won't go into a book report on See What..., but suffice to say it's a piece that simply rips you in half, I would imagine as a performer, and certainly as an audience member or listener/reader. In not so many words, it's what I wish I was doing more than anything. Now, of course, pieces like this one don't come along that often, and I'm nobody in the grand scheme of my business, so it's totally ridiculous for me to act like I could even come close to picking and choosing what I was doing, but this play is everything that I love about theatre, and it's the kind of theatre that charges, recharges, changes minds, changes hearts. Maybe someday. I know I have to focus on the positive aspects in everything I'm doing, no matter what it is, and not get lost in the 16-bar cuts, the running between one studio (where I throw on my gray dress and boots and give 'em red-headed earthy belter) to the other, several blocks away (to put on the bright blue dress and pink shoes to give 'em soprano ingenue), and the closest thing to a full production on my horizon that happens to end in "A Mousical!"

I talked with my grad school classmates who are THANKFULLY in the city now just last night on how in the world we can stay positive and motivated. I think we know that sticking together is going to be key, and discussion has started of something of a theatrical "book club" of sorts where we meet up, have a potluck, read monologues, read through a play, sing through songs in a specific show, discuss it, whatever it takes to get back into feeling like ARTISTS in some small way.

LaChiusa said it himself in the aforementioned See What I Wanna See, through the character of an Atheist grandmother, when she sings:

There will be a miracle
Stick around and see
You need patience for a miracle
Timing is the key

Somewhere in the middle of the Mousicals and the ECCs there will be some truly inspiring and artistically fulfilling work, I know it. I'm doubtlessly one of the "hungry souls" the song mentions. In the meantime I'd better get my food for tomorrow packed, along with my black shorts and tall black open-toed heels. Ragtime/Rocky Horror EPA in the morning...wake up ETA, 5AM.

She IS Endlessly Benevolent, All-Powerful, and Beloved by a Multitude of Nations...

On my way back to the dance studio tonight from babysitting on the Upper West Side, I had one of those experiences that I've come to realize is typical to New York City, and unheard of nearly anywhere else.

A man got on the downtown 2 train at 96th Street, and spoke, in full, clear voice, making my fellow commuters and I shift nervously as we realized he wasn't addressing anyone in particular:

"Jesus is coming! He told me to tell you. I am his servant, I only do what he say. If I am making love with my wife, and my master say stop, I stop. I do not argue with Jesus. (author's note: this is verbatim; I assure you, I started composing a note on my phone immediately once he said the former line.)

"Jesus, why you not hurt me? He say, if you go to Oprah Winfrey's house, and her dog jump on you and start licking your lips, you do not hurt that dog, yes? American people are like that. They are smart and they know not hurt you. I am God's dog. Jesus is Oprah. I am licking your lips right now. I would not hurt oprah winfrey's dog because I love oprah! I! LOVE! OPRAH!!!"

Then he exited the train. I'm pretty sure the sermon was intended to conclude with something about Jesus, but it didn't bother me. I knew just how appropriate it was to deify Oprah.

When we were in Chicago on the Annie tour last year, one of the little girls, the littlest "orphan," in fact, had a big fancy LA agent for a Dad. This meant that each of the adults in the cast, orchestra, crew, and Orphan Parents got a ticket to the Oprah show if they wanted one. It was a huge coup; I'd heard about people booking trips to Chicago a year in advance just because it was the soonest they could get show tickets.

My group of girlfriends signed up, and our guy friends in the orchestra reluctantly added their names, grumbling things like, "Only if I get a car," and "We'd better get some kick-ass free stuff for this." We prepared our outfits in accordance with the dress code (bright solid colors; they look best on camera), and we all agreed to be at Harpo Studios at 7:00 AM, which meant leaving our downtown hotel at a little before 6. We'd had plenty of bus calls earlier than that, it would be no problem.

Then, at dinner, our "Rooster," Chicago native Zander announced that all his "boys," 5 or 6 of his friends he grew up with from Hebrew school on, were going to take us out in Wicker Park that night after the show. "Oh sure," we said in the dressing room, "sounds like fun, no big deal, we'll get dressed up, they'll show us their favorite place, we'll have a couple of drinks, then come home and rest up for our brush with greatness in the morning."

A converted gas station with amazing small plate nachos and samples of many flavored tequilas later, we should've headed back to the hotel. But oh no, there was the ridiculous, swanky speakeasy across the street that we simply couldn't miss. I don't even know what was in those cocktails, I merely knew that they were only available by the $98 carafe. The gawky young men making fun of one another's noses and reminiscing about one another's Bar mitzvahs insisted, and insisted on paying, so the next thing I knew, it was 3:30, we had gotten a free round of rye shots (I do remember exclaiming, "Rye?!? Isn't that what hillbillies drink when the moonshine runs out?") because Lynn, our "Miss Hannigan," had claimed to have cut her lip on a chipped shot glass, and my girls and my friend Sean (who refused to let the girls get in a cab on our own that late) were all headed home, with Jillian screaming at the driver, "Sir! Sir! I am going to climb up there and piss all over you if you don't drive faster! Seriously! SIR! I will give you the biggest #%*&ing tip of your life if you get us back as fast as you can!" (Jill was always the delicate flower of the group. Ironically enough, she's the one from the cast who didn't drink.)

The short of it was this: we arrived home and had to wake up in 3 hours. When the alarms went off, the three of us started stumbling around, and were horrified at what we saw in the bathroom mirror. We weren't even walking straight, much less camera-ready. We started apologizing aloud, to Oprah herself: "Oh no, Oprah!" "I'm so embarrassed!" "This is not in accordance with my spirit!" "We're sorry, Oprah!" These phrases, or a general beseeching of forgiveness from the Almighty Oprah became a running joke when anyone was struggling to pull themselves together for any reason. I, for one, had no more nights (or mornings) like that one for the rest of tour.

On that fateful morning, by the time we got through all the crowd warm-ups. the anonymous surveys asking us if we were satisfied with the amount of sex in our marriage, and the bovine-like herding process of taking our seats, our eyes were clear, our bright sweaters and dresses were straight, and we miraculously performed an impromptu "Tomorrow" in four-part harmony when the pre-show warmup lady announced we were in the audience. Rosie O'Donnell was the guest that day, and we good musical theatre actors would NOT disappoint her.

As others beside me on the train shook their heads, laughed, or adjusted their earbuds to their Ipods, I was lost in grateful reflections, thankful that Oprah's dog wasn't there with us in Chicago a year ago. He wouldn't have wanted to lick ANY of our lips that morning. They probably still tasted like rye.