Pushing Upward

by Andrea Adler

  Rather than ask a particular question, I took out the three dimes from the silk pouch and simply thought the word LaPapa. Then I threw the coins. The hexagram that came up was:

  64. Wei Chi / Before Completion

  Above: Li, The Clinging, Fire

  Below: K’an, The Abysmal, Water

  The conditions are difficult. The task is great and full of responsibility … But it is a task that promises success, because there is a goal that can unite the forces now tending in different directions. At first, however, one must move warily, like an old fox walking over ice … His ears are constantly alert to the cracking of the ice, as he carefully and circumspectly searches out the safest spots. A young fox who as yet has not acquired this caution goes ahead boldly, and it may happen that he falls in and gets his tail wet when he is almost across the water.

  Oh Jesus, that was all I needed.

  Deliberation and caution are the prerequisites of success.

  I thought about the implications of conditions being difficult, and the proverbial fox whose ears are constantly alert to the cracking of the ice, as I drove to LaPapa’s rehearsal space. As I parked the car across the street and walked to the entrance, I found myself repeating: Carefully and circumspectly searching out the safest spots … deliberation and caution are the prerequisites of success. I hadn’t told Emma about the audition—in case I came home with more bad news.

  They’d told me, when I called, that the only reason I was able to get an audition was because of a cancellation. It was a sign. They’d instructed me to prepare a five-minute monologue, contemporary or classical. So I chose a scene from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Helena’s monologue was still in my brain from six months before, when I’d had to perform it for a critique in acting class. I loved the piece, understood the subtext, and was still familiar with the lines. I was anxious to strut my stuff.

  LAPAPA, 2ND FLOOR, it said on the mailbox. I walked up two flights of the creaky old stairs, paint chips falling off the walls; opened the door to the landing; and walked down the long hallway. There was a handwritten three-by-five card pinned on the door: YOU ARE HERE, LAPAPA. Underneath the card was a flyer: BARBARA’S BALLET & BATON. The door was closed, so I knocked. No one answered, so I turned the knob. It was unlocked. I peeked in and entered. There was no stage, not even a platform, only ten chairs in a circle, with another chair placed in the middle. A long, wide, oversize mirror hung along one wall, and a wooden barre stretched the length of the room in front of the mirror.

  My audition was scheduled for ten. I was two minutes early. I pulled my costume out of my bag and stood there nervously smoothing out the wrinkles, and then returned the costume to the bag. I waited about fifteen minutes before a woman in her forties walked in and introduced herself as Celia, a third-year member of LaPapa. She asked me to have a seat on the wooden chair in the center of the circle. One by one, the rest of the company entered in silence and sat down in the remaining chairs, encircling me. We all sat there, waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure, until the door opened and a woman entered. I presumed she was the director. She had no smile, no words of welcome. She simply walked over to where I was sitting, circled around my chair three times, and asked me if I was prepared to communicate my name.

  “I believe so,” I replied, surprised to see how much attention this woman commanded.

  “Good.” Her hands folded across her chest, she continued to circle around me. “Why don’t you tell us your name and then stand up.”

  “Sandra Billings.”

  “And what are you going to do for us, Sandra Billings?”

  “Well,” I said, my voice quavering as I stood. I needed space, and a window wide enough for me to crawl out of.

  I held on to the chair firmly. “I’m going to do a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I will play Helena, and I have a costume.” I reached down and brought out the costume.

  “A costume? That’s very inventive,” the director said. “The costume won’t be necessary.”

  “Oh, okay.” I bundled the costume back in my bag; I was very nervous now. Remember the fox, Sandra; remember the fox.

  “Are you game for being spontaneous, Sandra Billings?”

  “Well, that depends.”

  “How about we set up a little improv for you, based on Shakespeare’s play?”

  “Well, I’d have to—”

  “We’re going to ask the audience for some suggestions. You decide what to do with the information. All right, Sandra Billings?” She left me no time to answer. “Let’s give Sandra the name of an animal.”

  Someone yelled out from the left: “Monkey!”

  “Fabulous!” the director exclaimed. “How about an emotion?”

  “Jealousy!” someone yelled from the right.

  “Thank you. And now, a location for Helena?”

  A young male with a Southern drawl hollered, from the front of the circle, “Supermarket!”

  “Wonderful.”

  The director seemed to be in egotistical heaven, and the group played along with her little game. I refused to feel intimidated. I sat down, closed my eyes, and prayed to the Lord of Compassion, any Lord of Compassion, that I become nothing but an open vessel to receive the suggestions and let go of the results. After centering myself, I stood up, faced the director squarely, and said, “I will perform Helena, from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as a jealous monkey, revealing my undying love to my beloved Demetrius while pursuing him through the supermarket.”

  I proceeded to get down on all fours and make monkey sounds while I commenced with the dialogue: “‘You draw me, you hard-hearted’ … hee, hee … ‘adamant …’”

  I scratched my head and underarms while jumping around the imaginary supermarket. I was the monkey, grabbing make-believe bananas off imaginary counters, tearing food down from the shelves along the invisible aisles. And as the monkey, I went around the circle scratching everyone’s heads. Then I brought one of the male members onto the make-believe stage to play the part of Demetrius. I began to scratch his head and underarms. Seeing one of the female members staring at my beloved Demetrius, I became the irate, jealous lover and pushed her off her chair. All the while passionately reciting Shakespeare’s words:

  “‘But yet you draw not iron, for my heart is true as steel’ … hee, hee, hee.”

  The LaPapa ensemble thought the audition was hilarious, and without further deliberation the director, Ginger Pompidou, asked me to join their elite community.

  I was ecstatic! I got in! I flew down the stairs and couldn’t wait to tell Emma, call Rachel. I wanted to scream out to the universe: “I GOT IN!” All those classes, and scripts, and monologues. All the jogging and swimming and wine corks! God, it felt good to be acknowledged.

  When I got home and told Emma, who was at the time making spaghetti for a few guests she’d invited over for lunch, she was not at all surprised. She listened attentively.

  “You should have seen me, Emma; I was steady as a rock. I kept my equipoise throughout the entire audition. Even when they threw me hurdles, I jumped through them like a trained circus tiger. Or was I the proverbial fox ‘whose ears are constantly alert to the cracking of the ice’?” She looked at me as if I were from another galaxy. “Emma, you would have been proud.” I helped her bring the salad and soup bowls into the living room and placed them on the snack tables she’d already set up.

  “I am proud,” she said. “But I know how talented you are. Patience is a virtue.”

  “Rachel. I have to call her.” I ran over to the phone and dialed her number. But there was no answer. No strange recording anymore … but no answer either.

  This is very weird. I’ll have to investigate this later. I followed Emma back into the kitchen and helped her carry the serving dishes into the dining room. I was happy to help, thrilled to help. I could have cooked an entire meal from scratch, painted the apartment building, inside and out, climbed the Himalayas. But I had to stay grounded. Emma
was having one of those serve-yourself-from-the-buffet-table lunches, and the least I could do was lend my support.

  So I brought out the gold silverware and the paper plates, and shared every microscopic detail of the audition with her. She asked about the other cast members and how they’d reacted to the audition. She wanted to know when there’d be a production, how often the group would meet. I told her I wasn’t sure. “But I think every day,” I added.

  “Every day?” She was surprised and didn’t seem pleased. But she didn’t say another word. The doorbell rang. Her first guest had arrived.

  “Who’s coming over?” I asked, anxious to know whom she’d invited.

  “Just some friends.”

  Cool, I thought. Maybe Bert, the producer, had been invited, or Zelda, or some of her celebrity friends she’d talked about when we first met at the retirement home. Maybe some famous producers and directors were coming so she could brag about my theatrical triumph. But when Joe the mailman walked in without his uniform, and Max and Louise Silverman, an elderly couple from the second floor, came bustling into the kitchen, the anticipation of meeting new and exciting people pretty much dwindled. The doorbell rang two more times before her five guests had arrived, and with each entrance, I knew my chances of meeting someone “from the industry,” or anyone creative or unconventional—anyone I could relate to—were diminishing. Besides Joe the mailman and Max and Louise, there was Suzanne, an eighteen-year-old flute player from the fifth floor, and Marion, a recent widow from down the block.

  The conversation was a little awkward as we moved around the table filling our plates—at least for me. I didn’t know these neighbors. I’d never more than bumped into the mailman or ventured onto another floor. I had to admit, even to myself, that I didn’t care to expend the slightest bit of effort to get to know these people. They hadn’t made movies or produced any Broadway shows. They were ordinary folks, with ordinary concerns and plebeian occupations.

  It wasn’t until we were all sitting in the living room, dipping our bread into our spaghetti sauce and the olive-oil dressing from Emma’s endive salad, that I realized that these people had all somehow connected to this eighty-year-old woman, just as I had. And as I sat there, chewing on the toasty crust of the garlic bread, I realized what the connection was.

  We were all in need of this woman’s approval, dependent on her support and encouragement. We were all the same.

  “Suzanne is a marvelous flutist,” Emma said, as she filled Max’s glass with wine. “She will be performing at the University of Southern California next month.” Suzanne turned pink at Emma’s announcement, but mustered the courage to provide us with the precise date and time of the performance. Tending to Louise’s request for more sparkling cider and Max’s need for another napkin, Emma drew in Joe by asking him to repeat the ludicrous mailman joke he’d told her the other day.

  As she played hostess to each guest, catering to his or her needs, filling cups with liquid love, I watched, fascinated. She seemed to be teaching me, showing me how to tend to people’s hearts, no matter who they were, no matter what their social status or profession was. As closely as I watched and as hard as I listened, I could feel a fire inside me, burning away my ego and my ignorance. The more I realized how consumed I’d been with my previous expectations—convinced of how superior I was and disappointed that these friends of hers were so, well, pedestrian—the more I burned.

  What was implicit in Emma’s teaching that afternoon was how one word could transform an emotional interior, how the smallest gesture of thoughtfulness could lighten someone’s heart. How giving was a better trade than taking. And … how this was a lesson I needed to remember—and a lesson I continually forgot.

  Chapter 14

  … in such times of progress and successful development

  it is necessary to work and make the best use of the time.

  Over the next few weeks, LaPapa’s troupe members read tons of scripts sent to us by playwrights from around the world. After reading each submission, the company was to decide if they liked one of the plays enough to produce it, in which case they’d invite the author to come to Los Angeles and watch the actors from LaPapa present a staged reading. If the author was happy with the direction thus far, we would cast the parts and prepare for a live performance. Since LaPapa had a significant presence in L.A. and New York, the author would be guaranteed a full house and lots of media coverage. While searching for the ultimate script, Ginger had us warm up each day by doing improvs.

  I’d attended many theater classes and weekend clinics where I’d been asked to do improvisational theater games to stretch the mind and emotions. Improvs that were thought out with intelligence and foresight that helped me go beyond set parameters, go beyond any mental limitations. And I did them because I’d felt safe, protected under the directors’ guidance.

  Yet, Ginger dared each member to go onstage, one at a time, and re-create an extremely private moment—a moment that revealed something we would, under normal circumstances, be too embarrassed to share in public, something we did by ourselves when no one else was around. She told us it was an exercise in fearlessness. Now, if Ginger were the kind of director I felt safe with, I wouldn’t have minded, but I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw a Ping-Pong ball.

  One actor put himself in front of an imaginary mirror and dressed up in drag. Another actor made us believe he was home, pulling down the shades in his living room, dimming the lights, lying down in his bed, and masturbating under a blanket. One of the dancers did leg stretches while she sensually massaged her breasts and other body parts. When it was my turn, I went through the motions of taking off my clothes, walking into a small stall shower, turning the water on, and singing “Let It Be” at the top of my lungs. Our director made no comment. Everyone else seemed to like it.

  Two troupe members, the Carolina twins, refused to do the exercise, and Ginger flipped out. She took their refusal as a personal insult: “You think you’re too superior to do this exercise?” she screamed. “You two better get off your high horses and join the little people. What the hell are you doing here if you can’t execute what you’re asked? Wasting my time, and everybody else’s! How do you think you’re going to make it in this town without humility! When you’re hired as actors, you do what you’re asked. You think because you’re from a ritzy section of Charleston and have that … hair … that you’re beyond reproach?”

  She went on and on, getting hoarser and hoarser, until she sputtered out and sent everyone home, except me. I was the chosen one to stay. I wasn’t sure I appreciated the honor. Trailed by the tail of her cape, Ginger made a grand pirouette, and in her Queen of Sheba voice pronounced, “Follow me, Sandra Billings. I want to show you why actors must be cautious in my presence.”

  Dubiously, I followed her around the corner to another room she called “home.” Home was dismal and smelled of mildew. Even with the lights turned on, the room was dark and spooky. The windows were covered with black cloth. Pieces of velvet fabric were draped over a queen-size waterbed. Frayed shawls hung on the walls. Everything was musty. Ginger sat down on the oversize gray velvet chair and offered me the option of the floor or the bed. I somehow felt exposed, vulnerable, standing in the empty space before her chair. Warily, I chose the rippling waterbed. I sat watching her while she clutched the arms of her chair tightly and worked herself back into a heavy fume.

  “Who the fuck do these actors think they are? I don’t have time for their arrogant bullshit. I have a company to run, a tight ship to steer.” She stood up, dramatically, and paced the floor, her arms flailing, her cape flying. “I’m not asking them to do anything Peter Brook and Stanislavsky wouldn’t have asked their companies to do. Great directors expect unflinching obedience.”

  Is she out of her mind? Placing herself in the same sentence with these directors!

  Ginger reached under the chair and pulled out a box filled with colored powders and tiny brown bottles. She began to mix an
d measure pinches of powder from one bottle into the other, muttering. Adding a gooey glue-like substance to one bottle, scented oil to another. One of her potions, no doubt! She added a splash of yucky green liquid to top them off. “This will show those Southern crackers who they’re playing with.”

  She placed the mysterious mixtures on top of the bureau and began to recite unidentifiable incantations, moving her hands around and around in small semicircles above her head, chanting in some strange language, dancing to a bizarre, primal rhythm. All this to activate the magic potion, I guess!

  “There are good spells and bad spells,” she said, after completing her dark, mysterious worship. She approached the bed. “You just have to know the right amounts to create the right chemistry. The liquid must solidify before the spell takes effect.”

  Ceremony completed, she plunked down next to me, sliding her heavy body close to mine. Before I could move away she began massaging my shoulders with her masculine hands. I froze. One hand slowly, deliberately, made its way to my breast, the other massaged the back of my neck. Her thick, muscular body exuded an odor I could barely bear to inhale.

  “Ginger,” I said, edging away, desperately reaching for a verbal diversion, “how long does the liquid take to solidify?”

  “About two hours.” She moved closer.

  “Uhm …” I tried to sidle sideways again, an awkward maneuver on the rising and falling waterbed. “What’s going to happen to the twins as a result of this mixture?”

  “You’ll see, my naïf.” She crowded even closer.

  “I, ah, think you have me all wrong. I like you and everything, but I’m not a … you know.” I shifted, to edge farther away. But her fingers reached for my hair and twirled a few strands.

  “That’s too bad. We’d make quite a team. I like you,” she continued in her low-pitched tone, probably meant as seductive. “You have so little ego. Most people don’t let me in. But you do. You’re open and trusting. It’s why I picked you. Your face is young, your eyes are old, and I can feel your rage. It’s a great combination. I could make you a star, if you’ll let me. If you’ll have me.”