I can’t overstate how often the commercial for A Chorus Line ran in New York in the ’70s and ’80s. It was on day and night. “The reason for the line outside the theater…” the announcer intoned, “… is the line inside the theater.” FUCK YES! nine-year-old me thought every time it appeared. All the actors, side by side, headshots covering their faces “Who am I anyway? Am I my résumé? That is a picture of a person I don’t know.” (Still perhaps one of the greatest lyrics in musical theater history.) And finally, of course, all dressed in gold, tipping their top hats “One … singular sensation, every little step he takes…” This, along with the Evita commercial that ran a few years later, would change my life. (A Chorus Line starred Robert LuPone as Zach, the exacting choreographer, and Evita starred national treasure and Broadway legend Patti LuPone. I find out they are brother and sister years later and my mind is blown. Between us, my sister and I can barely entertain our relatives from New Jersey.)
I saw the actors in the commercial so often that I began to think of them as friends. I knew all of their outfits, the little bits from their solos, every flourish and thrust. Every twirl and jump. I wanted to see A Chorus Line for almost as long as I can remember being alive. When I finally do see it for the first time I’m thirteen. (Hello twelve, hello thirteen, hello love. Google it.) It’s been running for years already at this point. I go with my sister, Maria, to a Wednesday matinee. We get our tickets at the TKTS booth in Times Square for half price. (The show runs without an intermission and I feel like I’ve been shortchanged. An intermission draws the event out, allowing you to savor it just that much longer. Now when I find out a show has no intermission my first response is “Thank fucking God, please let it be only ninety minutes.” But then I wanted everything to last forever, forestalling my return to real life for as long as possible. Funny how that changes.) And I sit there watching the performers onstage, none of them from the commercial any longer, as they audition for a spot in the chorus of a Broadway musical. Their lives so glamorous to me. All I want is to audition for something. To be taken from where I am and brought somewhere else. To be auditioning for a Broadway musical, what could be more fabulous than that? Certainly not doing homework and emptying the dishwasher in Queens. To me, the people auditioning for the chorus line were the most successful people in the world. They were auditioning for BROADWAY! The idea that someone could be that successful was extraordinary to thirteen-year-old me.
I see the show many times during the course of its run, and when I’m twenty-four, I go with my roommate, Steve, who is also an aspiring actor, to the final performance. And we sit in the balcony far from the stage and we are spellbound one last time. I’m still younger than most of the people in the cast and still have absolutely no idea how one gets an audition for a Broadway show. My feelings for the show now are the same as they are the first time I see it when I’m thirteen. “One day that’s going to be me auditioning for a show.” And as they tip their gold hats and kick their gold legs one final time we collectively jump to our feet. We all get key chains in the shape of tickets for this last performance. A gift. For only us. (Isn’t that a delightful thing to do? Something so small can stay with you for so long. I still have mine.)
When I am in high school I don’t audition for any of the shows. Too afraid of doing something—anything that will draw unwanted attention. Until my senior year, that is. I am starting to become myself. It happens without me even trying. It’s like I can’t stop it. Some force within me knows I’m graduating soon and it doesn’t give a fuck. It is rising up, gaining strength. I decide to audition for my senior musical, South Pacific, and am up for the role of Emile de Becque—a widowed, middle-aged French murderer who dates an annoying American nurse during World War II. I audition with the song “Pilate’s Dream” from Jesus Christ Superstar. It falls within my range, which is approximately two notes. It’s also a good fucking song. I make it through to callbacks, where I am up against several other boys. A surprising fact, since I am unable to sing. But St. Francis is not exactly the High School of Performing Arts. No one was belting out songs on lunchroom tables or dancing on taxicab roofs here. The talent pool was not that deep and apparently I’m close to the top.
As soon as the part of Emile de Becque, THE LEAD, is dangled in front of me it is all that I want. There are many other supporting roles in the musical. It is World War II after all. But I am only interested in Emile de Becque, THE LEAD.
During my callback I have to sing his big number, “Some Enchanted Evening.” If you are not familiar with this song, shame on you. It is what we call a standard. Go listen to it on one of your devices. It is often performed by people such as Placido Domingo and is a particularly tricky number for someone such as myself who cannot sing. I’m not sure if I think I can sing at the time, or why I think I can sing if I did indeed think I could sing, but, let me state again as clearly as possible for the record, I cannot, could not, sing. Certainly not “Some Enchanted Evening.” I can still see myself auditioning in front of Sister Anne, my English teacher and the musical’s director. (She had a whispery, childlike voice that predated Paris Hilton by a good two decades.) My gargled strangulations as I try to hit each ever increasingly higher note.
The scary thing is that I’m not even the worst one. I’m, like, in the middle. I’m even seriously considered. Sister Anne saves me perhaps from the greatest humiliation of my life by not casting me as the lead. I am given the role of one of the sailors instead and my first thought when I see the cast list is, Fuck that.
I am too good, my talent too undeniable, to play some dumb sailor, some nobody. It’s Emile de Becque or nothing for me. I went from not even daring to audition to a state of outrage over not getting cast as the lead in about a minute. (This would be unusual if I were not gay. But for a gay it is par for the course.)
Naturally I decline the role. “No thank you, dear. Good luck with your little show.” Condescension oozing out of my every pore as I waltz out of the auditorium like I’m fucking Jane Fonda. “Glad you’re familiar with prayers, Sister Anne, ’cause you’re gonna need ’em.”
By the time I get home I already feel like I’ve made a mistake. Maybe it would’ve been fun. Maybe I should have stayed. It’s too late now as I sit in front of One Life to Live and watch Viki succumb to her alternate personality, Niki, once again. I didn’t even tell anyone I was auditioning, so there’s no one to tell I didn’t get it. Well, I did get it. But not the lead. This audition is the only time I have stayed past the final bell in the four years that I am at St. Francis Prep. In my yearbook, underneath my photo and name it is blank because I have done nothing. No activities, no clubs, no sports (duh). It would have been maybe nice to do one thing. A sailor singing “Bloody Mary.” I could have done that. A memory of singing and dancing with my classmates might have been a better one than being spiteful to a child-voiced nun. Then again, it might not have been.
Years later, when I am forty, I return to see the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line and it is suddenly a completely different show and I am floored. My younger self saw these dancers as accomplished and successful and already so far beyond anything in their career that I could have imagined. But at forty I realize I was wrong and I actually saw the show for what it was. People who give up everything for a measly part in the chorus. They are not famous, they are not the leads, they are struggling. And scraping. And desperate. The part means everything to them. They are not the huge successes that I originally thought they were. They are jobbing actors and dancers trying to get by. And it’s heartbreaking and moving and touching in all the ways I couldn’t see when I am thirteen and fourteen and sixteen and nineteen and twenty-three and twenty-four. Every musical number makes me cry because this time I can see what I could not all those other times.
When I get to college, I do audition for shows. And I get a few parts. And I am fearless now in the way young people can be. My true self finally appearing after being hidden for so long. Like trying on a new outfit and admiring what you see in the mirror. For the first time I don’t worry about what anyone thinks.
Every year at Hofstra there is a Shakespeare Festival and one of Shakespeare’s plays is performed on a replica of the Globe stage. The show runs an entire week. Local high school students attend midweek matinees. It’s basically a fucking Broadway run. And in my senior year, I get the seventh lead in Twelfth Night. I play Fabian, one of the servants in Olivia’s court. I have a Scottish accent because Dr. Madden, the aged alcoholic director, thinks it will be a good idea. He also thinks my character should be elderly and walk hunched in the shape of a question mark. There is nothing in Shakespeare’s play that would indicate any of this. But Shakespeare is dead and Dr. Madden is not. (Well, he is now.) The “makeup artist” draws thick crayon-like lines on my face indicating “old age.” (Is there anything more touching than a young person dressed in a school show to look old? More gray, more lines! Their young body stooped and crooked, but the life force still bursting out of them like candy from a piñata.) I still remember my first line, uttered like Scotty in Star Trek. “There is at the gate, madam, a young gentleman who much desires to speak with you.” The accent so thick it’s all but unintelligible (not unlike an actual Scottish accent). My wavy black hair grayed by an entire thing of baby powder (which, I believe, is now considered asbestos), a white cloud of talcum follows me across the stage. I get a laugh off of every line. I have no jokes, mind you. This is actually known as “pulling focus” and not thought of highly by other actors. But no one knows this at the time. We are all young and stupid. College acting is basically Survivor. Whoever gets the most attention wins. There was not exactly a high bar for sophisticated humor at Hofstra University in the ’80s. A funny accent was funny. Dr. Madden was right after all.
I don’t think there has ever been a production of Twelfth Night before or since (and I am including the original one that Shakespeare attended) that was stolen by the character of Fabian. A character I’ve since seen dropped from several productions, as he’s considered that inconsequential. (How do you drop the best character in the show, I’d sit there thinking after noticing Fabian’s omission from the program, already prepared to hate the production.) Twelfth Night has about six of Shakespeare’s most famous characters in it and I upstage all of them. All of my lines, basically exposition that could be given to any other character or even cut, are now show-stopping laugh lines confusing the entire company. Each of my entrances brings delight and applause. I am Kramer. And I eat it up. I live for the audience. They are my people. I perform for them and them alone. This is my Funny Girl, my Hello, Dolly!, my Gypsy. I feel euphoria on opening night.
“Great job,” my fellow cast members say to me after the show, slightly confused. Kind of like “that wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?” I am told that the critic for the Hofstra Chronicle is there that night and he is going to single out my performance in his review. If Frank Rich were writing about me for the New York Times I couldn’t have been more excited. “I’m going to be in the fucking Chronicle! I’ve made it!” This is the pinnacle of my college performing career. I’ve been chasing the high of that opening night ever since. I had been seen for the first time. And I wanted more. More. More.
Recently, I see A Chorus Line again. Now I am in my fifties. (The most difficult sentence I have ever written. Until I’m in my sixties, I guess.) Look at them. To be auditioning for a Broadway musical, what could be more fabulous than that? They were artists, they were fearless. They were doing what they loved no matter what. And to me they were the most successful people in the world. I was right the first time.