Too Much Is Not Enough

by Andrew Rannells

  I don’t know how long I cried, but it was a while. Finally, I stopped. I decided that I couldn’t spend my first day in New York feeling sorry for myself. I summoned the Midwestern grit of my ancestors, the strength and spirit of Willa Cather and her prairie kin, and decided I needed to take charge of my experience. Unlike other college dorms, these cells were only meant for one person. Initially the “no roommate” detail had seemed like a plus, but now I realized that I alone was going to have to make this room acceptable. I unpacked my clothes and put them in my tiny closet. I made my bed and sprayed my eucalyptus Bath & Body Works linen spray everywhere. I arranged a few family photos I had packed, and then I sat back and took in my new home. It wasn’t bad.

  Just as my stress level started to decline, I heard people outside in the halls talking and laughing and yelling about extension cords, flip-flops for the shower, and Beds in a Bag (popular in 1997). I wanted to go out and say hello, but I was too embarrassed—embarrassed that I didn’t have any of that fun stuff that’s meant to make a dorm room livable, and that I was alone. I couldn’t stay in that room any longer. Fuck it, I thought. This is New York City and I’m living here now. I marched down those stairs for the fourth time that day, looked for a pay phone, and then called the one person who I knew in the city: Celestina Villanueva.

  I had met Celestina at a college scholarship audition earlier that year, and we had kept in touch. She had a low, vaguely Southern drawl and a job as a hostess at a wine bar in Dallas, which seemed like the most mature job a person our age could have. As a kid, I loved the TV show It’s a Living, which followed the lives of the waitresses at a penthouse bar in Los Angeles. I could easily picture Celestina next to Ann Jillian, serving drinks and slinging wisecracks. She fit perfectly in my dream version of life in New York.

  I knew that Celestina was already living in the NYU dorms, so I dropped in my coin and called the number she had sent me. Much to my relief, she answered. I tried to sound calm and natural and crossed my fingers for an invitation. After listening to her talk about her “brilliant movement teacher” for two more quarters, she finally said it: “Come see my dorm!” That was it. That’s what I needed. She told me to take the R train, which was magically the one I was standing right by, and she said the stop was 8th Street/NYU. How easy was this? I purchased my token, got on my train, stood instead of sat—so as to look more confident—and exited at my stop. I was slightly unclear as to exactly which neighborhood I was in, but it was immediately apparent that this was closer to the New York I had imagined. There were young people everywhere, laughing and playing hacky sack, wearing fishnets. And drinking coffee. At night! A man played a plastic bucket as a drum. It was like a community theater production of Hair and I loved it. A strange sense of direction kicked in and I walked right to Celestina’s dorm with no problem at all.

  Her room was everything I’d dreamed mine would be. It was bright and cheerful, with air-conditioning and windows that looked onto Washington Square Park. She had a roommate who seemed sweet, and they had loft beds with desks underneath them with fun little lamps and corkboards above them. It was a dorm room dream. Celestina told me all about her first week at NYU—her classes and the people she had met, the teachers she loved, the boys she didn’t like. She talked pretty much nonstop for two hours without once asking me a single question. I would later come to know this (and see it in myself) as a solid tell that someone is an actor. Somehow we can be completely self-centered yet give the listener the impression they are in on the fun. I didn’t care. I was thrilled to be with people, and to feel like I’d been welcomed somewhere.

  Celestina kicked me out after a couple hours because she had a Voice and Speech class in the morning. It all sounded so academic and artsy. We said our good-byes and I left. Once outside, I realized it was later than I’d thought, close to 11 p.m., and dark. I started back toward the subway certain of my way, but I must have made a wrong turn somewhere because before I knew it I was IN Washington Square Park. I knew this wasn’t right. I hadn’t been this way before. Or had I? “The city is a grid, the city is a grid,” I kept telling myself, unaware that it is most definitely not a grid below 14th Street. I’ll just go back to Celestina’s dorm and start again, I decided. But which way was it? It was at this point I realized there was no one else around. There are always people around in New York, so this felt odd. A young-ish man walked up behind me and mumbled, “Smoke? Smoke?” I continued to walk. “Coke? Coke?” I walked faster, so did he. “No, thank you!” I said. He walked away.

  I felt like I was back on track now, that I was starting to figure out where the train was. Another man approached me. “What are you looking for? Coke?” Having grown up watching Miami Vice, I knew he wasn’t talking about pop. (That’s Midwestern for “soda.”) “No, thank you!” I said again. This was getting ridiculous. I saw some drunk students weaving around across the street from me, shouting and laughing. Maybe I should just ask them where the subway is? Just then, one of them vomited on the sidewalk while his friends laughed at him.

  Another man approached me. “Smoke? Smoke?”

  “No!” I shouted. I felt like I was in a drug-infused opening number of Oliver!

  And then, a miracle…a taxi appeared with its vacant light on. I stuck my arm out and the cab stopped. Just like in the movies! “57th and Lexington, please!” I belted. And off we went. The cab smelled like an armpit mixed with an ashtray, but I didn’t care. I rolled down both windows and let the breeze come through. I looked around the city as we sped uptown. I could see that there was so much life happening everywhere. A woman getting off from work, waiting for the bus. A group of businessmen stumbling out of a bar. A young couple laughing and holding hands crossing the street. So many people I didn’t know, who didn’t know me. How would I fit into this world? It seemed so crowded already. Was there space for me? I felt lost and scared.

  I wanted to go to my parents’ hotel and tell them this was a mistake. I should go home to Nebraska, I thought. I’ll come back in a couple years when I’ve saved more money, when I can go to NYU instead of a school whose most famous alumna is Geraldine Ferraro, who, last time I checked, has never won any Tony Awards. But even thinking these things felt wrong. I had to make a choice. I could be afraid of what was to come; I could panic about the decision I had made to move to New York with no contacts, no real friends, and no clue on how to get started. Or I could embrace it.

  Sure, I didn’t know anyone and my dreams of being on Broadway seemed light-years away, but isn’t that how everyone starts here? Isn’t that the beauty of New York? I didn’t want to die of regret in Omaha. I wanted to try! Like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, I could give myself a makeover and conquer this town, god damn it! I was Tootsie! I was Annie! I wasn’t Coco from Fame, but I was Leroy from Fame, and I was going to rule that fucking school! Okay, maybe I was Danny, but still I felt calm all of a sudden. No more panic. No more sadness. Just calm. My heart had been racing moments before, but now, in the safety of a filthy cab, I felt okay. The lights of the city, the smells, the sounds, they all felt safe to me. I would find my place here. These people outside on the streets would be my friends, my neighbors. There was space for me—I would make sure of it.

  I didn’t know what was next. What school would be like, who I would meet, how I would fit in. I didn’t know that night that years later I would ask my parents about that trip and they would tell me that I seemed fine, capable, totally in control. That they felt awkward and in my way and wanted to give me space to set myself up. That as I was lost in Washington Square, they were in their hotel crying, together, because I was growing up and going away and they didn’t know how to help this very ambitious son of theirs. I also didn’t know that somehow this distance between us would actually make me and my dad closer. That there would be regular phone calls and stories told and thoughts shared in a way that we never could face-to-face. I didn’t know how my mother, who seemed so frig
htened by this city, would fall in love with it too.

  I didn’t know that night how many romances this town would give me. The friends I would make, the fights I would get into. I didn’t know about the jobs I would have, both the fantastic and the miserable, or how or when I would get to Broadway. I didn’t know any of this. It was just the beginning. And I was ready for anything.

  Be Loud

  How do I get started here? That was the big question. I didn’t know anyone except for other students, and I had zero clue how to get closer to my dream of being on Broadway. All I knew was what had worked in Omaha. Maybe if I just did that again, I could find success here. I mean, New York was basically just a bigger Omaha, right? I really had no choice but to try; I was convinced that a life on stage was my destiny.

  I have been a shameless entertainer ever since I was a little kid. Singing and dancing in front of people, telling stories, trying to get people to laugh—I loved them all. But I didn’t have a word for my need to perform then; “actor” wasn’t a part of my vocabulary yet. Remember that game MASH you played as a kid? The one where you would write down different visions of your future: your job, your spouse, your car? Then you would continuously draw a spiral until someone said “Stop!”—at which point you’d use some nonsensical, child logic to figure out which future would come true? I never said “actor” in that game. I usually said “doctor” or “news anchor.” (For what it’s worth, I always said “Michelle Pfeiffer” or “Lisa Whelchel” for my wife. I also said “Lamborghini” for my car even though I really had no clue what that was.)

  Even though I had seen my sister Becky in high school productions of West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof—both productions were all Catholic, all white, and filled with lots of questionable accents—I had never imagined myself up on stage with her. The actors were all in their teens, I was a tiny child! I figured I would have to wait until I was older to have my turn.

  Then came the day when my Catholic grade school, Our Lady of Lourdes, took a field trip to the Emmy Gifford Children’s Theater, Omaha’s premier (and only) children’s theater. My class saw a production of Frankenstein, and there was a little boy my age in it. Suddenly an intense envy sank in. I had always been jealous of Ricky Schroder on Silver Spoons. Both of Ricky Schroder, the actor, getting to be the center of attention like that, and of Ricky Stratton, the character, and the fact that he had an indoor fucking train. But that life seemed insanely out of reach. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would take to be the star of a television show or where to buy that kind of train. But who in the hell was this kid on stage at the Emmy Gifford? If there was going to be an Omaha Ricky, it was going to be me.

  My parents regularly attended shows at our local community theater and both dinner theaters in town, so I figured my mom might know how I could break into the Omaha theater scene. I asked her how that kid got to be in that show, and she told me that the theater held “tryouts” and listed them in the Omaha World Herald’s LIVING! section. (It is still called the LIVING! section to this day.) I started scouring the Sunday paper for these “tryouts” and was regularly disappointed by the results. A community theater production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I had never heard of it, but there should be a child in that, right? No such luck. The following week, tryouts for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Surely that was a children’s show? Nope. But then, after weeks of looking, I found it…Oliver! It was the jackpot of children’s shows: basically all children, and boy children at that. Maybe I could just sign up for this one? There couldn’t be that many boys who wanted to do theater. This was my chance to be Ricky.

  I told my mother the good news. After reading the requirements in the ad, she explained that I would need to sing for the audition and I would need to bring something called “sheet music” for the piano player. Okay. I went to our piano, which no one in the house played, and riffled through the piano bench, where, for some reason, we had a lot of sheet music. I think my mother hoped that just by having it in the house, some musical ability might seep into our brains. We had The Hits of Barry Manilow. I considered “Copacabana,” but it didn’t seem quite right for an orphan. “The Theme from Ice Castles”? Solid choice, but would it be as effective without ice skates? And then I found it, shoved in the bottom of the bench: “Getting to Know You” from The King and I. It was perfect! They didn’t know me; I was introducing myself to them. Slam dunk. My dad had shown me the movie years before, and I had completely fallen in love with it. I thought Deborah Kerr was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I got a funny feeling down there when Yul Brynner dragged her around the dance floor without his shirt on. This was it. This was going to be my song and I was going to be in Oliver! at the Emmy Gifford Children’s Theater. I told my mother and she agreed to take me to the audition. I’m sure she was thrilled that I was showing interest in anything besides watching hours of TV all day and telling her how bored I was.

  I practiced my song again and again alone in the bathroom, when I was certain no one could hear me. I thought it would be perfectly okay to perform it with accompaniment for the first time at the tryout itself. Later that week we drove to the theater and much to my horror, it was packed with little boys who also wanted to be in Oliver! They all knew each other and were laughing and talking, they all had better hair, and they were all carrying binders filled with their sheet music. I, on the other hand, had brought along the entire “You Play the Hits of The King and I” book. Stupid, Andy, stupid! I thought.

  As we walked in, a woman handed me a form with all sorts of information to fill in: age, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and at the bottom, a large space to write in “Past Experience.” I panicked. Do I write down my re-creation of Grease 2 in my garage? The lip-synced “A Boy Like That” my sister Natalie and I did in our living room when no one else was home? All of a sudden those didn’t seem like legitimate productions. Did I have ANY experience to share? Sensing my agita, my mother said, “You can leave it blank. That’s okay.” I refused to listen to her. I can’t leave it blank. I must have some experience! I racked my brain. What the hell was that show I had to do in the first grade called? It was for an assembly or something, something about birds or I don’t know, insects? I quickly wrote down, “The Birds and The Flowers and The Bees.”

  My mother frowned. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s the show we did in Sister Idalia’s class three years ago.”

  “It is?” she asked doubtfully.

  Damn it, Mother! Just go with me here!

  “Are you sure, Andy?”

  “Yes!” I said.

  “Okay, then…”

  I handed in my slightly false résumé, and the woman at the check-in table said we could have a seat in the theater. As we walked in, the gravity of the situation hit me. All of the other boys would be watching my audition, and there were hundreds of them. Okay, there were probably fifty, but they might as well have filled a stadium. We sat down, and my mother, picking up on my terror, said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes!” I shot back. What I meant was “Fuck no!” but the words came out wrong. We settled in and watched little boy after little boy get on stage and belt out song after song. They all seemed amazing. Where in God’s name were these children coming from? Why could everyone sing? No one sang at my grade school. I mean, we did in church, but that didn’t count. These kids were singing like they were on Star Search.

  I was beginning to think that maybe my mother and I should just slip out the back, and then they said it, “Andy Rannells, you are next!” I stood up. “Be loud” was my mother’s final bit of advice. I walked onto the stage and gave the piano player my music. I remember very little about the thirty seconds of singing that followed, except that I had the feeling it wasn’t going well and that I couldn’t quite produce sound. I could barely hear myself over the piano. I finished and grabbed my music and
practically ran off the stage. I could feel that my face was red and hot, and I wanted to cry immediately. When I got to my mother, she said, “I couldn’t hear you.”

  We got into our Dodge Caravan and she softened. “That was very brave, Andy. I’m proud of you.” I was devastated. I didn’t want to be brave, I wanted to be Oliver. She tried to be helpful: “You know they teach classes at the Emmy Gifford Theater, too. Maybe that would be a good way to get started.” Classes?! I don’t want to take classes! I want to be rewarded for my natural star power! But I knew my mom was right. I needed help. This was going to be hard.

  Needless to say, I did not get cast in Oliver! However, I got a glimmer of a feeling while on that stage. Even though standing up there had not gone well, as terrifying as it was it felt oddly familiar. I wasn’t fully comfortable, but I knew I could be. I wanted to stay longer. And there was something else—the smell of the stage, it was dust and wood and something vaguely chemical that was instantly comforting. It was like I remembered that smell even though I was certain I had never smelled it before.