Give in to that easy living...

PART 1 of a multi-part post

In high school drama club we had a tyrant of a director. His name was Mr. Eiklor. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog you've read all about him. He was completely opinionate and his opinions were the only ones that mattered. To offset throwing coffee cups at our heads, he would give some of his special students treats and trips to the theatre. I was lucky enough to be invited to see a show with him.

I remember when he came to my house to pick me up. Dick, a friend of mine since the third grade and the Drama club star/president, was already in the car. I got in and Mr. Eiklor’s first words to me were “You smell like a French whore. The both of you do.” I guess Dick and I had over done it with the cologne. We were teenagers and it was a big day. We were going to see professional theatre.

The town right next to ours had built a gigantic theatre. It could seat 2200 people inside. The rear walls of the audience opened up, much like a garage door. Behind the doors was a giant sloped lawn which was essentially a huge amphitheater-like space. Another 2500 people could be “seated” outside. The theatre was a union house, meaning only Equity actors and IATSE (the stage hands union) members could work there.

From the moment we entered the huge courtyard which led to the front doors I was in awe of everything. I don’t even remember what show we saw there. It may have been Godspell. At any rate it was amazing. I do remember that much.

Mr. Eiklor told us the only place worth anything in terms of theatre training in our area was Brother Augustine’s program at Niagara University. So naturally both Dick and I, and our female counterparts applied there and got accepted. Only three of us actually went though.

At the end of our freshman year at Niagara, auditions for a summer show were posted. The University had partnered with the local union theatre to do a pre-season show. Luckily for me it was “Joseph...” Lots of guys are needed for that show, guys who can dance.

Both Dick and I got into the show. He actually got cast in the part that should have been mine. This was where my educational institute began to fail me. But hindsight is 20/20 and that’s another story.

After the pre-season show the union house held local auditions for their season. The students weren’t allowed to work outside of the theatre department. Only the seniors from our school were allowed to attend the auditions, since they would technically have graduated when the shows started. If they got cast in a show, they would get their Equity card at the end of the contract. That was every seniors dream: graduate, book a show at this Equity house, get their Equity card and then head to New York City.

My senior year Niagara University did West Side Story for the union house pre-season show. I played “Chino”. I auditioned but didn’t get cast in the union theatre’s season though. No one from my class did. I did however get booked to be a supernumerary in the opera portion of their summer season, which preceded the musicals. I was going to do La Traviata, Das Rheingold and Girl of the Golden West. We were paid pretty well for standing around in costumes doing nothing.

Hard as I tried, I had no life plans after the operas were to close. However Life had plans for me. I only got to do two of the three operas. After the second I got a call from a theatre company that attended the NETC’s (New England Theatre Conference). I had auditioned for them there and they wanted to cast me. I was off to do my first gig outside of my hometown area.

That first gig we were paid $65 a week plus housing and transportation. Part of our pay was withheld. That money would be awarded us upon completion of our contracts. It may sound shady but that’s how they got people to stay for the season. I guess turnover was great.

That summer I did Sugar Babies, My One and Only and 42^nd Street. I worked from July through September. When September came around, the company offered me their winter season with double the pay. At the same time the musical director from the summer season offered me a job doing a Christmas show at quadruple the money I had made that summer. He was from Buffalo, which is about 20 minutes from my hometown. That meant basically going back home. I could see nothing in my future after the review closed, except getting stuck at home. So I took the theatre’s offer to work. I played “Andy Lee” in 42^nd Street. I worked right up until Christmas then headed home for the holidays.

After the holidays were over I got on a greyhound bus and went to New York City. I didn’t have my Equity card. I didn’t have a job.  What I did have was two hundred dollars, three suitcases and an unnatural fear of never leaving my home town. I needed a way to make money and a place to live. What I didn’t need was an Equity card. There was non-union work to be had.

So I auditioned my butt off. I got cast in a show at Columbia University. They were doing a “revival” of Chekov’s The Bed Bug. It paid, not well, but it paid. It didn’t matter though. A friend from the winter season got me signed up with a temp agency. I was temping in offices to make rent.

Then I got cast in a two week stock season in Massachusetts. Two week stock means that every other week a new show is opened. The company would be performing one show at night and rehearsing the next show during the day. That summer I did Sugar Babies, La Cage Aux Folles, Little Shop of Horrors, Dreamgirls, Man of La Mancha, 42^nd Street, A Chorus Line (for the second time in my career) and The Three little Pigs.  I met some great people there including Arthur and Chandra Wilson. We made pretty good money that summer. And we were on the Cape so it was a win/win.

After the summer, I was invited back to do that winter season again. I went right from summer stock to winter stock again. I did 42^nd Street (again), La Cage Aux Folles (again) and Annie.

Up until this point I had been subletting and couch surfing with friends in NYC. This time when I returned, I had what I thought of as a decent amount of money. With a friend from university, I rented my first apartment. It was a pied a tier on 96^th Street and Central Park West.

Also because the money was “flowing”, the credit card companies came a knocking on my door. They offered me all kinds of things: zero percent this and perk that and cash back on purchases. You name it they offered it to me. I had never had credit cards before. My parents had taken care of all my finances. But I was an adult now. I vowed not to accept help from my parents. So I took the credit card companies up on their offers. All of them.

My friend Arthur was cast in Dreamgirls in Connecticut. They needed a guy to play the part I had just played the summer I had met Arthur. He recommended me. The theatre hired me. We did a long run. This time I could commuted to and from the show, which was great. I got to enjoy my apartment and work in theatre and make money and live in New York City.

After the show closed, it seemed like work dried up for a bit. It had been three years of almost constant non-union theatre work. A break was to be expected. As hard as I tired I just could not do enough temp work to pay my all my bills, which now included credit card bills and my student loans. I had taken a deferment on my student loans so I could do that initial theatre job making $65 a week.

And doing that initial job was the right choice for me. It provided me with contacts which provided me with more work, which provided me better pay, which provided me more contacts...you get the picture.

The break in theatre gigs didn’t last long. Well, long enough for me to want to kill myself if I had to sit behind another desk and answer phones all day long. Luckily I got hired to be in the ensemble of Hello Dolly at a theatre in Pennsylvania.

Then Manuel, a dancer from Dreamgirls in Connecticut called. He told me to audition for a theme park show. He was assisting the choreographer and thought they would like me. So I auditioned. I booked the gig.

Unfortunately the theme park show and Hello Dolly overlapped each other. I had to do some fancy talking and promising in order to keep both contracts. Manuel even offered to help me catch up in terms of what the rest of the cast would learn while I while I was finishing up the “Dolly” contract. Thanks to Manuel, it was settled. I could join the theme park show a week late.

And I was off again.

It was different now though. I had an apartment to myself. My roommate had moved out. He was going through some stuff. He actually blamed his leaving on the fact that he couldn’t stand to hear my belts clinging in the morning when I got ready to go temp. 

So the shoe was on the other foot. This time I had to find someone to sublet my apartment.

First I offered my place first to my friend Franchesca. She was in an abusive relationship and wanted to leave her boyfriend. I hadn’t met him, so her coming to live in my place worked perfectly. Franchesca disappeared into my apartment. She got her life back on track and then moved out. After her, my friend Neil wanted to move into the city from Jersey so he took over the sublet.

The theatre doing Hello Dolly loved me. They offered me a contract to do their next show, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Now that is one of my favorite shows and I’ve always wanted to do it. Badly. However even though I was one of the best dancers in the company, the theatre wouldn’t allow me to be one of the brothers. I had to be a suitor. And we all know why. So I turned down the contract. Then to entice me, they also offered me the next show after that as well, which was The King and I. I was offered the role of “Lun Tha”, the romantic lead in the show.

I pondered over the decision for weeks. I wanted a crack at being a lead, sine my University did not provide me that opportunity. I also wanted to do one of my favorite shows. It was a tough choice. I finally decided that I was going to do the theme park gig. Sure the contract was shorter, but the pay was better. I would be making about $500 a week. That doesn’t seem like a lot now but at the time the basic chorus contract on Broadway was just around $1100 a week.

Being out of the city for so long I decided it was best to give up my pied a tier on 96^th Street and Central Park West. So when I got a break for Easter, my friend Helga, whom I had met at that $65 a week job, and I packed up my entire apartment in one night put my stuff in storage, and off I went.

After all my contracts had eneded I returned to NYC. Once again I needed a place to live. I took a sublet from my colleague Pedro. We had done Dreamgirls in Connecticut together. He was going out on a non-equity tour. He wanted to keep his apartment. He happened to live with Manny, the guy who helped me with the theme park show. Perfect solution. I also went back to temping to try and get ahead on bills. For some reason I didn’t fully realize that I had to pay back the credit card companies for all the things I had purchased. Silly me. Adulting is hard.

With my theme park salary, combined with the number of weeks I had worked, I qualified to become an Equity Membership Candidate or EMC. I no longer had to wait outside of the Equity lounge to be seen. I could sign up for auditions just like Equity members. I could even audition for Broadway shows without having to wait around all day for the people behind the tables to decide if they were seeing Non-Equity. If.

I continued to work non-equity and audition for Equity shows.  I did another theme park show, starred in a brand new musical off-Broadway and booked a cruise ship. Pedro did multiple contracts on tour. This meant I was able to keep my sublet. I made it my home base and returned there after each gig.

When the dust settled and I was back home in NYC, I returned to temping (again) and auditioning. In the next year I got cast in The Pajama Game, ensemble with a “Prez” understudy in New Jersey, as “Big Daddy” and ensemble in Sweet Charity here in the city, The Wiz in Connecticut, PIE Story Theatre, which was a theatre company that performed in Central Park, and my third go round in A Chorus Line at Surflight.

All of those jobs were non-Equity.All of them were paying. All of them allowed me to live life, take care of my bills, put a little money in the bank and have fun.  All of them took me places I would have never gone to on my own.  All of them taught me so much about the business, and about myself. And all of those jobs connected me with the most fantastic, talented people, many of whom you've heard of, and many of whom I’m still friends with today.

It was a long time ago. And...

“...Might be over now, but I feel it still...”