Unnaturally Green (14 page)

Before Marshall arrived, I lived alone in a building called “The Hunky House,” a three-story townhouse so-named after its landlord—who was the opposite of hunky but whose last name was Hunkiwiecz (hence, “Hunky”).

Four other
Wicked
company members lived there. Tim, a jolly broad-shouldered man with a shaved head, lived upstairs with his Pilates-instructor wife and two extremely Scandinavian-looking children. He was a long-time cast member who played Elphaba’s father and, while exceedingly jovial, felt less like a friend than a camp counselor trying to get me excited about arts and crafts. Maybe it was the age gap.

Next there was Tom, our Wizard, a delightful man whom I first knew from his role in the movie
The Birdcage
(which I’d memorized in my youth). He lived downstairs and worked out at the gym down the street.

Directly across the hallway was fellow newbie Etai, who was rehearsing to take over the role of Boq (the small, overlooked munchkin) a week after I would join the cast. With an infectious laugh and brown eyes that curved into half-moon smiles, the boy called Etai BenShlomo—whose name was
not
the punch line to an ethnic joke—was a little ray of aggressive sunshine. He’d been born a full-on Israeli and his mother was a physical therapist, which meant both that he exclaimed things in Hebrew and was always grabbing peoples' shoulders, giving massage tutorials, and explaining the merits of back-cracking. (It is also worth noting that only by coincidence, as opposed to its actor’s religious obligation, did the character of Boq’s costume include a
yarmulke
-esque skull cap.)

Lastly, there was stage manager David, who lived next door to Etai but whom I hardly ever saw outside of rehearsal. Once I ran into him while he was wearing a helmet and holding a bike, just standing there not moving. David was the closest thing to an authority figure that we had, and seeing him in the blaring light of the real world was always jarring—like seeing a transvestite without her wig.

We waved to each other. Then I ran away down the street.

All in all, we were one big, Hunky family.

One night, early in the rehearsal process, fellow newbie Etai and I met for breakfast-for-dinner to get reacquainted. As luck would have it, we’d actually met before
Wicked
—in New York, working together on a musical my friend had written about a little girl dying of cancer. It was originally titled
The Chocolate Tree
, but I affectionately called it “The Cancer Musical” because I am just that classy. Etai, who was barely 5’6”, had played a thirteen year-old and I, a member of the ensemble, had played a piranha, a jaunty French citizen, an astronaut, and others.

 “So, you pronounce it ‘e-TAI?’ My mind is blown,” I said as I gracefully licked Nutella off of the side of my palm. “All this time I’d been saying EEE-tai. Like ‘meat-pie’ where you stress the word ‘meat.’”

“You’re filthy,” said Etai.

Etai said “filthy” around 100 times per conversation as a stand-in for any adjective, but somehow I always got his meaning. In this case, I think he meant
hilarious
.

Soon we got to talking about more pressing matters, like our hopes for what
Wicked
would be for us. It was familiar touchy-feely actor stuff, punctuated by the word “filthy” and Etai’s constant shoulder-grabbing.

“So how are you liking rehearsals?” Etai asked.

“I like them as much as I like slowly slipping into the coils of insanity,” I said.

“I think I know what you mean.”

Rather than rehearse together, Etai and I had our own, entirely separate rehearsals, six days a week, at various dance studios scattered about the city. Each night we would return to the theater, drained from the hours of work, and spend the evening watching the show, either from the audience or from the wings, taking notes on the actors we would soon be replacing.

We gabbed a bit more, then ordered dessert (because after a Nutella crepe, this was the next logical step), at which point I declared that rehearsing for
Wicked
was exactly like Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave:

We were confined to learn about a civilization, chained in darkness, imagining the buildings, the people, the culture—hoping that, when we were finally set free, we would fit in, rather than be outcasts—stunted individuals out-of-step from reality, like Jodie Foster’s leaf-eating, breast-baring character in that movie
Nell
.

“That’s a filthy analogy,” said Etai.  “Just pure filth.”

“But it’s true, right?”

Dessert arrived, and we changed topics.

I soon learned that Etai had gone to school at the highly reputable University of Michigan where, unlike me, he’d completed a musical theater conservatory program.

“What’s that like?” I asked, since I’d often wondered about this road not taken—the road of a Bachelor of Fine Arts. “Was it super intense?”

Etai explained that in a conservatory, an entire curriculum might be based on breathing, balance, or diction—the fundamentals of theater that every actor should take the time to learn.

I thought of my own college experience. By its own admission, Yale didn’t really train you to
do
anything in particular. You “learned how to learn,” or something like that. Which explained why, after completing my Frankensteinian English major—along with a hodge-podge of liberal arts courses (including “Language Abilities in Animals” and “Death”)—the most I’d ever learned in the way of theater came from the workshops, occasional master classes, and student extracurriculars I did on top of my course load.

Etai described his senior showcase—the time when the theater majors put on a performance for industry casting directors and agents. This, he said, had been his most crucial foray into the theater business. Yale, in contrast, didn’t do that sort of thing for undergrads.

“Then how did you get an agent?” Etai asked.

“I emailed her,” I said, which was the truth. I’d compiled a video of my college theater performances and emailed the link to about 150 agents. Two replied; one of them was Ann. “It was a little luck, a little me-beating-the-system,” I said.

I liked talking to Etai because he had a healthy perspective. He was immersed in theater but was able to speak critically of it. We touched upon some of my favorite topics—the quest to find an agent; the blood, sweat, and tears of auditioning; those “musical theater types” (people who say “fierce” or “belt your face” and talk about themselves loudly at auditions, hogging the airwaves to broadcast their personal life stories, wants, and dreams).

“I’m pretty sure those kinds of people think musical theater is about singing the highest and loudest note possible, and being able to
kick your face!
” Etai said.

“When did that become a thing,” I asked, “like, that people encourage you to
do
things to your face? How is it even possible to ‘belt’ or ‘kick’ one’s face?”

“Those people make me want to…”

Instead of finishing in words, Etai reached for my neck, as if to wring it, then rested his hands on my shoulders (where else?), shaking them to drive the point home.

“They’re not interested in honoring character or story. It’s just…filthy.”

“Let’s never be like that,” I said, enjoying our time treading in this shared pool of agreement.

After finishing off a ginger cookie, I took a sip of water and said, out of the blue,

“Have you ever felt like you don’t
entirely
belong?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like that you’re an outsider. Like: that theater is what you do, but not necessarily all of who you are?”

As soon as I heard the words leave my mouth, I felt silly. But Etai looked pensive.

“Hm. I’ve definitely felt like the odd man out sometimes, in certain productions, and around certain groups of people. But doing theater is where I want to be. That’s always been the case. And it’s what I want to keep doing for the rest of my life.”

“Yeah. Me too,” I said.

I think?

As we paid the check, I beamed at Etai, my little crepe-eating companion.

I had found a friend. And a filthy one, at that.

9. LOOK, MA! I’M A PROFESSIONAL ACTOR!

“E
et weel be all right—I feex!” said Taisia, the Russian lady
Wicked
had assigned to be my dresser. “I weel have done by eight o’clock!” she called, bounding away to the costume room.

What she was going to feex was the clasp on my wool schoolgirl skirt, which, due to recent developments, would need to be moved about one quarter-inch for the remainder of the run. And by “recent developments,” I mean stress eating like there was no tomorrow. Resizing seemed to be a trend, as several days prior I had to get a different headpiece for the opening, since the two hats they’d ordered in XL wouldn’t fit my giant egg of a noggin. But, more disconcertingly, today I’d sized-out of some of my original costume measurements (specifically in the belly region) just in time for my first performance.

Further derailing matters, I’d arrived home last night to find a giant gift basket on my stoop, overflowing with cheese, crackers, and chocolate (the three major food groups), which I had no choice but to consume immediately.

The carb-sweet-fat basket was a surprise gift from my very own Gentle Rambo, one Marshall Roy who, even from 3,000 miles away, was crushing all of my ex-boyfriends’ high scores. It was the latest of several culinary gestures from Mr. Roy—the first of which was a package filled with two dozen hand-baked oatmeal date cookies, which I devoured on the evening I received them. (I will win medals for stress eating when left to my living-alone-in-a-new-place devices.) Despite the unfortunate side effects, his special food deliveries were the most romantic things anyone had ever done for me, tied with the time in kindergarten when a boy named Harrison made me a picture book out of construction paper in which he declared his favorite color was white, his favorite movie was
The Little Mermaid
, and that he liked me very much.

Luckily, Taisia was a whiz at alterations, and, despite my worst efforts, it looked like everything was actually going to be okay.

Now, the only thing left was actually
doing
the damn show.

“This is half-hour, everyone, half-hour please. At tonight’s performance, Fiama will be on as Madame Morrible, and Felicia will be making her
Wicked
debut—welcome, Felicia. Thank you, everyone, half-hour.”

At 7:30 p.m. the voice over the intercom confirmed that this was all in fact real, and not another iteration of the dream I’d been having since childhood. The one where I start out as me—average, everyday gal, with questionable fashion sense—then suddenly get plucked from oblivion to perform onstage with various Broadway stars. In most dreams it’s Douglas Sills from Broadway’s
The Scarlet Pimpernel
, with whom (as you’ll recall from my Dating History Museum) I was literally obsessed from the ages of 11 to 15. I even made a wall calendar for him, in which every month was a giant picture of his face, which I presented to him outside the Minskoff Theatre stage door. In dream world, we always played opposite each other, even though I was a pre-adolescent and he was pushing forty.

Nothing about this was creepy.

Tonight, I was sitting at my dressing room station amongst my new large-breasted companions, doing exactly as I’d been taught. I looked as I’d dreamed I might: my hair tightly matted under a black nylon wig cap and my face luminous with rouge, lip tint, and eyebrow pencil. It felt so good to be—or at least look, in all the measurable ways—completely prepared.

Like I
might
just belong.

“You ready, girl?” blonde-haired Alexa asked, as she slid her microphone pack down her back.

(All ensemble women wore their microphone packs low, in Velcro pouches at the back of
Wicked
-issued g-strings. They’d thread the cord up to their wig caps, coiling and tucking the wire underneath, while the little mic head stuck down onto their foreheads.)

“I think so,” I said.

At fifteen minutes ’til curtain, I had been called onstage to practice my various dancer lifts—the
finale
ultimo
to my weeks of grueling rehearsal. This was pretty standard, it turned out; every once in a while the dance captains would summon ensemble pairs to run the trickier routines, refreshing everyone’s form and making sure everything was being done safely. After my potato-sack genital-assault on Patrick at my New York callback, I welcomed any dancer-lift practice with open, flailing arms.

Now, in the dressing room mirror, I was a sight to behold—flanked by the bouquets that had been sent to me by my parents, my Grandma, my agent, my Gentle Rambo.
Break a leg
, they said.
We’re so proud of you.

Everyone else thought it. Now it was time for me to embrace it: I was a cast member of
Wicked
.

Tonight was my first official night as one of the girls—without stage manager David or the dance captains as chaperones. I looked around me with wide-eyed wonder. I was the naïve freshman who’d finally been invited to eat lunch with the seniors. And they were all so…
cool
.

Each girl had her own effortless style. Penelope wore low-slung sweatpants, made extra-stylish by a cropped cotton tee that hung off her shoulders. Neka glided around in a short, black wrap. Alexa wore Ugg boots and a bathrobe she’d had the costume team tailor to her figure.

Me? I was clomping around in a standard-issued, white terry cloth robe, with cushiony blue hospital slippers that had my name Sharpied on them. In our fashion-show lineup, I was wearing Mom Jeans.

As I put the finishing touches onto my makeup, some girls did lunge-stretches on the ground, while others brushed their teeth or gargled in the sink. Each pre-show ritual was different, and most girls had no ritual at all. For them, preparing for a performance had as much ceremony as popping in a breath mint, or plucking one’s eyebrows.