Finally a list of names were called, including mine, and we were told to line up. My anxiety kicked into high gear. Even though I’d had nothing to eat or drink for hours, I now had to urinate badly. But there was no time. I stood in line listening to the people ahead of me try and make the most of their brief time in the room. I started to feel like maybe I should flee. I mean, who cares if I just wasted an entire day? I don’t need a summer stock job. I could just go to Omaha and get a job there for the summer. I had always wanted to work at the Henry Doorly Zoo as the guide on the zoo train. I would get to point out the giraffes and okapis. Maybe this was my chance. As I was planning my escape, the door to the audition room opened and the mean-looking lady at the folding table, now even meaner-looking, yelled, “Next!”
This was it. I had thirty seconds to let these people know that they should be hiring me immediately. I left the safety of the line and walked into the room. No one spoke to me. There was a group of about ten people all sitting behind a line of tables that were covered with snacks and beverages. My hunger and dehydration hit me like a dodgeball. I thought about asking for a swig of one of their waters, but it seemed inappropriate. I gave the accompanist my music and walked to the center of the room. An older woman who sat in the middle of the group finally addressed me.
“What are you singing?”
“ ‘Amazing Journey’ from The Who’s Tommy,” I announced proudly.
In the sixteen-bar tradition, I had selected the highest and loudest portion of the song to perform. It was pleasantly aggressive at best and obnoxiously showy at worst. I planted my feet and belted out that song with all the power I could muster. Sometimes when an audition goes well, you sort of leave your body for a moment. It’s like you can see yourself performing; it’s all instinct. That’s how I felt when I sang this particular song. It fit perfectly in my voice, and I didn’t have to think too hard about it. When an audition goes badly, you also leave your body, but for different reasons. It’s like seeing your life flash before your eyes when you are struck by lightning or the moment before you are hit by a train. This was the good type though. I finished the song and walked to the piano to get my music. “Thank you!” I said to no one in particular and started for the door. The whole room laughed.
“Whoa!” the woman at the table said. “Give us just one second.”
They all started whispering among themselves. I stood nervously by the door, excited but also wanting to run screaming into the hallway.
“Do you know anything from The Fantasticks?” the woman asked.
As it turns out, I had played the role of Matt in The Fantasticks my senior year of high school in Omaha, at two different theaters. I loved that show.
“Yes. I know the whole show.”
The room laughed again. I didn’t feel in on the joke, but I smiled along.
“Can you sing ‘I Can See It’ for us?”
“I Can See It” is the big second-act number for Matt. It’s loud and high and really exciting if it goes well. Had I been thinking clearly I should have said, “No, I don’t really know it, but I would be happy to give it a try, I guess.” And then belted them into oblivion. But I had already shown my cards.
“Yes, I can,” I said.
The accompanist started playing, and I sang with all the power and passion in my nineteen-year-old body. Again I had the experience of being outside myself. There was no time to think about anything, I was just reacting. I was present and honest and suddenly not afraid of anything. Or maybe I was just delusional from hunger. Either way, it was satisfying. The song ended. They were all smiling.
“Thank you, Andrew,” the woman said.
I left the room feeling drunk on confidence and ready to collapse at any moment. I walked across the street to a Wendy’s and ate a large bacon cheeseburger and downed a bucket of Coke. I felt good and, for the first time in ages, like I had in Omaha. I felt like that job was mine.
Fortunately, it was. That woman from the audition room called me the next day. Her name was Joan Phelps and she owned the Theater Barn. She offered me the entire season, starting with The Fantasticks, then Forever Plaid, then Grease, and ending with Promises, Promises. I would rehearse a show for two weeks and then run it for two weeks while rehearsing the next show. I would also be expected to perform certain backstage and front-of-house jobs, such as helping with set building and light cleaning in the lobby between shows. The season was from June to the last week of August, and I would be paid $150 a week plus room and board for the summer. It was a lot of information to take in.
I was thrilled at my win but also concerned about some of the details. “Set building” and “light cleaning”? $150 a week? I hesitated on the phone just long enough for Joan to launch into a speech that she must have given hundreds of times over the years to hundreds of actors like me. She started explaining the value of a season of summer stock, the opportunity to work with great directors and great actors. She even referenced the lack of credits on my résumé and how this season would help me remedy it. It seemed like a low blow, but she was right. My head started to spin. I needed the experience and I needed a job. Period.
I accepted the job and that was that. I had committed to my first summer stock season. I would be singing and dancing all summer in a barn. C’mon, kids! I thought. Let’s put on some shows!
School ended, and I was able to go to Omaha for a couple of weeks before I had to report for duty in the Berkshires. I was now getting nervous about the reality of my summer. I had just started to feel settled into New York and my routine there—my commute to school, my nights out with Zuzanna, which old bodega lady would give me free coffee because she thought I was James Van Der Beek—and now I was uprooting myself. I didn’t really know where I was going, I wouldn’t know anyone once I got there, and I would be living in a house with these strangers for the next three months. But I was going to try to stay positive.
After a quick visit home, during which my mom repeatedly reminded me of how thin I was and how sad she was I couldn’t stay home for the summer, I packed my bags and left Omaha once again, this time bound for Albany, where Joan Phelps would pick me up and drive me to the Theater Barn. The day I traveled it was raining and my flight was delayed. When I finally arrived I saw Joan. She looked markedly less friendly than the last time I had seen her. She was wearing an oversized Garth Brooks T-shirt and faux-denim stirrup pants. (Her feet were not in the stirrups, which were just dangling off the back, just to give you a clear visual.) It was obvious Joan was pissed that I was late, and she seemed eager to punish me, as though I had personally flown the plane in the wrong direction just to annoy her.
“We gotta move!” she yelled. “I have a show opening tonight and we can’t be late!”
I nervously waited for my luggage while she looked at her watch and aggressively sighed every three seconds. When I finally got my bag, we ran to her eighties Cadillac and she raced out of the parking lot.
“Mind if I smoke?” she said.
“Not at all,” I said, and she quickly took out a pack of Merits. We sat mostly in silence for the hour-long ride to the theater. As I stared out the window, I noticed that the Berkshires were actually really pretty. I had never been that far north in New York, and it looked and felt like a different state entirely. It kind of reminded me of western Nebraska but with more trees. And more color. And mountains. Okay, it wasn’t that much like Nebraska, but there were cows, at least. I guess that was where the similarities stopped.
I had no idea where I was going, so I was just trusting this stranger to deliver me to this wonderful experience that I had been promised. We finally arrived at the Theater Barn and much to my surprise…it was a barn. It wasn’t built to look like a barn, nor was it “barn-like,” it was just a fucking barn. It hadn’t occurred to me that this would be the case.
“There she is,” Joan said rather proudly. “I’m going
to take you to the house and then you can walk over to the theater to see opening night of Tintypes. Your El Gallo just arrived today, too. His name is Steve.” (El Gallo is the male lead of The Fantasticks, and is usually played by a swarthy baritone. As for Tintypes, I didn’t know what the hell that was.)
We pulled up to “the house,” which was a rather run-down-looking white farmhouse with a screened-in porch and several cars parked on the grass outside. Joan did not show me inside. She just came to a stop and said, “Take one of the bedrooms upstairs. I think there’s an empty bed in the back room. You’ll have to share with one of the Tintypes actors. Don’t be late for the show tonight!” With that, she sped her car off the front lawn, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke in her faux-denim wake.
I dragged my suitcase into the house. It was…bleak. Dirty and sad, and the furnishings looked more like a last-minute yard sale than a home. I wandered around looking for signs of life. There were bedroom doors open, revealing suitcases exploded onto twin beds. The house had been left as if The Rapture had come and everyone had been saved mid-chore. I saw a staircase, so I ventured up. The second floor had an entirely separate kitchen and living space and was just as mismatched and dirty as the first floor. Where in the hell am I? Can I live for three months here on the set of The Grapes of Wrath? Is it too late to run? Then I heard a door open, and a very attractive man entered the kitchen with wet hair, wearing only a towel. Initially what I saw was a young Johnny Depp, and then I quickly realized he was more like a current-day Skeet Ulrich, which, in 1998, actually was a version of a young Johnny Depp. His wet torso and this game of Celebrity Look-Alike shook me out of my panic. “Hi! I’m Steve!” this person said.
“Hi. I’m Andrew,” I managed to say, though in my head I was chanting, Please be gay. Please be gay. Please be gay.
“Sorry I’m running a little late. We are going to see the show tonight, right?”
“I guess so,” I said. “I don’t really know where we are going though.”
“It’s just down the road,” Steve said. “Let me show you where your bedroom is.”
Steve’s combination of confidence and blind swagger made me feel certain he was not a gay person but rather just a straight actor who liked to be admired. I felt like we were seconds away from him showing me his dick and saying, “Do you like this? Because you can’t have it. But it’s nice, right?”
Steve walked me to a small back bedroom with two twin beds. “You’ll have to share with Jeff. He seems cool. He’s in Tintypes.” Everyone needs to stop saying “Tintypes”! I screamed in my head.
Steve got dressed, and I changed into a slightly different version of what I was already wearing for this “opening night” we were about to attend. We walked to the theater together, down a dirt road and through an empty field. Steve talked the entire time, about where he was from, where he wanted to live in Manhattan, what he was doing for the rest of his summer, and his girlfriend in South Carolina (I was right—straight actor). On top of being handsome, Steve was nice, very nice. I was relieved to have met someone who seemed like he could be a friend.
The inside of the Theater Barn looked more like a theater than a barn, but it still smelled like a barn. There were small glasses of warm white wine on a table in the lobby to celebrate the opening night. Steve and I quickly slammed two each before heading to our seats. As soon as I sat down, a day of travel and anxiety and cheap wine hit me all at once. I was exhausted. I couldn’t help but doze off throughout the show. I still couldn’t tell you what Tintypes is about. I know Theodore Roosevelt showed up at some point and there was a suffragette number. It was a revue, I guess, of songs from early-ish America. I was too tired to really pay attention. But I do remember thinking, That’s going to be me on that stage in two weeks. I will be up there having my own opening night with members of the next cast sitting here, judging me. I checked my judgment. This cast probably didn’t know what Tintypes was about, either.
After the show, there was a party, but I was too beat to go. I slipped out of the theater and walked back to the house, through the field and down the dirt road, alone. It was quiet, and a little scary, but pretty. I had never really been in the country like this. The moon was so bright. I remember thinking, Oh, that’s moonlight! It actually does give off a lot of light! (For those of you thinking, How did he not know this? He’s from the prairie, let me clarify: I am from the big city of Omaha, Nebraska, okay? There are tall buildings and hookers and streetlights and everything!)
I got back to the house and realized that it was left open. The doors didn’t lock at all. I started to have visions of In Cold Blood, but I was too tired to worry about getting murdered that night. I went up to my little shared room and lay down on my bed. A bright overhead light was on above me. It might be rude to turn that off before my roommate gets home, I thought. So I fell asleep, fully dressed, with the lights on. My roommate probably thought I had been murdered when he finally got home that night.
I woke up the next morning unsure of where I was. I looked around the room and then reality set back in. My roommate was asleep across from me. It was jarring to see a stranger in his underwear so close to my bed. I tiptoed out of my room and into the bathroom, and was startled to hear voices downstairs. I could tell that one was Steve’s and the other was a woman’s. I went downstairs, and there in the kitchen were Steve, once again in his “Welcome to the House” towel (which made me feel less special), and a young woman with curly brown hair and a megawatt smile. She just looked like sunshine and happiness, and there was something cosmic or past-life about her that I knew I instantly loved. She spotted me. “Are you Andrew? I’m Jenn Gambatese! Your Luisa!” (Luisa and Matt are the star-crossed lovers at the heart of The Fantasticks.) She hugged me, and somehow I knew that this summer was going to be okay.
I quickly learned that there is no time for leisure in summer stock. We were at the theater within the hour and reading through the script with the rest of the cast. If you don’t know The Fantasticks, it is a sweet show written in the sixties by Tom Jones (not that one, though it’s fun to imagine…) and Harvey Schmidt. It is a simple story about love and loss and learning that, most of the time, what you truly want has been there all along—in this show’s case, literally in the characters’ own backyard. El Gallo is the narrator and antagonist, Matt and Luisa are the lovers, they each have a father, and there’s an old actor character and his assistant and a character called “The Mute” whose primary role is to move scenery around. It’s definitely weird, but also incredibly moving, and has gorgeous music in it.
We learned on that first day of rehearsals that instead of fathers, Matt and Luisa would have mothers in this production. (Progressive!) And The Mute would also be played by a woman. (Doubly progressive!) The Mute would be joining us later in the rehearsal process, and everyone else in this cast was a local actor who lived in the area. This was shocking to me at first, but then I learned that a lot of New York City folks have houses in the Berkshires and live there for the summer. The cast was a real grab bag of ages and experience. The mothers both had acting careers in New York, but the old actor and his assistant were truly locals. They were both full-time teachers who just liked acting for fun. So this was part summer stock, part community theater.
The director was a young guy named Brett who took himself very seriously and acted as if we were performing The Fantasticks for the first time in American theater history. Even as an inexperienced nineteen-year-old, I immediately had the instinct to roll my eyes at him. But as we read the script for the first time, I was so pleased and excited to find that everyone in the cast was really talented, especially Jenn and Steve. All my anxiety about sharing bedrooms or getting murdered at night because of a home invasion drifted away. I was going to be a serious actor with other serious actors this summer.
The rehearsals for these summer stock productions are sort of a blur. Everyone has to move quickly because y
ou really only have about ten days to put the whole show together before you have an audience. As I said, I had done this particular show two times before, so I already knew the entire thing backward and forward. I would like to say that I was still open to direction, but that would be a lie. I had made my choices and my portrayal of Matt was LOCKED DOWN. This wasn’t about “exploring,” this was about showing off what I had already discovered. My trick in this show was that I made the bold choice to cry a lot at the end. When Matt and Luisa discover they have been in love all along, and what they truly want is to be together, I would launch into a full-out breakdown à la Sally Field in Steel Magnolias. It was highly uncalled for, but it made me feel like, well, Sally Field in Steel Magnolias, and I loved it.
The big takeaway from rehearsals was that I was working with professionals now. These people came prepared, had ideas, and asked questions that went beyond “Where do I stand?” and “What face do I make?” They were young, but they were ambitious. It made me excited and scared. (You’re welcome, Into the Woods fans.)
Along the way, Steve, Jenn, and I became a tight team. We ate every meal together, we went running together, we stayed up late and drank bad wine together. We grocery shopped together, we did laundry together, we drove around at night and found old cemeteries to walk through together. We were a unit that depended on one another for survival. At least I certainly depended on them. I now know it has to do with the fact that we were spending every waking moment with one another and shared an ambition that clearly stretched beyond the Theater Barn. There was nothing sexual about our attraction, but I fell madly in love with both of them in about three days.
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