Date of Run: July 17-August 2, 2015
ROLE: Diesel
If there's one show I've done that I would take back, it's this one. Up to this point in my career, this was the biggest mistake I ever made. For reasons which will become apparent as you read on, the cast and crew will be anonymous, which I do out of kindness, with one exception. To that end they will only be mentioned by character name or job, and this post will contain no photos of the production.
My second and final show of 2015 was the classic musical West Side Story in Santa Rosa. I first heard about this show months before and I wanted to do it very much because I would not always the right age to do this show forever. I steadfastly ignored all other audition notices for shows that were coming up around the same time, though sometimes it was a struggle. The show and the process were...we'll get to all that in time, but to put it shortly, it was not what I hoped it would be. The final product was a mixture of misconceived and disappointment. And, I regret to say, one of the worst shows I've ever done.
The auditions for the show were in early May. The night I went, there were mostly teenagers there auditioning. I should've realized afterward what the show was going to be like. Most of them did not come with sheet music, singing only a capella, and one of them read lyrics from his phone (his phone!), whereas I came with music and had my song memorized. I was several rungs above them in terms of preparation, talent and experience. When the dancing came, it was hard. So hard that I never got it right once. I was offered the role of a Jet, though I was not assigned a particular role. Yet.
I was not at the first read through because I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico for my sister's wedding, but after that I was fully available. Some of the cast on the other hand, were not available right away.
Some cast members were first doing another production, which didn’t close until one week before we opened and as such, they weren’t available until about a month before opening. Even after that production opened, they were not available on some dates. Of course, when some people aren’t around the rest of the company has to work harder to help them catch up. Our Anita and one other girl were definitely working hard on their own things. Anita was in our show as well as a part in another show which ended up extending and overlapping ours, along with the other girl. She told me later that the other girl was brought in to cover for her in the other show so that she (Anita) could do
We were not assigned which Jet we were until the second or third rehearsal. Rather than being cast because we were perfect for roles, the director, seemingly assigning the roles at random, said "How about you play so and so." I wanted to be Action because he is the main singer in "Gee Officer Krupke," my favorite song in the show. But I was cast as Diesel. It was not really the most ideal role because Diesel doesn't really say much. There would be one or two scenes where he didn't say anything at all. I did have a solo in "Krupke," but in terms of spoken lines, I only had a dozen. It made it easier to memorize lines, but I really had to think of good acting choices with so little info about the character. In the end I decided that Diesel is the strong silent and occasionally aggressive type who had a bad childhood and home life, but whatever problems plagued him he wouldn't talk about them.
Casting Tony proved to be the most challenging. One friend of mine was spoken to, but he wanted to be paid and he and the director could not reach an agreement. Then we were told that Tony was going to be somebody from L.A. and would not be with us for some time, but he was working on his things. Some people were worried and people outside the show who I told this to were perplexed by it. The actor finally joined us about three weeks before opening. He was not the best in my opinion. It took a very long time for him to get his first song "Something's Coming" right (if he ever did) and he was nowhere near memorized when he did arrive.
The process for developing this show was not very organized. They took nearly twenty minutes to begin after the call time every rehearsal. It didn't help that a rather large number of the cast were not that familiar with the show. We couldn't work on some songs until everyone was present and when they finally showed up, we had to wait for them to get CDs of the music so they could get acquainted. I, knowing most of the songs and the show by heart (not the lines per se, but the scene order), was frustrated at the slow progress. With only two weeks before we opened, I still didn't have costumes and we hadn't even started blocking the second act.
The staging of the show was some of the most disorganized I've ever experienced. Some scenes, in my opinion, were misconceived and others poorly blocked. One example was the song "Tonight," the duet between Tony and Maria. Being their first duet, it is supposed to be passionate, but it came off as chaste. Other than holding one hand together for some of it, they barely touched or even looked at each other at all, singing out to the audience for nearly all of it, and were never on the same physical level (Maria on the balcony, Tony below it).
Another example, which made no sense at all, was the lack of doors and too many exits. The lack of furniture I could forgive because there really was no space off stage for anything. During Doc's drug store, the Sharks entered from one way upstage, Anybodys exited another, stage left, and some characters entered or exited through the audience. The same thing happened after "I Feel Pretty," when the girls exited stage left, then Chino came on and left stage right and maybe ten seconds later Tony entered from the same spot. Having no doors or windows did not work in my opinion. The last scene missed the mark because people came on after Tony was already dead. Earlier in the show they knew Chino was after Tony and would shoot him so common sense dictated that after hearing a shot fired and knowing what must have happened, people would run on fearing the worst. But most people strolled on, oh so slowly.
The "taunting" scene, toward the end of the show where the Jets all attack Anita, went with the right ideas, but I'm not sure the younger members of the cast realized that the Jets were supposed to be trying to sexually assault her. The scene calls for the Jets to lift Baby John up and start bringing him on top of Anita before they are stopped by Doc. Our Baby John was small and skinny (he was only thirteen), but he was directed to be kind of afraid of what was going on and try to run away, only to be stopped by A-Rab and myself, and as a result, he kept squirming and after a while when we first staged it, his wiggling caused my hand to hurt. But none of the staging and blocking compared to the fight scenes. I shudder to this day thinking of those.
To begin with, there was no fight choreographer for this production (yes, you read that correctly). The fight scenes were atrocious and ridiculously unplanned to say the least. The beginning scene was only a bit better because the choreographer helped stage part of it, but they made a mistake by having Baby John be the one cornered and beaten by all the Sharks when it's supposed to be A-Rab. That should have been evident by the lines that clearly establish that a few minutes later. The rumble scene was another story entirely. Let's just say it was embarrassing.
And dangerous! And not realistic. The director wanted us to be in a circle formation,
fight one guy for like two seconds and then switch to a new
partner. For starters that's not how you fight someone. And they had Tony
drag Bernardo back and just kneel or stand there with the two dead guys. That's not a real fight. In a real fight, what would happen is Bernardo falls, the Sharks attack
Tony because he killed their leader and then the Jets come and grab a Shark and
they fight their partners. Getting to the circle position
was difficult because the two gangs were on separate sides of
the stage and the two who died were in the middle. Our first partners
were scattered, and it made it worse. We muddled through it until finally, Riff spoke up and said there had to be choreography because
he did not feel safe. Then, to add insult to injury, the assistant stage manager, Ayrick, had the nerve
to say to us, "you cannot be acting like a bunch of monkies up
there." We eventually worked it out so that we’d be near our starting
partners, but they should have gotten a fight choreographer in the first place
rather than have someone think they could just do it. What's more, the two
gangs didn't have weapons. While the script does not explicitly say weapons,
it's implied in the lyrics for "Tonight (quintet)." Oh "Tonight..."
In terms of the music direction, I was more disappointed than frustrated. I had worked with this particular music director before in Evita and I considered him one of the best I had ever worked with, so I didn't expect trouble there. But that was not the case this time. While staying faithful to most of the music, the "Tonight (quintet)" was the main exception. The song is traditionally done with the Jets, Sharks, Tony, Maria and Anita... in other words, the entire cast. But they just had only Riff, Bernardo, Anita, Tony and Maria sing it. The song is the final one of the first act (not the finale per se, as the rumble scene comes right after it) and as such, it should be big, not to mention it's the only time when the Sharks get to do any singing at all. But with only five people it felt weak and not at all thrilling, not to mention they just stood there on stage doing nothing, like they were in a concert. I've no idea if this was his idea or the director's, but either way, it felt anticlimactic. Also, when the orchestra played the music, they were not always right with the tempos or the sounds. I think the music director may have been tired and burned out because immediately before this he was the music director for another show, and he was dividing time between the two productions. A shame really, because West Side Story has one of the best scores in musical theatre and it didn’t shine in all its glory.
The saving grace in this show for me was the dance choreography. I think, up to this posting, this was one of my favorite shows to dance in. Part of this was because the choreographer incorporated some moves that are used traditionally with West Side Story, like the pose on the left in the poster at the top. In other words, she used some of Jerome Robbins' steps. The Dance at the Gym section was certainly fun. It also helped that my partner was a professional dancer. That alone made the partner bits in the show a lot better for me. "Cool" was the worst. It was easy until we got to the main dance part. It was what we were taught at the auditions, but I didn't even get it right then and I didn't remember any of it. It took a long time, but I got the hang of it and it was such fun when I did.
I began to think the show was going to be bad about two weeks before opening. Whenever someone asked me how things were going, I would pull up the painting of the Titanic, half-way sunk just before it splits in two, much to the amusement of whomever I was speaking to. At that point we had been rehearsing for about a month and we were not even half-way done. There were a number of factors which could have been easily avoided. We went at a very slow pace which might not have happened had we had a cast and music director that were fully available with few to no conflicts. It was also frustrating because the director kept stopping us too frequently: if someone forgot a line and paused, if like someone didn't push everyone a certain way or if people took too many steps forward, etc. Even for the smallest thing and if you forgot a line or paused too long, he'd jump right in. I longed for one rehearsal where we could just muddle through it uninterrupted.
The stage itself made it tough to do this show. It was not very large, there was little wing space on either side and only the stage left side had a clear exit door. The stage right side was a dead end and we had to slip behind the curtain when we had to leave, in clear view of the audience. The worst was on the matinee days when it was broad daylight outside because whenever someone opened the door on stage left, sunlight would pour in.
At least one positive thing came of it- the anger and frustration I felt over the lack of focus and progress fed my character and helped me feel like an angry hoodlum gang member.
When we moved to tech week, I was not there at all on Saturday and then on Sunday I was only there in the evening. On Monday we only made it through the first act, the second night we were there until a quarter past 11, the third night we finished on schedule before eleven. The third night went badly only because my dance partner pulled a calf muscle that popped that night. The last night of tech went only until 9 no dress or make up, which in my opinion was not a good idea. We had never had a full run through with all the elements, like the lights, until opening and we needed it; I don't care how tired anyone was, we needed it.
Opening night was what it was. I held my nose and went on. It wasn't a disaster like I was expecting, but it wasn't a perfect show, mostly due to the staging and the small space offstage, but that was beyond anyone's control. With my partner out of action for the night, the choreographer stepped in to dance with me in the Dance at the Gym. She was substituting for someone else during "Cool," though I didn't know this, so when it came time for partner dancing there, both A-Rab and I reached out and she took his hand. I played it off like he stole my girl. For whatever problems there were, the audience seemed to like the show. Half of them stood at the end and I could have sworn I heard someone crying softly when Tony died. For a brief glimmer, I felt maybe the show would be fine, give or take a couple more performances, but I learned quickly I was wrong there.
The second night was terrible. Bernardo flubbed a few lines before the Rumble and I could see him breaking character a little when he did so. Then he and Riff died in the rumble scene too quickly and were not in time with the music. "Gee, Officer Krupke" went badly. A-Rab messed up as he always did because I don't think he ever listened to the song outside rehearsals and I'm not sure he had an ear for music. When he did that it caused Action to miss his cue and we got out of time with the music. The following day we had to work with the music director on it. Fortunately, after this when A-Rab messed up, Action made sure to listen to the music and wait until the right moment to start singing.
The third day was bad for different reasons. For starters, since our dressing room was in a different room a long way from the theatre, we had to go outside in over 90-degree weather and walk the long hike to the stage. The coolest place was onstage but, unfortunately, the doors caused sunlight to come in, especially during blackouts. Ayrick yelled at us for that at intermission saying we knew the show well enough to know when to come in. Excuse me? We certainly did not know that.
I can't speak for everyone, but while I knew the order of scenes, I did not know which transitions had blackouts in between because for starters not every scene had one after it and we never had a run through with all the technical elements including lights. To make matters worse, three mics, and nearly a fourth, broke during the show. People were being too careless about those as well as their surroundings. It was a frustrating day because before doing the show, I had a fantastic audition somewhere else before going to the theater, so I was feeling great and then that feeling was shattered.
Ayrick, the assistant stage manager, was also the assistant stage manager when I did Evita and he was the same this time as last time I worked with him: a drill sergeant (and yet not, a real drill sergeant get results) and a monster. He often lashed out at the actors, blaming them for things that were not their fault and making the show a miserable experience without offering a solution to try to fix it. What he did try to fix were things like telling us how to act our parts and how to sing our parts and I thought "That's not your job. I don't take those kinds of orders from you, only the directors." To make matters worse, the director just let him have his way and never reprimanded him for anything.
Part of it was his fault, part of it was the fault of the cast and part of it was those who worked with him. It was tough on him because anyone assisting him offstage didn't have adequate experience and didn't understand what working offstage entailed. He was essentially running around trying to do everything himself. I admit that I've done that at my day jobs, but it has backfired on me at times and watching him reminded me of what my boss said to me: "Don't be a hero." It was also tough because he was trying to keep the cast of teenagers under control because the director couldn't or wouldn't do it himself. As a result of Ayrick's behavior, none of the cast liked him; in fact, at one point, one person told me that she agreed to do the show thinking he wasn't going to be involved and if she had known he was, she would've declined to participate.
The second weekend began with a performance that the director described as "sloppy." He felt people were being slow and stepping out of character too much. In the Rumble scene, during the fight between Riff and Bernardo, Bernardo lost his knife when it flew off the stage onto the floor and he crawled off to get it. On the bright side for that, it allowed us to actually be in time with the music (for once). Also, during "Krupke," at one moment my mic pack slipped out of my pants. Fortunately, I was spread on the ground, so there was no large damage, and when I got up, I hid it in my hand and slipped it back in. The audience was not really responsive and there was a sizable patch of empty seats.
The fifth performance was better and nearly full except for a few empty seats, though it was definitely not as noticeable as the night before. The same thing with my mic happened in "Krupke," though in a different place. This time it dangled down and I had to reach behind me and pull it up, but without turning around. Awkward.
The sixth show was one of the worst ones by then. It was as full as Friday, and it was going fine like the night before until we got to the scene before the Rumble. The five singers finished the "Tonight" quintet and left the stage. At this point Riff and Bernardo had to have their mics removed so they wouldn't get damaged during their fight. What was supposed to happen next was the Sharks would come onstage with Bernardo just behind them, then on the other side Riff and I would enter, then Action and Big Deal would come in from the audience, followed by Baby John and A-Rab from the same side as Riff and me, then Snowboy and Anybodys would enter behind the Sharks. What happened was only Bernardo and Chino were the only two Sharls who showed up and A-Rab and Snowboy never showed up for their cue. For about thirty seconds, but what seemed like an eternity we had to wait and improvise. Riff started with "Where's your posse?" I played it like "Oh now things just got more interesting." They finally did enter onstage, and we went on, but I was not happy about the whole thing.
The second Sunday performance sold out and was not as hot as the first, but still hot. It was also a brutal show for me. While in character, Action pushed me during the "Prologue," which was no big deal except I almost hit a rolling wall set piece. Then in the Rumble at one moment, just before the two knives come out, somebody, I didn't see who, accidentally hit me in the face.
The final weekend finally arrived, and each performance was packed full. The eighth show, a Thursday one, went much better than the last one, but I got hurt again, this time by Action, right in the chest. I tried to avoid that, but it still happened. Whether he did that on purpose, I'll never know, since we were told we could do these things and he was in character, but he was a big guy. A big, BIG guy. As the show went on, I began to get scared of going anywhere near him, but I didn’t have it in me to tell him to tone it down a little (he was not a nice person). In my opinion, he would’ve been a better choice for Diesel, rather than me due to his size.
For the ninth show we lost a Shark. At first, I thought it was a health problem for I knew this particular Shark had an ulcer, but the following night we found out a cousin of his had been killed and he was at her memorial. Sad news, but bad for us because now we were down to only four Sharks, which left a couple moments, like the fight scenes, uneven. For this show during the Gym Dance, my dance partner stepped out to allow someone who had been cut to do it for one night. Twice in this show, Tony did something that made us burst out laughing as soon as we got offstage. First, at the end of the Gym Dance scene he says "Maria" in a dreamy and somewhat goofy sort of way, before going into his song. Only Riff and I were left onstage with him at that moment, but I'm sure others heard him. As soon as Riff and I were off the stage we burst out laughing at that (silently of course). The second moment from Tony was during the Rumble when he enters to stop the fight. He did a leap in the air onstage. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye, but in my mind, I was thinking "What the-" For this show I took any precaution not to let myself get hurt again.
For the final two shows, they reconfigured the room and added about twenty seats. The missing Shark returned the next night and there was also a different conductor brought in for one night. Since he only saw the show once and wasn't fully briefed on the cues, he messed up a couple parts: the first was before "Maria," where he played the music before that a little too late and then after "Krupke," where dialogue happens, he started playing the scene change music. We just kept going until he realized that and stopped. Other than that, it was fairly good. After the show, in honor of the Shark's lost cousin the cast and others in the audience gathered on a hill close by and howled at the moon, since wolves were her favorite animal.
We lost that same Shark again for the final performance, and this time it was for health problems. He was having chest problems and had to go to the hospital. During the Rumble, one Shark I spared with actually did start making contact with me so I threw whatever I could back at him. If he wanted a fight, he got one. The audience, which was sold out, gave a standing ovation. None of that mattered to me because I was completely overjoyed to be done with that show and I got out of there as fast as I could. No goodbyes, no cast party; just grabbed my stuff, threw it in the car and took off.
I regret to say that this was by far the worst cast I ever worked with. The cast was predominantly teenagers, the youngest of which was thirteen, and some of which who hardly took the show seriously. It was like watching The Three Stooges. A lot of times when we were rehearsing a scene, the girl who played Anybodys and a couple younger Jets would be goofing around the background and also during a dance rehearsal one of those same Jets was texting on his phone when we were learning. It wouldn't have been a problem, but there were times when we had to turn around and he was right behind me, so I bumped into him and had to try to catch up on the moves. I was very angry at that behavior; if I was directing and I saw that I would've fired him without hesitation. A-Rab was the worst for me. For starters he had never done a show before; I suppose everyone has to start somewhere, but this was hardly the show to start with. Something lighter like Bye, Bye Birdie or Once Upon a Mattress would've been more ideal. He also proved to be a thorn in my side. It seemed like he was always following me; whenever I went somewhere he was often right behind me, and it was like he couldn't stand still. I wished for the cast and crew of Reefer Madness, Forum, Cuckoo's Nest or Alice to arrive and save me.
This show ended up doing nothing for me, except make me angry and proved to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, disappointments of my theatrical life. I knew afterward what I needed from whatever show I did next. I didn't need the show to be sold out. I didn't need it to be popular with audiences or critics. What I needed was for my next show to be a stimulating and rewarding experience. I needed to have a sense of accomplishment, like it the show was something I could be proud of.
