On Making Off: Misadventures Off-Off Broadway (10 page)

“
Well, hello!” Aunt Phyllis said warmly, as I entered the unassuming building into an elegant lobby adorned with dark wood beams and gold trim. “I trust you didn’t have any difficulty finding this place.”

“
No troubles at all,” I said. “Once you know the grid, everything is easy to find in Manhattan.” And we embraced.

“
Wonderful, then, let’s get some lunch.”

Aunt Phyllis led the way to the dining room. The century-old building was immaculate. The lobby ceiling rose three stories high, and a second-floor balcony hung like a halo at the top of a grand staircase. I imagined F. Scott and Zelda having a spectacular fight on the stairs for an audience of robber barons and their mistresses. We walked under the stairs and into the restaurant, where the tuxedoed maître’d showed us to our seats.

I didn’t know why Aunt Phyllis had come to New York. When I asked her on the phone, she brushed off the question, saying she had “things to take care of.” Was that true or did she want to check in on me? No matter the reason, I was glad to see her. While on the phone, we had spoken about The Beggars Group, and I had introduced the idea of her contributing. Now, I wanted to make a formal solicitation in person.

“
So, let’s talk about your theater career,” she started, as we dove into our gazpacho. “Are you still going out on auditions?”

“
No,” I said. “I’m really focusing on building this theater company.”

“
Well, isn’t that exciting!” Aunt Phyllis exclaimed, using her popular phrase that always seemed to precede a critique. “I don’t suppose you’re going to make much money doing that, though.”

“
No,” I said again. “But I’m making enough money at Blah-Blah Big Bank.”

“
Yes, well, I’m sure you are. But you don’t want to be a banker, do you? That doesn’t really interest you. Don’t you want to make a living doing something you enjoy?”

My instinct was to say “yes,” but that’s a trap. Phyllis was full of these traps. Once I agree, she’ll insist the path I’m on won’t get me to where I need to be.

When Lolly and I had stayed with her in San Francisco to audition for graduate schools, she kept insisting an actor had no need for a graduate degree.

“
If you want to be an actor,” she said, “I would think you should just go out and act.”

“
This coming from a woman who has her MBA!” I argued. “Did people tell you that if you wanted to be a businesswoman, you should skip school and go out and do business?”

“
Don’t be ridiculous. When I told people I wanted to be in business, they laughed at me and sent me for coffee. That was a different time. There weren’t many women in the workplace. But anyway, that’s business. Anybody who’s serious about business gets an MBA. Acting… well, I don’t know much about it, but I would think that spending three years of your youth at some university is not the way to make a career. People want young actors. This is the time you should be out there trying to make it!”

Lolly and I tried our best to explain to her the virtues of a graduate acting degree, but she wouldn’t have it. Lolly ended up getting accepted and I did not, so we would see in 10 years which route was best.

“
Yes,” I started, as I pushed the empty soup bowl away. “I do want to make a living doing something I enjoy, but if I’m going to truly do what I want to do, which is make theater, I’m going to have to build it slowly. I’m not interested in going out on auditions all the time. I don’t have the stomach for that kind of life.”

“
Well, how do you expect to be an actor if you don’t go out on auditions?” Aunt Phyllis sparred.

She was so unbelievably good-natured when she asked direct questions, and I’m sure that’s how she achieved her level of success.

“
Yes, you’re right,” I conceded, so I could change the direction of the conversation. “So, about my theater company…”

My introduction may have been weak, but the prospect of “the ask” made me uncomfortable and inarticulate.

“
Wait, are you saying I’m right just to get off the subject?” she interrupted.

“
I am, I’m sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I forgot you weren’t born yesterday.”

“
More like 29 thousand yesterdays,” she said, which totally disarmed me as I ran calculations in my head to check her accuracy. We should all have minds this sharp at 80.

“
Yes! Your theater company! I’ll stop grilling you for now. Let’s talk about this exciting endeavor! I have a check for you. Don’t let me forget to give it to you.”

And just like that, “the ask” and “the receive” were over. I instantly relaxed.

“
Well, thank you very much,” I said, as our second course arrived. “That’s going to be a great help.”

“
I want to help,” she said.

“
Thank you,” I repeated and launched into my pitch about
The Expatriates
.

She listened intently. Being only 20 years younger than our characters, she had a working knowledge of their lives and firsthand memories of the Depression. I pitched the show pretty hard, even though she had already agreed to give us money. I wanted her to feel good about her investment, but I also wanted to comb her mind for any lurking details about that era.

“
Well, isn’t that exciting!” Aunt Phyllis said after I finished. “But I’m not sure about the name.”

“
Well, the play is really about expatriation so…” I started, braced to defend our name.

“
No, not the play. The play sounds wonderful. And I love the title.
The Expatriates
sounds exotic and exciting. I don’t care for the name of the company.”

My spine collapsed into a lower-case “c.” I loved the name The Beggars Group. I called myself a “Beggar.” It was already infused with my identity.

“
Well, the name speaks to the experience we want the audience to have when they see our shows,” I said passionately. “Seeing a beggar on the street causes you to self-reflect.”

“
I don’t know about that,” said Aunt Phyllis, taking a bite of salad. “I just think that if you want people to give you money, you should have a name that says ‘success.’ People like giving money to successful projects. The Beggars Group doesn’t sound successful. You don’t want to be beggars. You want to be emperors. How about The Emperors Group?”

The Emperors Group? It sounded like a place you went to for high-end hookers.

“
Well, I don’t think the Emperors Group is exactly what we’re going for.”

I could see her point, but I was convinced this was a generational thing.

“
We want to convey an everyman feeling. You know. We don’t want to come across as elitist.”

“
Why not?” Aunt Phyllis asked. “This club is elitist. There’s nothing wrong with being elitist. But if it bothers you to think of it as elitism, then think of it as excellence. Only the smartest get into Yale. Only the brightest are published in the
Harvard Law Review
. Only the best are in The Emperors Group.”

Chuckling at the name, I nodded my head.

“
Beggars may not be the best or the brightest, but they’re genuine,” I said.

“
I suppose you’re right.”

My joy in her acceptance tempered as I waited for the inevitable twist in logic.

“
And may your theater be gracious enough to allow us to see it.”

She raised her iced tea in my direction. And I finished my pesto chicken
sandwich wondering if she had agreed with me simply to get off the subject.

After lunch, we went to see
Wit
in Union Square. Whenever we got together, Aunt Phyllis would take me to the theater and let me pick the show. Unfortunately, my youthful passion to explore the depths of life and death never sat well with her 80-year-old sensibilities. As smart and worldly as she was, she’d pick a musical comedy over more serious fare any day. Unless it was Shakespeare. She loved good Shakespeare.

My choice for this visit,
Wit
is about a woman dying of cancer. Moved by the experience, I left the theater transformed in some foreign and exciting way.

“
Well… that was depressing,” said Aunt Phyllis, looking at me lovingly with a hint of sadness.

I would see this sadness in her every now an then, usually when her guard was down. And I suppose nothing gets your guard down like a good play about death. Although I couldn’t identify the origin of this sadness, there was a long list of possibilities. She had lived through the Depression, World War II, her friends dying at an accelerated rate, and now this totally depressing play I suddenly deeply regretted suggesting. Maybe she was sad because our date was ending? Maybe she was still disappointed because I named my theater company The Beggars Group? I would never know because, as Aunt Phyllis would say, “It’s just not something you talk about,” and I’m too polite to pry. We both acknowledged the sadness in silence.

I folded out my elbow and Aunt Phyllis clutched it as we walked across Union Square Park. The sounds of buskers and political activists rang out from its south side. We made a small detour to listen to the protestors but didn’t join them. We weren’t going to free Tibet tonight.

“
I’ve been to Tibet,” Aunt Phyllis said quietly. “They should be free.”

I knew very little about the subject but quickly agreed. “Everybody should be free.”

“
Well, the people of Tibet should be. That’s all I know. There’s my cab.”

She threw her fingers up and pointed as if she’d been expecting that very cab to pick her up at that very moment. I hugged and kissed her. As she got into the car, she pressed a $1,000 check into my hands. “Best of luck dear. It’s going to be wonderful. I just know it.”

“
Thank you, Aunt Phyllis,” I said as I shut the door.

And I watched the taillights of her cab disappear into a sea of flickering red lights slowly moving uptown.

ROCK AND ROLL

“
So I want us to think of this play as rock-and-roll,” Chris told us. “It’s going to be late, the audience is coming in from the bar downstairs with drinks in hand, and they’re gonna be pumped. We’ll be blasting some crazy music as they take their seats, and when the lights go down, I want the play to pop with so much energy, the audience thinks they’re watching a fucking rock concert!”

He finished with his fists in the air, and we cheered, ready to take on the concept. Who wouldn’t be? Doesn’t everyone want to be a rock-and-roll star?

Chris was directing Charles Busch’s
Theodora, She Bitch of Byzantium
, The Beggars Group’s late-night offering at the Red Room Theater.
Theodora, She Bitch of Byzantium,
is a short, wildly entertaining piece about the campy adventures of a Byzantine emperor’s wife.

I had booked the 10:30 p.m. slot in the Red Room Theater every Saturday for eight weeks. The Girls set to work securing the rights to perform the play, a task that turned out to be far more difficult than we initially thought. Because Charles Busch was working on another project uptown, there was some question about whether our little-known group should be granted production rights to
Theodora, She Bitch of Byzantium
.

If we were in Topeka or Minneapolis or Key West or anywhere else in the country, we would have had no problem. Hell, if we were producing the show across the river in New Jersey, we’d have had the rights in a heartbeat. But New York has its own rules. It is the country’s theatrical capital and as such, authors and agents are far more scrutinizing when granting rights permission. Thankfully, The Girls’ tenacity convinced the agency that, despite our $2,000 budget, we would present the play in the most professional manner.

“
Yeah, we’ll show them professional,” Chris said after learning we got the rights. “Professional rock-and-roll!”

And he unfurled a beautifully painted muslin backdrop of a vagina with a slit through the middle for our upstage center entrance. Girl power is a huge theme in the play, and Chris wanted to make sure everyone in the audience understood that. So, just in case we performers didn’t get that across, there’d always be the giant labia on stage.

Besides this backdrop, we needed no other set pieces, which gave me a great sigh of relief. Getting in and out of this show would be much easier without set pieces—or so I thought.

With no set to worry about, we turned our attention to creating Theodora. I’d done this part in college, but now, I was keenly aware that doing drag in the East Village required a much greater eye for detail. In New York, drag is a profession. Here, people put “drag performer” on their tax forms. I couldn’t just throw some apples in a bra, slip on a dress, slap on some makeup, and parade around. I needed to
bring
it.

We combed some downtown thrift shops and found me a slinky purple gown and open-toed, two-inch heels. That left the wig and the makeup.

In rehearsals, I had been prancing in my heels and a secondhand, misshapen wig as if I’d done it my whole life. But the real wig, our performance wig, had thus far eluded us.

The subject of my makeup invoked intense debate. I had long insisted I could not do it myself. Lolly said she could apply the makeup if someone else designed it. So, Chris made an appointment for me to sit down with Jesus, who, I was told, would teach me everything I needed to know about becoming a woman.