Note: This is something I posted on my Facebook page on July 4, 2020, and I thought it might be worthwhile to put it on my website as well.

The 10/12 rehearsal days continued from February into the beginning of March and our first preview was looming large on the horizon. That date – March 7th – also marked the official start of the term of the year-long contract most of us had signed. (I know – it’s weird that the contract didn’t start with the first day of rehearsal back in January, but apparently that’s SOP on The Broad Way.) Our days were mostly spent working specific scenes, and after the dinner break the company would try to do a run – initially of the acts, eventually of the entire show.

“Necessity Is The Mother of Invention” from Act II, with all its banners. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Two big issues still dogged us as we moved toward the 7th: the set and the length of the show. In regards Issue #1, it was still a question of too much set in too little space, and the transitions from one scene to the next were taking too long. The intermission changeover was particularly problematic. The Nederlander simply didn’t have enough rails to accommodate all the banners, signs and other pieces that needed to be “flown” into the set, and replacing the Act 1 fly rail items with those for Act II was a tedious process that had to be achieved by hand; i.e. untying all the unneeded banners and rolling them away neatly, then tying the new banners on. During the first full run of the show, that changeover took 30 minutes.

Everyone was working so hard on streamlining those changes, and for Patti Cohenour and me, that meant many hours of standing in for the two stars while transitions were rehearsed. Complicating matters for us were our costume fittings. Patti C. had some usable costumes from War Paint‘s Chicago tryout, but I was being fitted not only for an entire set of the Helena Rubinstein costumes, but for wardrobe for my three ensemble tracks as well. Sometimes my fittings were away from the theatre, at the studios where the costumes were being constructed, but more often Patti C. and I had our sessions with costume designer Catherine Zuber and her staff in the VIP room of the mezzanine lobby.

The VIP room was not a big space to start with – it was designed simply as a place for celebrity guests to wait before the show and during intermission, so they didn’t have to mingle with the hoi polloi. Now, filled with costume racks and sewing machines, it was cramped and stuffy. It was also, unfortunately, the only way for some of the Nederlander staff to access their offices, so we were frequently interrupted in the middle of a fitting by someone needing to pass through. Most of my fittings ran between an hour and a half and two hours, and were usually scheduled first thing in the morning. It never failed, however, that halfway through the fitting I’d be standing there in my underwear and towering show shoes, with costume parts pinned all over me. when an assistant stage manager would burst in with an urgent summons to the set: “Michael needs Donna NOW.” We’d rush through the rest of the fitting, I’d yank my clothes back on and report to the stage, where I’d run transitions until the director was ready to move on. I didn’t mind – I was much happier on my feet working than sitting in the mezz – but it made Cathy Zuber crazy and once again, I wasn’t getting my scheduled breaks. I finally spoke to the stage manager, who advised me to take a break after my fittings even if I was wanted on stage. That translated to hiding in the mezzanine ladies’ room with my aching feet propped up and a cup of water in my hand for ten minutes, because if I went into the house, I’d be spotted and put to work.

War Paint’s Understudies on Opening Night. L to R: Patti Cohenour, Tally Sessions, Barbara Jo Bednarczuk, Tom Galantich and me.

As to issue #2 – the length of the show – cuts and changes continued apace, through tech and right into previews. Every day there were little nips and tucks: a line deleted here, a musical interlude eliminated there. Some of the ladies of the ensemble began to look glum as their specialty bits and solo lines were sacrificed on the Altar of the Clock. (I was particularly sad to see the demise of a gloriously liquid harmony section sung by the Arden Girls as the prelude to “Step On Out,” the big first-act dance number led by John Dossett and Douglas Sills.) It was hard on everyone, keeping up with these changes. Once we’d had our first preview, the rehearsal day changed somewhat: five hours of rehearsal, which led into the dinner break and thence to the half-hour before curtain. Most of the cast brought their meals, ordered in or ran out to grab a bite, then tried to get some rest. Both Patti C. and I had sublet apartments a few blocks from the theatre, so we were able to go home to eat during the break. The stars had their own dressing rooms, of course, and the ensemble men (all three of them, plus the two male swings) had a dressing room equivalent to the one the eleven ensemble women shared, so they were fine – but the ensemble ladies and the crew weren’t so lucky. It was common to see people stretched out in one of the theatre boxes, or on the floor of the mezzanine, or a sofa in the upper mezz lobby. The little fold-out foam mattress in the ladies’ dressing room was always in use, as was the elderly chaise parked on the 5th floor landing.

Eventually, as the show got tighter and smoother, the rehearsal hours got shorter – for the rest of the cast, that is. For the understudies, our day was still just about as long, because when we weren’t called to stand in for more transitions and tech work, we started being called for understudy rehearsal. Now, at last, I got a chance to step through the ensemble numbers and scenes I’d only been able to watch. It wasn’t the same without the rest of the cast and our time was limited since the crew often needed the stage for work calls – but at least it was something. During the preview performances the understudies usually watched from the back of the house, along with the directors, designers, creatives and producers. That was a show in and of itself. If something went wrong – a set piece was late, or a lighting cue was missed, or someone’s body mic started feeding back – the people at the back of the house would pace, or curse, or huddle together by the door and hold a heated conversation in what I can only describe as a screaming whisper. I always tried to slip into the shadows when that happened.

But eventually, after a solid month of previews – we arrived at our April 6th opening night. I went to the theatre early in the afternoon, to put cards and little gifts on my fellow cast members’ stations (an opening night tradition), then returned that evening with my husband John, during a torrential downpour. I signed in at the callboard, climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, looked at the cards and presents that had been given to me and wished everyone well, then retreated to the house, where John and I, along with the other understudies and their spouses/dates, were seated in the mezzanine. It looked very different from the place where we’d spent the last month and a half. The show was well-received by an enthusiastic audience, and the after-party at Gotham Hall was splendid, but everyone was tired. The tech and preview process had been long and exhausting, and for the two stars, the work was far from over. Both Ms. LuPone and Ms. Ebersole had been giving interviews and making appearances in the run up to opening, and that wasn’t going to stop for a while yet. In addition, the onstage cast would be summoned to the recording studio all day Monday, April 17th to record the War Paint cast album. Oh, and by the way, the show had opened a few weeks before the Tony Award eligibility cut-off date of April 27th, so the show would need to be at top form while it was under the nominators’ scrutiny.

It was good to be finished with the long, long days in the mezzanine. Yes, my costume fittings were still ongoing (only about half of my Rubinstein costumes were finished), and we’d be having understudy rehearsals twice a week, and I’d still have to be at the theatre for every performance, but it was all going to be so much easier now. All the ladies I understudied were doing well and sounding great, and I heaved a sigh of relief and got ready to settle into something resembling a routine. I wasn’t worried at all.

I should have been.

Next up: “You’re on.”

I’m a voracious reader. I read fast and I read a lot. Everything is grist to my mill: literary and genre fiction, all kinds of nonfiction, magazines, newspapers and the myriad offerings on the internet. Heck, I’ll read a cereal box if there’s nothing else handy.

But this year has been a particularly big one for reading. Since late January 2017 I’ve been understudying a Broadway musical, and after the show finally opened and the dust settled, I found I had a lot of time on my hands. I have to be present backstage for every performance, which translates to a lot of sitting around, waiting. Since I must always have at least part of my attention on the show, that means I can’t really listen to music, watch movies or play computer games. Reading was the logical – and for me, the most natural – way to pass the time.

By my count (and backed up by my Goodreads reading list) I’ve wolfed down more than sixty books this year. One or two were a struggle to finish, a few more were merely so-so, a larger amount were enjoyable, a fair number were very good, and a handful were truly outstanding reads. Here are my top five reads this year:

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders. 

An extraordinary story, part history, part fantasy, set in the cemetery where little Willie, Abraham Lincoln’s young son, has just been laid to rest in a family friend’s mausoleum. The cemetery is populated by ghosts of those both recently and long dead, and by Lincoln himself, who cannot bear to let his little boy go. It’s Saunders’ first novel, and stylistically it’s such a departure that you almost have to train yourself how to read it. (After the first two chapters, I backed up and started over just to be sure I understood the way the story was structured, and if that sounds like drudgery to you, I assure you it was not.) It’s a beautiful study of grief, love and the afterlife that I cannot recommend enough.

American Fire: Love, Arson and Life in a Vanishing Land, by Monica Hesse. From 2012 through 2013, a series of inexplicable arsons rocked the blue-collar community of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. More than seventy fires (often more than one a night) were set in derelict buildings across Accomack County, a once-prosperous area that has suffered a significant economic downturn in recent years. Hesse’s crisp, efficient prose is the perfect vehicle for this story of dogged firefighters, determined investigators and finally, the arsonists themselves and the strange motive behind their crimes. (Note: I visited the Eastern Shore last fall for a birding festival, and found it an intriguing, evocative landscape – so much that I’d like to go back there, even though it was rife with mosquitoes. Author Hesse captures the moodiness of that landscape perfectly.)

The Shepherd’s Crown, by Terry Pratchett. I was a latecomer to Sir Terry Pratchett’s rollicking Discworld fantasy series, starting it only after Pratchett’s 2015 death and the subsequent outpouring of sorrow from his fans around the world. There are some 40 books in the series and yes, I’ve now read them all. The Shepherd’s Crown is the last of them, and the fifth of Pratchett’s books featuring YA heroine (and witch-in-training) Tiffany Aching. It’s not as crisp as some of Pratchett’s earlier books (in his last years he suffered from Alzheimer’s, and the story lacks some of his usual polish and verve), but it’s still a warm, wise and wonderful story, and gives a fitting sendoff to my favorite Discworld character (hint: it’s not Tiffany).

Welcome to Hard Times, by E.L. Doctorow*. A western so bleak, in a style that’s so terse, at times it’s reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s work. I think this is one of Doctorow’s most successful books; his stark but beautiful prose is particularly effective in this story of a doomed town and its stubborn survivors.

*I must add that I worked with Doctorow on the 2009 Broadway revival of the musical based on his masterwork Ragtime. Of a company that included luminaries like playwright Terrence McNally, lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, only Doctorow’s presence left me shy and stuttering. Flatteringly (and somewhat comically), he kept mistaking me for our star Christiane Noll, and that only endeared him to me more.

The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science, by Douglas Starr. An exceptionally good nonfiction book about the crimes, the hunt for and trial of 19th century French serial killer Joseph Vacher, set against the rapidly developing science of criminal forensics. Fast paced and fascinating. **

**I just noticed something rather interesting. Of my five books, two involve shepherds. I’ve actually read a fair number of books involving shepherding this year (among them Amanda Owen’s The Yorkshire Shepherdess, William Henry Hudson’s A Shepherd’s Life, and James Rebanks’ A Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape. I also follow Ms. Owen (@AmandaOwen8) and Mr. Rebanks (@herdyshepherd1) on Twitter (you should, too – if only for their photos). All the foregoing was a form of research for Books 3 & 4 of my fantasy series The Gemeta Stone (I have a supporting character who was formerly a shepherd), but it seems that research has crept into my everyday reading as well.

I said those were my top five reads this year. I should add the caveat: so far. It’s only October. With a few more months left in 2017, there’s still plenty of time for more reading and more great books.

What were your favorite books this year?

The Ursula costume – the beginning.

My first encounter with Ursula’s “body” was a brief one, occurring just after I’d completed the publicity photo shoot for the production back in October.  With designer Pei Lee leading the way, we ducked into the costume shop, where I was shown the very beginning of work on the creation:  a dressmaker’s form draped in a substantial-looking black fabric.  Pei informed me that the dress would be built largely of neoprene, which is the same substance wetsuits are made of.  I hefted a piece of it, afraid it would be heavy, but it wasn’t.  With a slightly slippery surface and a matte sheen, it would give Ursula the “slimy” look Pei was aiming for.

It wasn’t until rehearsals started a few weeks later that I saw Pei’s rendering of the costume.  I wish I’d had the sense to take a picture of it; it was a work of art, and I think someone was presented with it on opening night, gosh darn it.*  It featured two long tentacles sprouting just above each hip, which could be manipulated by me as well as the two actors playing Flotsam and Jetsam, Ursula’s eel henchmen.  A second pair of tentacles protruded from beneath the dress in the rear, the third pair would run up the front of my dress and coil neatly on my bosom, and the final pair would be the sleeves of the dress.

Pei Lee’s original design for the Ursula costume.

(*Turns out Pei still had access to a copy of her rendering and was kind enough to forward it to me from halfway around the world.  So here it is, so you can see just how close she was able to stay to the original design. Thanks, Pei!)

“Rehursula” – an old ball gown and flexible aluminum duct.

I realized early on that I would need a mock-up of the costume for rehearsals so I could get accustomed to handling the tentacles.  Pei and her crew kindly provided me with a rough version, constructed from an old ball gown (I recognized it from the production of Cinderella I’d done at Olney two years before) and flexible laundry duct, with a hoop skirt and a bumroll underneath to make it stand out.  (For the uninitiated, a “bumroll” is a fashion accessory dating from the 15th and 16th centuries – a crescent-shaped pad worn to accentuate the hips and give the illusion of a small waist.)  We named this creation “Rehursula.”  It was a struggle getting into it and once in, it was difficult to sit – a harbinger of things to come.  The duct scraping along the floor was also noisy as hell, but it served its purpose, letting us stage business that otherwise would have had to wait until we moved onto the set.

I was also provided with my show shoes fairly early on, for which I was grateful.  Pei wanted me to look quite tall in comparison to other characters, so several pairs of outrageous drag queen platform boots were ordered for me to try out.  Problem was, since they were built for men whose feet are usually wider than women’s, my foot shifted around in them, making me feel wobbly and unsafe.  We finally settled on a sneaker-style pair with a four-inch wedge.  They had a somewhat Frankenstein-esque appearance, but they gave me the height I needed and were surprisingly comfortable.  You can see them at right; I’m also wearing them in the Rehursula photo.

A dressing-room shot of the incomplete Ursula costume – at this point lacking the rear tentacles and some additional sequin trim on the collar. Just beneath each hand are the moveable pair of tentacles, without their cute striped cozies.

Once we left our rehearsal studio and moved onstage, it became clear that the design of the rear tentacles would need to change.  Flotsam and Jetsam’s costumes included Heelys – those sneakers with a skate wheel built into the heels – and the trailing tentacles would present a tripping hazard for them.  Pei tried to puzzle out a solution while dealing with another unexpected problem:  the purple and black sequins that formed the underneath of the two moveable tentacles looked great, but they snagged on the neoprene, creating long horizontal pulls that interfered with the desired slimy look.  As a temporary solution, long narrow bags with drawstring openings were built to cover the tentacles during rehearsals so they wouldn’t do any more damage.  The wardrobe interns referred to them as “cozies” and their striped fabric added an incongruously cheery note to the Ursula ensemble.

The ensemble also included a pair of elbow-length black gloves, worn beneath the tight sleeves of the costume.  The sleeves were so tight that I couldn’t take off the gloves without partially disrobing.  The aforementioned hoop skirt and bumroll used for Rehursula were also present beneath the costume, joined there by a very puffy crinoline.  All these layers made me very wide indeed (as well as unable to go to the bathroom).

Looking rather like Mother Hubbard, Ursula weighs in. The moveable tentacles are bunched up in my arms; you can just see one of the rear tentacles peeking up in the back.

By the time we went into previews, I was still lacking a rear set of tentacles, although the sequined sections of the offending moveable pair had been covered by a fine black netting, which did away with the snagging problem.  The final pair of tentacles arrived two nights later – Pei still had them protruding from the back of the costume, but rather than trail on the floor, they ran up the back of the dress and ended with an impudent little curl.  They weren’t all that heavy – certainly not compared to the moveable ones, which were rather like dragging around a pair of bolsters – but I could still feel the additional weight.  It made me curious as to exactly how much the whole costume, tentacles and headdress and all, weighed.  A few days later I brought in a bathroom scale and got the verdict:  twenty-three pounds.

Ursula reading her Kindle and enjoying a refreshing beverage in the Sub-Lair. The stool I’m sitting on is completely hidden beneath the costume.

I quickly realized that the sheer mass of costume was going to make sharing a crowded dressing room problematic.  Even sitting on the stool provided me (I couldn’t use a chair), I took up a lot of valuable real estate.  And in the green room, no matter where I stood, I was in the way of stage crew, wardrobe staff, musicians and my fellow cast members.  I also couldn’t take the stairs to the stage in such a bulky outfit (well, I could, but it would have been a complicated affair).  Fortunately the Olney mainstage is equipped with an elevator, so getting to the stage level was solved, and it so happened there was a nice little nook just in front of the elevator on the lower level where I could sit (on yet another thoughtfully-provided stool) and be out of everyone’s way.  It had enough light for me to read my Kindle (turning pages in a regular book while wearing gloves proved difficult) and there was a old prop piano nearby to hold a water cup, tissues and other items.  It was cold there, but I was so snug in my neoprene and gloves that I didn’t mind.

Maneuvering backstage was another story.  The elevator took me into the stage left wing, but all of my entrances in the show are from stage right.  There’s a crossover hallway behind the stage area, but for our production it was being used for the ensemble’s quick changes (and they had a lot).  After having to push past half-naked cast members a time or two, I determined that I’d need to come upstairs early for my scenes to make that backstage cross when the crossover wasn’t being used as a dressing room.  Fortunately the wings of the Olney mainstage are pretty spacious, so once I’d made the cross I was generally able to find a spot to stand where I wasn’t in anyone’s way.

At the time of this writing, The Little Mermaid has opened to great reviews (check my News, Notes and Upcoming Gigs section for pull quotes) and we are settling in for our holiday run.  I’ve developed a routine now:  Gracie and I come in an hour early and she starts her own makeup while I pincurl my hair.  Then she does the airbrushed portion of my makeup and I put the finishing touches on eyebrows, eyes and mouth, then put on my mic belt, pin the mic into my wig cap, and get into my shoes and layers of underpinnings.  I tromp across the green room like some sort of deranged Black Swan, where Taylor or Kelsey or Joseph (or a combination thereof) are ready to help me get into the costume and headdress.  The costume is too heavy to hang; it’s bundled into an old grocery cart when I’m not wearing it (fortunately, neoprene doesn’t wrinkle).  Togged out, I retreat to my Sub-Lair with my Kindle and a cup of water (equipped with a straw so I don’t spill and ruin my makeup).  There I wait, reading quietly until it’s time to go upstairs and wreak havoc on unsuspecting merfolk.

Here are some production photos so you can see costume and headdress (and me) in action.  These were taken by the gifted Stan Barouh during first preview, so I’m still down a pair of tentacles.  Even so, you can see that it’s an astonishingly effective costume – worth every bit of trouble it gave Pei Lee and her dedicated costume crew.  Here’s to all of you!

Plotting with Flotsam, Jetsam and the Magic Shell. (with Nurney Mason and Robert Mintz)

Clearly up to no good.

In front of my Lair, giving poor Ariel a hard time. (with Laura Zinn)

I have been remiss, I know, in keeping the ol’ blog updated, but today I had to share this video, produced by Signature Theatre, in which strippers Tessie Tura, Electra and Mazeppa (that’s me) show you HOW TO UNWRAP A CHRISTMAS PRESENT.  Enjoy!

GYPSY opens Tuesday, December 17 and runs through January 26th, 2014.  Go to Signature Theatre’s website to order tickets!

Thirty days ago I decided I needed a new exercise to get my writing going in the morning.  Normally I can sit down in the a.m. and start hammering away, but I just started the third book in my series and a lot of my writing time seems to degenerate into staring-into-space time while I sort out how to get Character A to Point B while picking up Subplot C along the way.  I wasn’t getting any actual writing done, and while I didn’t exactly feel blocked, I did feel as if I was getting out of the habit of writing.  And that’s no good.

So I decided that every morning I’d write from a prompt and get myself going that way.  Now, I have several books of writing prompts – ones that I’ve purchased or that have been given to me – but my tendency is to spend my time flipping through them to find one that I feel like writing about, and ending up writing none of them.  Also no good.  (I have the same problem with books of crossword puzzles.)  So I said to myself, “Self, there are bound to be some good prompts on the Interwebs; go ye and find some, fer cryin’ out loud.”

Turns out there are a lot of websites with writing prompts.  None of them really spoke to me.  Some were too general; others too specific; still more gave long scenarios that weren’t interesting.  At last I found WritersWrite, which has a lot of prompts geared toward writers with works in progress.  Even better, they give just a single prompt per day – no choosing.  I told myself that for one month, I would visit the site and read the Daily Prompt.  I would set myself a time limit, anywhere from five to fifteen minutes.  And then I would write.

I confess that I didn’t do the prompt exercise every single day.  I couldn’t get myself into the habit at first.  Some days I was too busy with life and other things.  Some days I read the prompt and came up dry.  Some days I plain forgot.  And some days (thank God) I was actually writing on my own and didn’t want to interrupt the flow.  A lot of what I did write was crap – forced and pompous.  Some wasn’t.  And some was actually useful.  Here’s yesterday’s prompt, and my response to it:

Your antagonist is making tea for his mother.  What is he thinking?

 Daazna sifted the dried herbs through his fingers, examining the mixture.  The tea was a combination of many mundane plants, but there were a few – a very few – that, consumed by themselves or in simple combinations, could have interesting effects.  Valerian, he thought; that might do the trick.  Perhaps with a little pennyroyal.  A bit of dried mushroom.  I could do whatever I wanted.

 With the crumbled herbs poised over the pot, he hesitated.  Or I could use none at all.  I don’t need herbs.  I have the spells to do what I want.  I have that power.  If I wanted to.  Do I want to?

 He glanced at Ariphele.  She was gazing into the fire, her chin propped on one fist.  His grandparents sat at the table with their backs to him, to their daughter.  The two of them against the two of us, he thought.  It’s always been the two of them against the two of us.  A slight movement caught his eye; his mother had shifted position and was looking at him now.  A little smile tightened her mouth, and he wondered, as he often did, if she could read his thoughts.

 “Grandmother,” he said aloud.  “Grandfather.  Would you like some tea?”

The nice thing about this prompt is that it allowed me to write a little backstory on my series’ antagonist as well as his mother Ariphele, who is an important character in Book 1 and Book 2.

It’s only been in the last two weeks that writing from the prompts has begun to feel more natural, so I think I’ll continue the exercise.  It may be tough to do for a while – my theatrical schedule is very full for the next thirty days – but I’m going to give it the old college try.  About a week ago I stumbled across (literally; I was using StumbleUpon) another writing prompt website.  Oneword is another daily prompt site, but it’s a 60-second, single-word prompt, which makes it a quick challenge – more like a game.  Today’s word was neon and here’s what I wrote in the allotted minute:

Blue, yellow, red, green. Blue yellow red green. Blueyellowredgreen. The neon lights flickered in their endless pattern through her hotel window. Bet lay quiet, hoping the man next to her would not wake up.

I don’t know where this came from, nor if it could lead somewhere else one day, but I got a kick out of writing it.  I’ll keep visiting this website, too, because no matter how busy my life becomes, I know I can always spare sixty seconds.