Filthy’s is closed Mondays, so I usually spend my Monday nights at the 115th-Street library with my acting group. I can get lost here; become someone else. And if there was ever a time I needed to be someone else, it’s now.
Everyone in my group is black except for a few guys that come over from Columbia. The group facilitator, Quinn, is a retired professor from the theater department at City College. I’m pretty sure he’s always stoned, but he’s pretty cool, and he keeps the group fresh.
“Irish!” he calls as I step into the room. He thinks a mixed kid with reddish-black hair and freckles is hilarious. “You gonna rock our world with Rosalind tonight? Or is it going to be Katherine?”
It’s Shakespeare night, so we each have to do a dramatic reading of a Shakespearian monologue.
“You know me too well, Quinn,” I tell him, sliding into a seat in the circle. The community room is always freezing in the winter, so I keep my jacket on. There are usually about fifteen of us, and about half the group is already here, chattering in their seats. The Columbia guys, Nathan and Mike, are talking and laughing about Mike’s weekend hookup. Across the circle are two sisters from Harlem, Kamara and Vee, who always come together. They play off each other really well, and always leave me laughing.
I’ve been coming here pretty regularly for the last two years, since I lost my agent. At first, I was hoping for connections, but it didn’t take long to figure out that wasn’t going to happen. I’m probably the most experienced person here, other than Quinn. But I kept coming back for the people. And the escape. I get to come here and be someone else, even if it’s just for a little while. I can put on my character and just forget myself.
“So what you got for us tonight?” Quinn asks, nudging me with his bony elbow as he lowers his scrawny old frame into the seat next to me.
I give him a sly smile. “You’re just going to have to wait and see.”
He reminds me of my grandpa, always joking with me, except he looks nothing like Grandpa did. Grandpa was a fair-skinned redhead. Quinn is black as night, with gray fuzz and a voice like James Earl Jones.
He laughs and pokes my shoulder as a few more of our group trickle through the door. “Someday I’m gonna be able to say, ‘I knew her when . . .’ ”
“ . . . she got blacklisted from Broadway for running down a director during a dance routine,” I finish for him.
“I know you can sing, Irish, but I’m not sure why you think you have to do musicals.”
“You know why. The Idol thing is my only in. If it’s not a singing part, I can’t even get the audition.”
“Dumbass business we’re in,” he grumbles.
When the group is assembled, Quinn stands and gets us started with Theseus’s famous “More Strange Than True” monologue from Act Five of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. Everyone in turn stands in the center of the circle and acts out their monologue. When we get to the Harlem girls, they stand together.
“Monologues are boring . . .” the heavier one, Kamara, says.
“So we’re doing the scene from Act Two of The Taming of the Shrew, where Petruchio is trying to get into Katherine’s pants,” the taller one, Vee, says.
Kamara steps in front of her. “I’m Petruchio.”
“And I’m Katherine,” Vee says.
Quinn rolls his hand in a circle. “Just get on with it.”
Kamara clears her throat and stands straight, holding out her hand to Vee. “Good morrow, Kate; for that’s your name, I hear.”
Vee makes a disgusted face. “Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing:
They call me Katherine that do talk of me.”
“You lie, in faith; for you are call’d plain Kate, and bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst.”
Kamara keeps rolling, pouring it on as she finishes the long list of all Kate’s virtues. As they banter back and forth, everyone around the circle is on the edge of laughing. When they finish, they sit with a bow and flourish, and everyone claps. But then the next three girls do utterly uninspired Juliet monologues and bring the whole room down. By the time we get all the way back around the circle to me, everyone is yawning.
“What you got, Irish?” Quinn says, elbowing me. “Time to lay it all on the table.”
“Keep your bony elbows to yourself, old man.” I stand and move to the center of the circle. “So, this is Rosalind . . . or her male alter ego, Ganymede, really, trying to convince Phoebe to love Silvius instead of him . . . or her . . . or whatever. It’s from Act Three, scene five of As You Like it.”
I close my eyes, feeling Rosalind seep into my bloodstream.
“And why, I pray you? Who might be your mother, that you insult, exult, and all at once,
Over the wretched?” A tingly rush prickles my skin as I open myself up to her, letting her have me.
“What though you have no beauty as by my faith, I see no more in you than without candle may go dark to bed, must you be therefore proud and pitiless? Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?” I ask, raising my voice and lifting my hand, pressing it into my chest as Rosalind starts to use my body as hers.
“I see no more in you than in the ordinary of nature’s sale-work. Od’s my little life!”
I open my eyes and move around the circle. Quinn smiles and shakes his head as I glide past.
“I think she means to tangle my eyes too. No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it: ’Tis not your inky brows,” I say, running a fingertip over Nathan’s, “your black silk hair,” I add, my hand raking through his waves. Mike elbows him and I see him blush. “Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream, that can entame my spirits to your worship.”
This is the part I love about acting—when I totally escape into the character—someone who’s not me. I let Rosalind have me, body and soul, as she tells us about how foolish men are. But as she finishes by telling Pheobe to stop pining over her male alter ego and take what she’s got right in front of her, my real life creeps back into my thoughts.
Just like in Shakespeare, when you fall head over heals in love with someone you don’t even know, it’s never going to end well. Love killed Juliet when she was thirteen. I made it all the way to fourteen before it nearly killed me.
Chapter Four
JESS IS GOING to get this one. I can feel it. Chalk it up to karma or whatever you want. It’s just for a tiny, short-run off-off Broadway show, but if it does well, there’s the possibility of going on the road. LA and maybe Vegas. Vegas could be kind of fun. They’re taking three for the chorus and she was by far the best. Me, not so much, but I’m not surprised. It’s the read where I usually shine, and there’s no read for this part. At least this time, I’m spared the humiliation of getting rejected right in front of everyone. They’re not posting callbacks until tomorrow. It’s not until I grab my bag that I notice Brett in the back. He’s talking to the director.
“We’re still on for tonight?” Jess asks me, pulling my attention away from trying desperately to read the director’s lips.
“Yeah. Club Sixty-nine, right? On Ludlow? Ten?”
“Perfect. Mind if I invite some other friends too?”
I give her a quick, sweaty hug, so I can watch over her shoulder without being rude, as Brett knuckle bumps the director. “It’s your party. Invite whoever you want.” I pull back as Brett makes his way to the stage. “Gotta go, but see you tonight.”
I turn and Brett is waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “What did he say?” I mutter as I make my way down.
He shrugs. “He might be able to find something for you.”
I can’t help myself. I leap off the last stair onto him and wrap my legs around his waist, grinning like a moron. “Thank you!”
He grins back. “Don’t thank me yet, babe. But I like the enthusiasm.”
He turns for the side door with me still clinging to him like a monkey, but then I see the director giving us a look. I slide off Brett and try to appear . . . something other than crazy.
“See ya, Tim,” Brett calls with a wave as we head for the door.
The director lifts a hand. “I’ll text you about the audition.”
“What audition?” I ask once we’re on the sidewalk.
“Something he thought you might be better suited for.”
Great. “Which means he’s not giving me a part.”
We weave through the crowded sidewalk toward the subway and he loops his arm around my waist. “You don’t know that.”
“So what’s this other thing?”
“It’s a recast for someone who got knocked up in When You Least Expect It. Says he’ll get you on the audition list.”
I feel my eyes go wide. “At the Elektra? Are you shitting me?”
He grins as he wends us through a swarm of high-school kids in matching orange T-shirts who are clogging the sidewalk. “As far as I know, no, I am not shitting you.”
“But that’s off-Broadway. Open run!”
“Last I looked.” He’s all smug now, trying to hide his self-satisfied smirk.
But then reality comes crashing down on me. “I’m not going to get it.”
He tugs me to his side. “Tim says the dancing is less choreographed for that one so they’re basically looking for someone with a hot body, because there’s a partial nude . . . which you have covered,” he adds, squeezing my ass, “and a voice, which you also got.”
“When is the audition?”
“He just heard about it so he’s not sure. After Thanksgiving, maybe. Said he’d talk to the director and get you on the list, then let me know.”
I’m not even going to let myself believe I might get this. But . . . holy shit!
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