I was doing a play called "Is There Life After High School?" It's a series of monologues, songs and group remembrances told by people in their 20-30's looking back on their high school days. The highs, the lows and everything in between. It's one of my favorite productions and one of the few shows that I can watch myself in and not flinch. Plus it's the show I met my fair maiden (now my dear friend) in so it was a life-changer.
That's me in the back row sporting the mustache, which was actually left over from my last production. My fair maiden (now my dear friend) is also in the picture, but I'm not telling you which one she is. It was a great cast lead by a great director who gave everyone their moment to shine. We all had monologues and featured moments and solos.
If I can brag a bit, I had a killer monologue. How do I know it was a killer? Because this was in the days before I had started studying acting and looking back at the videotape, I can see everything I did wrong and how I could have made it so much better. Yet, every night, I got laughter and applause. Even during the final matinee performance for a bunch of blue hairs who didn't laugh at anything. I walked off stage, honestly surprised they were clapping and went into the men's dressing room to find all the guys doing their best Wayne's World "we're not worthy!"
One night, near the end of the run, something happened that became the stuff of legend. It was a moment that could not have been planned if you tried and a moment that I still don't know how I got myself out of. To set the stage, pun intended, we had a fill-in stage manager that night and the scene before my monologue was about prom night, complete with a disco ball and sparkly lights. A bunch of people reminisce about how special prom was and then Jill bursts on stage with "At my school, the prom was cancelled because of a bomb scare. I recommended this become an annual tradition." Everyone scatters, the disco ball disappears into the ceiling and I come out carrying a desk chair and launch into my monologue.
It was all about a dream that I had, where I had to go back to high school to finish up some classes. The teacher hands out those blue booklets for a test, but I discover that there are obscene pictures all over it. I begin to slowly panic as I try to figure out what to do and I build to a pitch as I try to erase them but more keep appearing.
At that exact moment, right before I shift into the next gear to bring the monologue home, I hear a thud behind me. I remember time slowing down as I turned around in my chair and I see the disco ball lying on the floor behind me and a puzzled drummer staring at it (the band was on stage the whole time.) I turned back around to face the audience, time still in slow-motion and all-the-while I'm thinking "what am I gonna do?," "what am I gonna do?"
As soon as I face front, from out of nowhere I say "and things started falling all over the place" and launch back into the monologue right where I left off. Where that line came from, I have no idea. It was pure improv from the depths of my subconscious mind. And if that ball had fallen at any other point in the monologue, it would not have fit the way it did. If you have to have the set fall apart around you, it's nice when its timing is impeccable.
As soon as I get off stage, the cast was buzzing. Some were impressed with how well I handled it, although none more impressed than myself. The nicest compliment I got was from Mary Kate who said that if that had happened to her, she would have cried and ran off stage.
We come to find out that the stage manager had been trying to tie up the disco ball and she gave it one tug too many, causing it to come off it's hook and plummet to the ground. She was naturally embarrassed and apologetic, but considering how well it turned out, I didn't have the heart to be mad at her. (Later at the cast party, she gave me a miniature disco ball, which I still have hanging in my apartment.)
Talking with audience members afterwards, many thought it was part of the show. The few who realized something had gone wrong were tipped off by the way the drummer seemed dumbfounded by the whole event. So chalk a big victory up for me.
So, I told you that story to tell you this one.
Cut to 2007, when I'm doing a play called "Music From a Sparkling Planet." This one is about three guys who spend their days trying to avoid growing up by dishing trivia about sci-fi, TV and old movies. (Side note, the play takes place in the Tri-State area, so a lot of their references were familiar to this Jersey-bred-boy.) One day they begin to reminisce about Tamara Tomorrow, a local TV host and they decide to track her down. The play cuts back and forth between the present day and the past as we watch these guys cope with their lives and see the rise and fall of Tamara Tomorrow.
One thing that makes this play unique, is that the past and present will occasionally overlap. Lights will come up on two different set pieces and two scenes will run parallel with dialogue intersecting or overlapping. If you ever get a chance to perform in a play that uses this device, do what I should have done.
Run. Run fast and run far. Run until your tiny little legs can't take another step, then hail a taxi and keep going.
Getting that type of scene down will be the hardest thing you will ever do. While memorizing dialogue is not always easy, when it's written well, it at least has a flow about it. It's generally a conversation that's headed to a specific point and, if you know the scene well, you can accommodate any detours that come up. It's quite a different story when your flow is interrupted by a line said in another scene that has nothing to do with what you're doing. It becomes very technical and makes you stay in your head instead of staying in the moment.
To top everything off, the final scene has all five actors in five spots on stage, essentially giving a monologue about what they've learned. Except they give their monologues one line at a time. And it's not like there's a flow where you always say your line after actor 4. No, it could come one time after actor three, the next after actor one and maybe there's five lines before you speak and the next time there's only two. Frustrating does not even begin to describe the hell we went through getting this play down.
Despite all this, the five of us managed to pull it off almost every night. I say almost, because this story would not be worth telling if there weren't an almost.
One fateful night, we get to the closing scene. We're probably about a page into it, when one of the actors JUMPED TWO PAGES AHEAD. We all stood there like a collective deer in the headlights and you could hear us all thinking "oh, fuck." To our credit, we tried like hell to rescue it. We all started spouting out lines, miraculously not stepping on each other as we tried to bring the scene back around. It was like the train had jumped the track, was still going 80 mph and we were trying to get it back on the rails. After what seemed like hours, but was only minutes, we managed to get to the same point in the script and we could finish the play with our last shred of dignity.
Like most actors, I'd seen train wrecks happen on stage before. I've probably caused some and I know I've gotten us out of some. I'd had some good things happen and some bad things happen. It's just the nature of live theater and part of what makes it thrilling.
But until that moment, I had never wanted to cry and run off stage.
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