ARRIVING IN NEW YORK, EVERY actor reads the trade paper Backstage. Now of course, it is online, so you can find what auditions and work are available by searching those pages. I started by going to cattle calls, at the Actor's Equity office, only 45 steps from Broadway. Producers had to advertise their casting calls by law, so even if they had already picked their cast, they would still go through the charade of auditioning. I thought that was really a farce, but went anyway, because at least you were being seen by someone. Not necessarily the casting director, as their work had already been done in most cases.
There is a notice Board in their lounge announcing out-of-town and touring productions, usually again already cast, and notices for accommodation, travel discounts etc. Very occasionally they give out free tickets for Equity shows.
To get an audition, you had to be there very early, as soon as they opened, to sign up on the list, with no idea, of course, what time you would be seen. On freezing mornings I would get there early, then have to return later, maybe around 3:00 pm to be seen. It was extremely depressing. I got many auditions; it was always the same question: what have you done in New York and where can we see you?
Like the coach before the horse: how can they see you if you can't get a job? Even though I had worked with the Old Vic Company in London, they had to see your work in New York. In those days no one had videos or demo tapes.
One bone-chilling day, walking home, totally discouraged, I suddenly stopped in my tracks, hit by a small epiphany. It was so obvious. What I was doing was a total waste of time! I decided that I would stop going to auditions, stop beating the pavements. I would sit down and write a play, with a lead role for myself. Then I would get a theatre to produce it and thereby get an agent to come and see me.
I was determined. No more auditions. I was at least going to give it a try because nothing was happening.
I quit my day job as a Receptionist at Elizabeth Arden on Fifth Avenue, behind the famous little Red Door. One of the perks of working there were the free hair do's and makeup.
In the beginning I was delighted to join such a famous and prestigious company but I had been there for several months and was bored out of my mind. There were funny times, however. My job was to make appointments in our third floor Beauty Salon. Most them were made by phone. We had a package called 'The Main Chance Day" that was a day-long makeover of your face, hands and body at around $500. One man called to make an appointment for his wife, which I thought was unusual, and he asked for "The Last Chance Day" which sent us all into hysterics. Did he have a mistress or another wife waiting in the background, we thought? We eagerly awaited her arrival the following week, trying to keep straight faces as we took her coat. She didn't look so bad, we thought. There was another package called "The Visible Difference Day," named after the new cosmetic called Visible Difference. Again, some husband phoned and asked for the 'Physical Difference Day.' Wow! What did he expect, we wondered?
The chief receptionist was a witch. She and her assistant would deliberately let the phones ring and ring before answering them, or they would answer and say "Please hold," then put down the phone on the desk when we were not busy. They wanted to give the impression that our phones were ringing off the hook, when often they weren't. Clients got tired of waiting and hung up, which defeated their purpose, as we lost those bookings.
Some of them would come in every morning to have their hair done then perhaps a massage. It just wasn't my scene. I guess they had nothing else to do. But this was New York after all and they may have been going to balls, opening nights and parties every night. But I had found a new life, I hoped, as a writer.
I forced myself to sit at my dining table and start writing a play. Try it sometime! The realization of the lost income from my job gave me extra motivation. No fooling around. I read books on how to write a play, but after working week after week in weekly Repertory I sort of knew the structure and scene order, but nevertheless it was very difficult. I went to the great Public Library Reading room on 42nd street, a wonderful room, and worked there. The atmosphere gave me inspiration. I had to write a play! Anything that helped: atmosphere, exercise, reading, walking. It all helped.
I read that Noel Coward wrote a play in three days! Unbelievable. All his plays were still being performed around the world and his biography written by Cole Leslie was my reading treat. I read it over and over. Such success, but not till after lots of hard work.
I based the play in Sydney. It was a comedy and I tried to bring in some Australian idioms and jokes.
The lead was a bored housewife, not exactly in the suburbs, but someone hundreds of people could identify with. Someone who, like me, who had an unfulfilled ambition. I never forget those lines in the film Shirley Valentine, when Pauline Collins says: "It is all inside me and I can't get it out. What are we supposed to do?"
Finally it was finished. I sent it out, and it came back, many times. I tried to get a play agent; no luck, but I kept at it. In desperation I started pounding the streets, looking up theatres Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway. Every afternoon I would visit one or two. I would ask to see the Manager/ Director but most of them were in rehearsal. I would leave a copy of the play with a covering letter and a stamped addressed return envelope. I had no idea if anyone would bother to read it or even open the envelope. Weeks of this. Some scripts were returned but no letter or just a brief typed form letter: thanks, but no thanks.
One evening I attended a tribute to a great theatre woman in New York, Jean Dalrymple, and onstage she named a young director who she had helped find a building near by which had three theatres in it. She said he would be busy filling the three theatres. Next day, I looked her up in the phone book and found out she lived just a block away. I wrote her a letter asking if I could come and see her. Nothing ventured nothing gained. She was elderly and I thought possibly lonely, even though she had had a lovely tribute.
I received an answer, and to cut to the chase, I met her, told her about my play. She suggested I send it to this young director. It worked, with her name attached. I met him, and he gave me a date, He read the play of course, and wanted to direct it with me doing the casting!
Little did I know how difficult this would be. None of the actors could do a believable Australian accent! It just didn't sound right with American actors. By this time, I was so involved with getting the play on and doing rewrites that I decided I'd rather sit at the back of the theatre as a playwright to see how the play worked, than play the lead. For some reason I felt that the play was more important than just acting in it. Don't ask why. In the end we found a British actress for the part, who could do a passable Australia accent. She had friends in Earl's Court, renamed Kangaroo Court in London.
I wrote a second and third play, all produced at the American Theatre of Actors on the West Side. One day, I received a letter from the Australian Film Board who had read in an Australian newspaper of my search for Australian actors in New York and they were interested in seeing my scripts. Nothing came of this because the chap who wrote to me left his job and no one followed up.
It is customary not to have the playwright in rehearsals, so I spent my time sending out press releases and doing publicity because the theatre did not have the finances to have a press agent. Besides, they had two other theatres running as well. The theatres was usually well-attended and they had an Open Air Shakespeare Festival each summer as well.
When I first came to New York and before I got the job at Elizabeth Arden, I applied for all kinds of work. I left my resume and waited. While trying to write my third play the phone rang; it was from a chap at a well known travel agency who put together various groups. They had interviewed me months earlier because of my work in The Bahamas and said they'd contact me if something came up. Was I interested in taking a group from the San Diego Zoo on a Safari to Kenya for ten days? We would start around Nairobi in jeeps. then fly over to the famous Safari site on the other side of the Riff Mountains. I phoned my long-suffering husband who was working in Toronto and he said whatever I wanted to do was fine, but watch out for the deadly snakes, ho ho.
I had read about the Mathaiga Club in Nairobi; the notorious Happy Valley set, the book White Mischief' with the unsolved murder of a British aristocrat---recently solved. It all sounded very exotic and romantic. It also gave me a break from playwriting, so I accepted. It was a nightmare. The tour company ceased operating shortly after we arrived in Africa because of the local people's hostility to tourists and the subsequent murders and riots. But that is another story. I found the safari disappointing--- the land so dry, dusty, parched, compared to the beauty of Tasmania. We saw all the animals that the group had been searching for, sitting up some nights in lodges till 3:00 am, in the local zoo on our last day there. It was a photo op they had missed during the safari!
It was a relief to get back to the play, and New York.
The only way to get a play on it seemed, was to have a deadline. Actors had to learn their lines, the set had to be finished and the curtain must go up. A few months later we were two nights away from opening night, when the phone rang. I picked up the phone, and it was Dad's doctor from Hobart.
Holding my breath, I waited to hear the news. Oh what timing! Please, please let everything be all right.
My heart pounded. I had been home on a trip within the last year and Dad had seemed well enough.
It seems that he had had a heart attack, that he was in hospital and that it may be necessary for Dad to have a pacemaker. He said it was not urgent but that I should be aware of his condition. Because of this, he was moving both of them into a nursing home near our house, after he was released from hospital.
Anyone whose life has been suddenly interrupted by such family news, knows what the feeling is like.
What do you do? Suddenly the play seemed insignificant. I phoned my brother in England and was relieved to hear that he had already booked a visit and was leaving in a few days. I explained my situation and he said I should stay and come out later, which I did.
Dad lived on for several years and I was thankful that I was home when it happened. I had arrived the day before.
The play was a success. We even managed to get a small review in the New York Times written by veteran columnist Edith Nemy! The assistant to the Broadway producer Alexander Cohen, a huge figure in the New York Theatre phoned to reserve. I was over the moon! But the show opened in the middle of the Jewish holidays in September and they were all going out of town.