Sing to Me!

Ok, I’m about to become very unpopular. As I have mentioned recently I don’t go on Facebook much anymore. A big part of that is that I have to scroll through 20 ads before I even see anything posted from someone I know, and even then, their post is 3 days old, but I digress. At any rate, I was scrolling through my feed the other night, and I came across 3 friends almost one right after the other who had posted the duet of Suddenly Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors sung by the cast in the most recent production at The Pasadena Playhouse. Now, let me start by saying that I love Little Shop. I have seen at least 4 different productions, and both of my daughters have played Audrey, and all I have to do is hear the beginning strains of Somewhere That’s Green, and I will tear up. Each production was different, and for the most part I enjoyed them all. This is not a commentary on Little Shop. This is a commentary on Musical theatre singing in general. Let me say here that this is an opinion, my opinion, because this is my blog. You may disagree with me. In fact, I’m sure the majority of you will, and that’s fine, but don’t read anything into this that is not there. I am no stranger to Musical Theatre. I have been singing since I was 3, and I did my first professional musical at the age of 10. Over the last 46 years I have been in the chorus or featured in 22 musicals, and I have seen countless others, not bad statistics for research. I do not understand the obsession over vocal power. Now here’s the part where everyone starts hating on me. I pulled up the recording of Suddenly Seymour as everyone was commenting how amazing it was. I listened. I didn’t like it. There I said it. ANNOUNCEMENT: Please do not accuse me of not liking the duet because Audrey is being played by a transgender actor! I did not even know that when I listened to the recording!!! And this opinion has nothing to do with that! What I did not like was all the belting and riffing. Now, they are not the first cast to sing the duet like that. In fact, most do try to belt their faces off. I am also not opposed to belting a song. There are certain songs that need to be belted, When You’re Good to Mama and All That Jazz from Chicago, Everything’s Coming Up Roses from Gypsy, Poor Unfortunate Souls from The Little Mermaid and lots of others. I, myself, can belt. My first high school show was Godspell, and my father said I got the role singing Turn Back, O Man because I “blew the doors off of the back of the auditorium.” People with a good belt are impressive, it’s true, but just because you can belt doesn’t mean you should on every song you sing. Riffing is a blog entry all on its own. Short and Sweet: I’m not a fan, and it’s way over used! Back when I was auditioning for Godspell in 1978, there were no body mics. We had to project and belt to be heard at the back of the theater or the top of the balcony, but today we have this cool stuff called technology and you can whisper on stage and the cheap seats can hear you because everything that’s heard by the audience is coming through a speaker. This technology has been a great help to the actor and I’m sure saved countless voices. Yes, even with body mics, there are still songs that need to be belted, but only if the song or character suits that style. No, I do not want to hear Feed Me from Little Shop in a lyric tenor voice, but so many songs now become screaming matches between the actors. We get it, you can sing loud. You have power, but let me use the Suddenly Seymour duet as an example. Audrey is broken and sad. Life has beaten her down. That song can grow in power as she realizes that Seymour gives her the respect she deserves. She can be someone with Seymour. The song can end powerfully, but power doesn’t have to come from a belt. Too many times I just feel like the actors are yelling at me, and I just want to turn it off. I have been listening to Michael Caine read his book Blow the Bloody Doors Off. He talks about when he first got into film after being a stage actor for many years and projecting so the balcony could hear him that he had to retrain himself to act for the camera. I experienced the same thing when I was shooting my one and only film, and I was so frustrated because I was used to being loud and booming, but there was no need when the camera is 6 inches from your face, and a boom mic is literally right above your head. Remember that thing called technology? By the end of the 2-week filming I began to appreciate the camera because I could embrace nuance and subtlety. That’s’ what I miss with listening to musical theatre stars of today. Where is the nuance, where are the subtle, almost breathless tones sometimes? I want to see that in singing as well as dialogue. Stop yelling at me! Sing to me. Emote the song. It can be much more powerful than just being loud. When you whisper, you draw people in. Make the song about the song, not about how loud it can be! Rant over!

You're Gonna Make it After All

When I was a kid, there was a sitcom on called The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was about a young single woman moving away from the comfort of her home to the "big city" to live on her own and all the situations she encountered as she lived her life. The opening sequence shows her leaving her hometown, the goodbyes, and then a shot of her driving her fully loaded car away into the sunset off on life's journey. A little over a year ago, I watched a young single girl do the same thing, but this girl was my daughter, and she was off to New York City to chase the proverbial dream to be an actor. The beginning of the lyrics to the Mary Tyler Moore theme song are, "How will you make it on your own? This world is awfully big, girl, this time you're all alone." I have to be honest, as a Mom, I couldn't help but think about that and worry, but, boy, has she proven me wrong! She loves the city! She has fallen into the rhythm, and seems she's been there all of her life. It helps that she's there with friends. So, this is the part where I thank all of her friends and roommates for making this adventure a little bit easier, for taking care of her and loving her, and being the arms around her because I can't reach that far. I am so proud of you "making it on your own!" The rest of the song goes like this, so take it as my wish for your life and your birthday as you turn 27 today and living life on your terms. Love you so much!!!! Happy Birthday.
Love is all around, no need to waste it,
You can have the town, why don't you take it?
You're gonna make it after all!

Falling Angels

Today is Friday, September 13^th, but I am not going to write about black cats crossing my path or walking under a ladder being bad luck or all of the theatre superstitions I TOTALLY follow. Today, I want to write about something that everyone was writing about 2 days ago, September 11^th. This is not going to be a minute by minute reminiscence of what I went through that day 18 years ago. This will be more about the feeling I had then and still. On the eleventh I was scrolling through Facebook, I usually do that once a day now, far less than I used to, but I came across a post of an article on my feed. I follow the comedian Elayne Boosler, and she had posted a beautiful article that ran in Esquire magazine called The Falling Man. If you are old enough to actually remember details about that day in the late summer of 2001, you know exactly what this article was about. If you are not, you are lucky. A tiny bit of backstory about me and that day. I have a very photographic memory, not the kind that is instant recall of books I’ve read or papers I’ve seen. My eyes are not cameras, but life event emotions and feelings, I can play them back in my head just like they are a movie, and certain memories are not the kind you want to see over and over again. Unfortunately, once I’ve seen it, I can’t shake it. 9/11 was filled with those pictures. For that reason, I did not watch the news for several days after it happened. It was easy immediately after because I was working at an elementary school, and we were told not to discuss it with the children. No TV’s were on. The days that followed were harder for this TVholic, but I purposely kept the set off. One of the first images I did see, and I think it was in print was a photo of 2 people falling past one of the Towers. They had jumped out of the windows of the Skyscraper. I was overcome with sadness, and a sick feeling welled up inside of me. The desperation, the fear, the absolute horror these people must have felt to leap out of a window 100’s of floors above the ground. Let me pause here and say, I have never had suicidal thoughts. I don’t know what that’s like, but I know that they exist, and are very hard to fight. However, if I had been on the floor with those people that day, I may have made the same choice. And here’s the thing, I do not believe they were committing suicide but instead choosing how they would die that day. They knew that death was inevitable. They knew they were not getting out of this situation alive. They chose “Escape” that day, escape from choking smoke and intense heat, and literally burning alive, and damn anyone who judges them for the choices they made. Yet we have shunned those images and put them away quietly. Whenever someone does speak of them, people freak out. How awful that someone took pictures of that! How disrespectful! How demeaning! The Esquire article was a beautiful tribute to these people. Why have they been left out of “NEVER FORGET?” If anything, I think those images paint a very clear picture of the fear of that day and exactly what was happening. Terrorists decided to execute hundreds of people that day. The people who jumped that day simply wanted the dignity to die in their own way. They were not going to let someone else decide how they would die. People jumped from the Hindenburg, and they were the ones who survived. I am sure they did not know as they jumped from the massive, ball of flame that they would land alive. No one judges them. The heroic people of Flight 93 chose to wreck their plane into a field knowing they would die, but they would thwart evil by doing it. They are revered and remembered as well they should be! Some place the number at 200 people who jumped or fell from the Towers that day. 200 people that we don’t want to remember. These are the images that show us how horrible it was in a mental capacity, and that makes us uncomfortable. We wonder if we might have made that choice, and that scares us. Faced with burning alive, I am not ashamed to say, I would have, as I read in the beautiful article in Esquire, “jumped into the arms of God” with full faith that he would catch me and take me home. God bless all of the “Falling” Angels. I remember you, and grieve for you and mourn the loss of your soul in this world.

RIP Rhoda Morgenstern

I grew up in the 1960's and 70's. To say I was a TV kid would be an understatement. I can remember always watching cartoons on Saturday mornings sitting right up on the television set, ignoring the warnings from my grandmother that I was going to "ruin my eyes." I didn't, by the way. Cartoons were not my only fare. Color TV was introduced in 1965. I was 2. I remember sitting in the living room to get dressed for school so I could watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. My mom even let me eat in there most mornings. I watched The Jackie Gleason Show – I can still hear my grandmother (I spent most weekends with my grandparents) yelling from the back door that Jackie Gleason was on, and I would stop whatever outside play I was engaged in and plant myself in front of the set. I watched the Carol Burnette Show every week, and all of the yearly events. There were no VCR’s or DVD or Blu Ray players back then. You could not watch anything any time you wished. I would wait in anticipation of the yearly broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella starring Lesley Ann Warren or Rankin and Bass’ clay animated Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, the Peanut’s Charlie Brown Christmas at the Holidays and my pièce de résistance, The Wizard of Oz. I never missed it! In fact, I was extremely up set in my senior year of high school that I had to compete in a forensics competition and would miss the yearly broadcast. In short, I love television! I still do! Television has changed over the years. You can now watch anything, anytime, or almost anytime you want. We are in the age of streaming. We can be anywhere and watch TV if we have a phone or now, a watch. As with any improvements, there comes cost. When I was propped up in front of my TV set as a child, it was free. In my tweens something came along called cable television, and you had to pay a monthly fee. The free channels were still there, but cable gave you many more channels to watch. My family got on the Cable train, and I continued that as I moved out on my own until about 2 years ago. We cut the cable chord, and we are streaming only with digital services and Wi-Fi and have a digital antenna to still get those FREE channels. This has its benefits, no commercials, and we do something now called binge watching. When we moved into our present home I decided to start binge watching the TV shows I loved as a child. The short ½ hour comedies. I wanted to watch from start to finish. I chose That Girl first. I then moved on to The Dick Van Dyke show, and then Mary Tyler Moore. These shows were so rich with the characterizations of the cast members. Their mission was originally to bring us into their lives each week and follow their journey, feeling like we were part of their family, their world, and we did. We cared about those characters. When I started watching Mary Tyler Moore, I had forgotten how much I loved Rhoda. Rhoda was Mary’s best friend who lived in the very tiny 1 room apartment upstairs from Mary or “M­ar” as she called her. Rhoda didn’t even have a closet or a kitchen, but she did have those cool beads that hung at the entrance to her apartment, and it was painted a deep pink. Valerie Harper played Rhoda Morgenstern. She was the queen of sarcastic humor and so witty. She was quick with a comeback, and her timing was impeccable! You could always count on Rhoda to tell it like it was, something I identify greatly with. As a kid, I always thought Rhoda was cool with her wild clothes and neat apartment, but re-watching the show as an adult, I just love her!! She was my favorite. She left the show to do a spin-off, something the networks did in those days. If a character was popular enough, they gave them their own show. Rhoda moved back to New York, and I didn’t enjoy the Mary Tyler Moore show as much after that. It was still good, I just really felt Rhoda’s absence. Valerie Harper passed away this week, after a long battle with cancer. She was 80. It’s hard to watch the icons of your childhood pass on. It means that I am getting older, but it also means more and more of my childhood is leaving me. I am so glad I can see my old friend any time I want. Rest in Peace, Rhoda Morgenstern.

You Have to Have Rain to Get a Rainbow

I was tagged by my daughter in a post yesterday. It was about "Rainbow Babies." I had never heard the term. A Rainbow Baby is the baby that is born after the mother has already had a miscarriage. My oldest daughter is a Rainbow Baby. When I first got married, all the way back in 1982, I didn't think I even wanted children. I was very young. I had just turned 19 the week before my wedding, but that wasn't the reason. I was never one of those teens who liked to babysit. I didn't want to work the nursery at church. I was never the one that wanted to hold the newborns of cousins or aunts. Truth be told, I'm still not big on that. I didn't have anything against babies. I wasn't a baby hater. I just didn't find it something I needed to be around. When I had been married about 8 years I started to feel a little differently. Weirdly it was because of a soap opera I was watching called Guiding Light. One of the characters was pregnant, and as I followed her journey, I began to have yearnings of my own. I started to really want to have a baby. My husband had wanted children from about marriage year 3, so he was ready to start. It took me about 6 months to conceive, and in June of 1991 I was in the middle of doing a show and found out I was pregnant. I was over the moon. I bought What to Expect When You're Expecting, the BIBLE for expectant parents, and wrapped it up to give to my husband to tell him we were expecting. We told everyone right away. I told my whole cast, and every person was so excited. We started to make plans, even if only in our minds, and I bought a Baby Book and a first year calendar and started to fill it out with early details of this little one's life. I was a little queasy in the first month but not too bad, tired but not too tired. That could have had something to do with my schedule. Work 9-6, then go straight to the theater to do a show 4 nights a week and 2 shows on most Saturdays, but everything seemed to be going fine. It had been a long Sunday in September, at the end of an already full week with work and shows, we had also had a Sunday Matinee. I felt fine, but I had started to bleed, pretty heavily, and I called the doctor's exchange. My OB was not on call. His partner called me back. I explained what was going on, and he asked me if my OB had heard the heartbeat yet. I said no, and I will never forget his response. "Oh, well, just come in in the morning," he said in a very dismissive tone, as if to say, well, there's nothing we can do. No rush. the baby's already gone. Note here to ANYONE in the medical field who is talking to a pregnant woman who is scared about something going on with her unborn child: No matter what you think is going on, DO NOT DISMISS HER LIKE HER BABY IS ALREADY DEAD! I barely got any sleep that night. I was going in first thing in the morning to my OB to see what was going on. I continued to bleed. My husband had just started a new job and felt he couldn't miss work, so my sweet Daddy, God rest his soul,  took me to the doctor so I wouldn't have to go alone. They did an ultrasound, and I kept asking the poor technician questions. Questions she, of course, could not answer. She was wonderful and sweet. She kept telling me the doctor needed to interpret them and would tell me all about it. It was cold on the examining table. Finally the Ultrasound was done, and I went upstairs to see my doctor. My Daddy waited in the waiting room with all of the pregnant ladies. I'm pretty sure he was the only man in there. I waited, by myself, in the doctor's office for what seemed like an eternity. He walked in with a file and sat across from me behind his desk. Anyone that walked in would have thought it was a job interview. Side note: I am very good at holding it together, especially if I am not with someone close to me. The first words out of his mouth as he sat down were, "I wish I had better news." I didn't really hear much after that, but I kept my gaze directly on him appearing to listen intently for this very medical terminology to tell me that I wasn't pregnant anymore. I was at 12 weeks when all this happened. The baby had stopped growing at 9 weeks. It's called a "blighted ovum." It wasn't anything I had done. Sometimes it just happens. It just happens, but why to me? We scheduled a D&C for Thursday. I left the office, passing my sweet Daddy in the waiting room and half mumbling we had to go. He could barely keep up with me as I walked to the elevators asking what was wrong as he hurried after me. This was it. I was away from people I didn't know, and I lost it as I told him sobbing, "I'm not pregnant anymore!" That was Sept. 10th, 1991. Many emotions would run through me the days and weeks ahead. Lots of anger at God, myself, just life. Deep sadness, grief really. I think miscarriage and how it affects someone is a little better understood these days. Back then, no one knew what to say. Someone very close to me actually called it a "female problem." People didn't treat it like a death back then, and yes, it isn't like losing a living, breathing child, but it is the death of a dream and a hope for a life. I did get pregnant again, almost as soon as the doctor said we could start trying, but this pregnancy was different. I didn't let myself get as excited as I did the first time. I, myself, never bought anything for my baby until she was born. As silly as it sounds, I was afraid to jinx myself. A year and 2 weeks after I lost my first baby, my Rainbow Baby was born. She was healthy and such a good baby. They are called Rainbow Babies because a rainbow signifies hope after a storm. What a beautiful sentiment. If I had not lost my first child, I may not have had her, and I certainly would not have had my second child as both of my pregnancies were filled with health issues. I would have stopped at 2 or maybe the first. I always say that everything happens for a reason. We may not see how the puzzle piece fits at the time, but it is part of a beautiful masterpiece. I am so glad my "Rainbow" is part of the mix!

When Love Walked In

About this time 21 years ago I was basking in the afterglow of a wonderful exciting experience. It all began when I was doing a show at Dogwood Dell called City of Angels. I met a talented actress named Katie McCall, and we became fast friends. She told me that she was involved in an independent filming project. A friend of hers was shooting his first feature film, and he was looking for someone to play her quirky mother, was I interested? Of course I was! One Saturday she and I drove up to Charlottesville to read through the screenplay. I was in. I was so excited! I had never done any camera work, let alone a film. Before it was all said and done we went through several cast changes before our first day of shooting. Because of conflicts Katie was not able to play my daughter, but a cast was assembled, and in a mild week in the spring of 1998 I traveled up Route 64 to a suburb of Charlottesville to start shooting. If you don't know anything about making a film, it's very expensive! As I said, this was an independent film. The filmmakers were spending all of their own money to make the film. No big studio budget to spend. Everyone involved was working for free, including me. It was a real family operation. The producer was also starring in the film. He and his brother were co-directing. His 3 year old daughter was playing his daughter, and he and his wife put me up in their home for the week of shooting. His Mom and Dad and wife were Kraft services and provided all the cast and crew's meals. They didn't really know me at all, but they welcomed me and made me feel like one of the family too. I learned so much in that week! And they were incredibly patient with this Stage actress. I'm pretty sure I deafened the sound guy with my projection and my over the top style kept moving out of the shot, but by the end of the week I learned to be subtle and act for the camera. We finished the week, and knew we would all be back in July to wrap it up. The week in July actually ended up being a lifesaving distraction for me as my marriage of 15+ years had just ended weeks before. We wrapped on a humid July night. I would not even see the film until 10 years later. Remember, I said it was independent. A whirlwind of activity surrounded my 10 year reunion with the film. It had been accepted to the Bare Bones International Independent Film Festival, and it was nominated for several awards including a nod for me as Best Actress. I flew out to Muskogee,OK to screen the film and attend the awards with the brothers. I ended up winning. It was a dream realized for this actress. I got to experience all of this because of one man, Kent Williamson. I found out quite by accident last night through Facebook that Kent was tragically killed in a car accident last Friday along with 3 of his family members. A drunk driver ran a stop sign, and Kent and his family all died at the scene. He reached so many with his films. The film I was lucky enough to be in was called When Love Walks In. Ironically, the film deals with a man, Kent, who loses his wife to a car accident, and it follows his journey through grief as he tries to raise his 3 year old daughter alone. I have been told that grief counselors use the film to illustrate all the stages of grief to their clients. My heart aches for this family whose amazing love and faith will sustain them through this terrible, terrible tragedy. Their love walked into my life at just the time I needed it, and I will never forget that experience for the rest of my days. Rest in Peace, Kent Williamson. You have left a legacy for generations to come. You are not truly gone as you will live on in your art and in the hearts of everyone you touched.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Me with the lovely Lynn West

It was a hot July night, and sweaty and covered in dust I walked into the building. My hair was falling down around my face, and I can still remember what I was wearing, a navy sleeveless 1 piece culotte outfit that zipped up the front with a red, swiss-dotted applique of a mushroom on the leg. I had been to the circus that day at the Fairgrounds, now known as the Richmond International Raceway. The circus visit was not the special thing that was happening on July 25, 1974. The building I entered was Swift Creek Mill Playhouse, and it was opening night of my very first professional show, The Music Man. I don't remember much else about that night except that I had missed the memo on dressing up for opening night. In those days everyone "dressed" to go to the theater, but there I was in my dirty circus soiled clothes at the opening night party. I didn't think much of it then, but I guess it left an impression if I still recall it 45 years later. The opening night was obviously not that important to me. Being in the show was! You could say this is when I began this journey of being an actress, but it started way before age 10. The earliest recollection I have of being in front of an audience would be age 3. My parents took me and my sister to some mountain resort, and we were waiting by the hostess stand for a table. There was a man playing guitar, the restaurant's live music for the evening, and he asked, "Does anyone know how to hula dance?" I walked right through the crowd and up on stage to hula. My sister, 5 at the time, was mortified. I've never had a problem being in front of people. I was always "acting up" for my parents, especially my daddy. I was lip-syncing way before it was a national pastime! I used to put on the 45 of Vicki Lawrence's  The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia and play it at 78 speed and mouth the words for my dad, and he would laugh and laugh. Translation for those who have no idea what I am talking about: A 45 is a small, vinyl record that contains a single song. If you play it on a turntable at 78 it revolves very quickly, and it makes the singer sound like they are on permanent helium. The Music Man, however was my first "professional" show. I was paid to perform. I got paid $5.00 per show, and we did 4 shows a week. $20.00 a week was big doings for a 10 year old, but I didn't care about that. I loved doing the show! I haven't really stopped acting since then. It hasn't always been a paid gig, but I have loved every minute of it! I met my ex-husband doing a show. If it were not for the theatre, I would not have my 2 amazing daughters. The theatre has blessed me in so many ways! I am 55 now, closer to 56, and roles are not as readily available for my age. Recently I told my daughter, " I'm past wanting anything. I'm never going to make my living as an actress, and I'm okay with that." God had something different in mind. Earlier this year I found out that I get to reprise my role of "Louise" in Always, Patsy Cline at VaRep, and just recently I was cast in what I think will be one of the most challenging roles of my career with Richmond Triangle Players. This old girl's not done yet! With any luck, I never will be.