When I won in all three categories, vocal, piano, and acting, I had to make a difficult decision. The rules stated I could compete in only one of these events during the national competition at Bob Jones University.
The vocal solo had been an afterthought. I love to sing, but I knew the guys I’d be up against at nationals would all be classically trained, and the competition would be stiff. Besides, the guy I’d beat out for first place wouldn’t be able to go to nationals if I went, and singing was his life.
I’d worked hard on the piano solo, and I knew I could probably win at nationals, but the nervousness I feel when I sit down to play a piano solo in competition is unparalleled. My palms drip sweat onto the keyboard, and my knee trembles so badly it causes my foot to shake on the damper pedal. I don’t feel like I’m in control of my fingers sometimes. There’s more margin for freak error at the piano—more of a chance my nerves will make my brain hiccup and my fingers slip onto the wrong keys.
More than anything else, deep down inside, I wanted to act at nationals. The rush of being onstage in front of an audience was something I could never get enough of. So I made my decision, and after two days of sleeping on school buses, we arrive at the campus of Bob Jones University, a college in Greenville, South Carolina, well known for losing its tax-exempt status in the seventies by refusing to allow interracial dating.
The college allows students of different races to date now, but the place is permeated with an air of cheerful fascism. The dress code is strict, and the students aren’t allowed to leave campus unless they sign out and sign in at a guard station. All dates between students must be chaperoned by an approved staff or faculty member. Even the grounds seem manicured in a way that feels unnatural. It’s as if the leaves fall directly from the trees into plastic bags every night.
On the second day of competition, I perform “Before a Bakery Showcase” for the judges in the school’s studio theater. Every audience I’ve performed for so far loves this piece, and this day is no exception. My characterizations are well drawn, the laughs I get are plentiful, and the applause enthusiastic. The winners in every category of the competition are announced on the last night of our stay during a huge Command Performance, which features the best of the competition in all disciplines. When the list of the performers is announced, my name is on it.
That night, I perform in front of nearly four thousand students and faculty. It is my largest audience to date.
As I begin the piece with the fat lady, the crowd goes wild with laughter, and for a few minutes in the spotlight, I am a star. After a standing ovation, I find my seat next to Erica. She is wildly proud of me.
“That was amazing!” she squeals.
The girl who follows me plays a piece by Khachaturian on the piano—not as difficult as the toccata, but the audience isn’t into it. Her incredible technique and amazing effort are met with polite applause, and I know I made the right choice for me. I could tell it disappointed my mom when I didn’t choose to take the piano solo, but acting is where my heart is.
When the awards are announced, I am given second place, but I don’t care. The performance was the real prize. The laughter and applause of four thousand people will ring in my ears long after a plaque or a trophy loses its luster.
Besides, when I get back to Kansas City, I have an audition.
After weeks of looking, I finally found the notice I had been waiting for under the “Auditions” posting in the back of the Arts section of Kansas City Star:
MISSOURI REPERTORY THEATRE
Non-Required Equity Principal Auditions
Prepare two contrasting monologues, not to exceed 2 minutes.
Bring your picture and resume, stapled together.
Please call for an appointment.
I called the number. I gave my name. I booked a time after school the following week.
“You’ve got an audition at the Rep?” Erica’s voice is almost awed.
“Yep.” I can’t stop smiling.
“What are you auditioning for?” asks Megan.
“It says that they’re holding auditions for the season, so I think that means they’ll consider me for any part I may be right for.”
Mom and Dad are more cautious about this development.
“What kind of play are you auditioning for?” Dad wants to know.
“It’s not an audition for one play. It’s every play in their next season,” I explain. “I mean, I don’t even know if I’m right for one of the parts, but it’s still good to have the experience.”
Dad looks less than certain.
“But what if the plays aren’t good shows?” he asks. “Not everything they do at the Rep is going to have a good message like A Christmas Carol.”
Be patient. Breathe. I could feel my annoyance creeping into my throat. “I may not get offered any part. I just want to go and audition.”
“What monologue will you do, honey?” Mom asks.
“It says two contrasting monologues, so I think I’m just going to do two different characters from ‘Before a Bakery Showcase.’ ”
“I think that’s a great idea,” she says, and smiles.
Dad glances at her, then back at me. “I guess it’s okay,” he agrees. “What time is your appointment?”
“It’s at four fifty, so that should give us plenty of time to get there after school.”
I decide to wear a colorful tie to the audition. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to dress, but I want to look nice, and stylish. I have a new tie from Banana Republic that has a bright abstract print on it. I iron and starch my favorite white dress shirt, and pick out a pair of brown corduroy slacks. I feel great in this outfit: confident, handsome.
By the time Dad comes to pick me up, I feel like I might crawl out of my skin.
“You okay, son?” he asks.
I nod. “A little nervous.”
I smile at him as we head toward the theater. It’s on the campus of the University of Missouri at Kansas City. I’ve been there lots of times. When I was in grade school and junior high, Dad finished his PhD in education here. The theater is in a lovely part of the campus, surrounded by trees. When Dad parks, he asks if I want him to come in.
“No,” I say, spotting the stage door and a sign pointing toward the check-in for the auditions. “I’ll be fine.”
“You will be fine.” He smiles. “You’re the best actor I’ve ever seen on a stage. Doesn’t matter what these yahoos say.”
Actually, it only matters what they say.
This is the first time I’ve acted in front of a professional director—somebody whose job it is to hire and pay professional actors.
What if I’m not really any good? What if I’ve been told I’m good by people who don’t know what being good is?
My heart is racing as I step inside the stage door. I am seeing the guts of a professional theater for the first time: the rigging for the fly system that moves all of the drapes and scenery; the back areas of the stage.
A young woman sees me and smiles. “Are you here to audition?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Name?”
“Aaron Hartzler.”
She finds my name on the list, makes a mark next to it, and asks for my headshot and resume.
Headshot.
I’ve never heard that word before. Makes senses. An actor’s picture must be his headshot. I hand her the résumé I printed up. It has all of the shows I’ve ever done, starting with the one where I played dead when I was three years old. Most of them are Christian musicals I’ve done at school. I also listed that I won second place at the National Fine Arts Competition for my humorous interpretation. Attached to the résumé is a wallet-size school picture of me. I notice that the other photos in the stack she has are glossy, black-and-white eight-by-tens.
Crap. I don’t even know how to bring a headshot.
The young woman with the clipboard and the stack of photos hands me an information sheet to fill out, then walks behi
nd a curtain toward where the stage must be.
I sit down and fill out the form. Name. Address. Phone number. Age. Height. Hair color. Previous experience.
Suddenly, I’m terrified. I don’t know why I came. I’m out of my league. It’s one thing to sing songs and do scenes in church for people who are amazed when anyone memorize lines and manages to quote them in order without forgetting.
What am I doing here?
I consider turning around and walking back to the car, but before I can, I hear my name being called. She’s back. With the clipboard. And she’s smiling, and motioning for me to follow her.
I stand and hand her my information sheet.
“Oh, no. Take that to the woman in the front row,” she says, smiling. She holds back the black curtain at the side of the stage and indicates I should walk through it. “Break a leg!”
I take a step forward. I feel like I am going to throw up. Two more steps forward, and I see a handful of people sitting in the empty theater. Instantly, I feel my church smile snap into place.
Breathe. Shoulders back. You know how to stand on a stage.
There is a silver-haired man with a strong jaw sitting near the seats where I watched A Christmas Carol with my family. He seems to be in charge and has a couple of assistants. When he sees me come in, he looks away from the younger man who is whispering in his ear, and tilts his head toward the stage, but says nothing.
A woman in the front row calls out “Hello!” with a smile, and steps toward the stage. I walk to the edge of the platform and hand her my information sheet. She consults it briefly, then calls back to the silver-haired man. “This is Aaron Hartzler.”
“Hello, Aaron,” he calls out. “What are you going to perform for us today?”
I take a deep breath and call back in a strong voice that fills the space:
“I’ll be performing a selection from a humorous interpretation I did recently at the National Fine Arts Competition. It’s called ‘Before a Bakery Showcase.’ ”
“Very well,” says the white-haired man.
I see there is an X made of tape near the center of the stage.
That must be where I’m supposed to stand.
I walk toward the X until I am standing directly on it, and bow my head for a moment. I take a deep breath. When I raise my head, I am the fat lady from the piece, and I perform exactly as I have every other time.
Only this time is different.
This time no one laughs.
I try to assure myself it is because there are only four people in the room. Or perhaps it’s because they’ve seen this piece before. I try to stay in the moment of the piece. I try not to think about what they’re thinking about, but it’s almost impossible.
I had planned to do two characters from the piece, and when I’m done playing the fat lady, I bow my head and prepare to switch characters. Before I can begin the second character I hear a voice from the seats in the theater.
“Aaron?”
I raise my head.
They’re going to tell me to leave.
The man with the silver hair smiles at me from his seat, and holds up a finger. “One moment, please.”
He turns and whispers something to the woman sitting behind him, and then leans over to the younger man at his left, who picks up a legal pad and a pencil.
He turns back to me.
“Aaron, thank you for sharing that with us. Would you mind coming down here for a moment?”
My knees almost collapse.
“Sure,” I say. My heart is racing. I can feel sweat trickling down my back under my white T-shirt and white dress shirt and Banana Republic tie.
I walk back to where the man with the silver hair is sitting. He indicates the seat next to him, and when I sit, he extends his hand to shake mine.
“Aaron, I’m George Keathley,” he says. I recognize his name instantly from the Christmas Carol playbill. He not only directed that show, he’s the artistic director of the entire theater. He’s directed shows in New York, and even a soap opera for several years. His voice is rich, and up close he seems younger than I expected him to be. His smile is kind and handsome.
I shake his hand. His assistant hands me the legal pad and offers me a pencil.
“Aaron, this is highly unusual. Typically, I don’t stop auditions like this, as we’re on a tight schedule, but I felt perhaps you could use a little direction. After all, I’m a director.” He smiles. “It’s what I do.”
“I’m all ears,” I say. He nods. I can tell he likes me.
“You are a good-looking young man. You have a presence on the stage and appear to be someone who may have a future in this business.”
I blink at him and smile, cautiously.
“Aaron, you should never perform that piece at an audition again. Whatever they have you doing in your high school drama class is one thing. In the theater, I can’t cast you as an obese woman, so there’s no sense in you coming here to play one for me.”
I feel my cheeks flush, but I immediately know he is right. Of course.
“If you’re going to be a serious actor, you need to be reading plays,” he continues, “especially plays that have characters in them who are your age—characters I could cast you as. Those are the monologues you should be looking at.”
I nod again.
“Write this down,” he says.
I ready the pencil.
“Go to the library,” he instructs. “Check out the plays of Neil Simon. You’ll want to read Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues to begin.”
As I write down his instructions, my hand is shaking. I feel like I might cry with relief.
“Start there,” says George Keathley. “Find a monologue that’s one or two minutes long. Work hard. Come back. Audition for me again.”
“I will.” I tear the sheet from the legal pad and hand it and the pencil back to Mr. Keathley’s assistant. “Thank you,” I say. I stand to leave, and as I shake his hand I meet his gaze. “Thank you for taking the time.”
His eyes are kind and deep, like Mrs. Westman’s. They are full of a meaning I can’t quite decipher. I know somehow this man with the silver hair and the strong jaw cares about me.
“Aaron, if you want this, don’t let anyone try to stop you.”
“I won’t.”
He smiles and I climb the stairs back to the stage. As I walk through the wings, I gaze up into the rigging that towers over me in the fly space. There is something different going on here, I realize. Something better than “quality biblical drama.” There’s a deep importance about being on this stage I have never felt before on any other. The stage at the Missouri Repertory Theatre leaves me with a feeling of awe.
All of the other stages on which I’ve acted were in a church, or a Christian school. This stage is the first I’ve ever performed on that was not co-opted for theater from a Sunday sermon about Jesus. This is not a place where theater is a tool for telling stories about God. This is a stage where the craft of theater is foremost, and used with reverence for telling the stories of humanity, stories where an audience member can see himself in a character on the stage and know he is not alone.
I want to come back to a stage like this, to perform for a director like Mr. Keathley; to be seen and accepted in this world of professional actors. This audition was my first tiny taste, but I am hooked. All I want now is more. As I step into the parking lot I realize I meant what I said to Mr. Keathley.
I won’t let anyone stand in my way.
“How’d it go?” Dad asks as he turns the car toward home.
“Okay. The artistic director actually called me down from the stage to talk to me.”
“What did he say?”
I tell Dad about Mr. Keathley’s directions, and the plays he said I should read.
“You need to be careful about the advice you follow, Aaron. Those plays may not honor the Lord.”
My heart sinks. On the way to the car, I somehow hoped Dad would be as excited by this devel
opment as I am. Tears of frustration spring up in my eyes. I turn and look out the window at the trees whipping by above us, and try not to be angry with Dad, but he is breaking my heart.
I wanted him to be a part of this audition. Acting is something we’ve always shared—something we’ve always done together. This is the next step, the part where I take everything he taught me, and venture into the professional world. I want him to come with me on this journey so badly, to always be my partner.
We are in the same car, but we are heading in different directions. There was a turnoff back at the Missouri Rep, and it’s the one I’m taking. I want to be as excited as I was walking across that stage moments ago. Instead, I feel like I’m losing my dad. He gave me my start, but he can’t come any farther. This is where I finally leave him behind. Acting will now be one more thing we don’t share.
“I’ll be careful,” I promise him.
And I will be. Careful not to let him find the plays by Neil Simon when I check them out at the public library. Careful not to mention this again. Careful not to tell him anything that will give him the chance to say no.
CHAPTER 26
It’s 7:00 AM on Sunday morning, and I have made it home from Bradley’s.
Barely.
He got home from Iowa for spring break on Friday, and threw a huge party last night. I am standing in the bathroom, staring at my reflection in the mirror. My head hurts so badly, I think I might start throwing up again. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the couch downstairs in Bradley’s family room, and the ceiling spun around so hard that I had to clamp them closed again for a minute to keep from barfing.
It’s Palm Sunday—the week before Easter. This is the day when we celebrate Jesus’s “triumphal entry” into the city of Jerusalem the week that he was crucified. This is the day when the disciples “borrowed” a donkey and Jesus rode into Jerusalem in a massive crowd of people waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna!”
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