Better Nate Than Ever (6 page)

Who are you dressed as?
Libby would say, still trying to cheer me up from this disastrous New York mission that will end as well as my family’s trip to Magic Kingdom did.
Some kind of suburban housewife?
I’d be in a Mrs. Rylance wig and would turn to Libby and say,
A suburban house witch, actually, who drives her son to auditions and then burns the other boys’ applications
. My costume would be her horrible wig-hair and a purse full of fruits and matches, and honey packets, and a general demeanor of bloodthirsty competition.

Okay, so I won’t ask Mrs. Rylance to cover for me.

The audition application is otherwise so simple, taking care of my lost résumé and everything. I wonder if I can list Libby as an acting teacher: We’ve drilled my
Brighton Beach Memoirs
scene-work so deep into the ground, I could practically do a one-man tour of it, dripping in found oil.

Not that I’m old enough to play the part of
Eugene. I’m never old enough for anything.

And that’s when I get the idea. The best idea ever.

NAME:
Anthony Foster

AGE:
21

HEIGHT:
four foot eight (it’s genetic)

WEIGHT:
not sure, happy to stand on scale or call doctor back home; need Nokia phone charger if the latter is necessary

RELEVANT PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

I played a piece of broccoli and understudied the legumes in a local pre-professional production of “Vegetables: Just Do It.”

YEARS OF VOCAL TRAINING, AND TEACHER:

2 years and 3 months, teacher: Libby Ann Jones

DANCE TRAINING?
2 years and 3 months, Libby Ann Jones

ACTING TRAINING?
2 years and 3 months, Libby Ann Jones

STUDIO:

Studio?

“Excuse me,” I say to a very pretty African American girl in a wool skirt. “Do you know what this means? ‘Studio’? On the audition application form?”

She shakes her head, and I see that she’s polishing a flute.

Is anyone
else
here just a regular schlub from the
back roads of Pennsylvania, dressed as a hip-hop artist, who not only
doesn’t
play a flute, or juggle, but sometimes has a hard time keeping his balance tying his shoes if he’s had too much dessert?

“‘
Studio’
just means the dance studio you attend,” a guy says, an uncle type with a helpful vibe. “For instance,” he continues, and I see that he’s in some kind of jazz sneaker, “I run a performing arts studio in Florida, for gifted children. Like my nephew, Shawn.”

Shawn appears from behind his uncle, dressed in the identical outfit (pleated khakis; pleated hair; pleated Polo).

“And so Shawn would list my studio, the Robert Poppins School of Performing Arts, under that column on the application. Shawn, tell this boy how many pirouette turns you can do.”

“Eighteen in tap shoes,” Shawn says, with one strange, lazy eye distracting me, “and six in jazz flats.”

“But he did
nine
in jazz flats at the competition in Virginia Beach, didn’t you Shawn?”

“Well, technically I spun on my heel. I did most of the turn on my heel and not full relevé. Not on my toes like you coached me to, Uncle Robert.”

Uncle Robert shakes his head at Shawn and says, “Not if they ask, you didn’t, Shawn. If they ask in the audition, you take the average of both your turns—eighteen in tap shoes and nine in flats—and you just
tell them you’re able to do thirteen at a moment’s notice.”

“What if they ask me at that very moment, when I’m done auditioning?” Shawn is eyeing a big wooden door where we must be going to get judged. “What if I get in there and they ask me to do thirteen pirouettes?” He appears as nervous as me, which is amazing, since he can do an average of thirteen pirouettes, no matter the shoe, and I wasn’t even sure what a pirouette
was
all these years. Every time Libby mentioned it, in passing, I thought she was mentioning a special kind of pastry that Broadway people ate in the green room before going onstage.

“They won’t ask you that, Shawn,” Uncle Robert says, his fake-red hair glowing something purple in the wash of sun streaming through a far window, “because they wouldn’t want to intimidate the other children at the first round of auditions. And I can’t imagine ‘Elliott’ has to do thirteen pirouettes, anyway. It’s
E.T
., for crying out loud, not
Firebird
.” Uncle Robert directs his attention to me. “A lot of people don’t realize that children at a studio like mine can already perform more difficult tricks than many, many Broadway professionals can. Even adults. Isn’t that right, Shawn?”

But Shawn’s lazy eye has reached its limit, dropping entirely to the bottom of his socket, and he nods
off for a second and then pops his head up, disoriented, beginning the whole trick again. Uncle Robert hands him a PowerBar.

That wooden door from across the hall opens, and a large man—not fat exactly, but just bursting with life, with long flowy hair and a long flowy shirt and a long flowy face—walks up to the blonde assistant woman with the shiny face, and they whisper. She stands and claps her hands, not in a fun cheerleader way but like she’s already mad at all of us for something.

“Listen up, please,” she says, and the hallway is instantly quiet. I watch Mrs. Rylance cross her legs and pat Jordan on the knee, and he’s smiling so hard I think he actually splits a corner of his mouth open. “We are about to see the first fifty children,” casting assistant woman continues, “and the cutoff today is three hundred. Please look at your application, if you haven’t turned it in, and make note of your number.”

Number ninety-one.

“We will take in fifty children at a time, and do a type-out”—this makes Uncle Robert groan—“and it will take approximately twenty minutes, per fifty kids.” All this math, it’s harder than algebra. I thought the very
point
of New York was that there was no homework, only dangerous subway rides and Brooklyn Bridges and giant-size Applebee’s. And
Wicked
.

“So,” the casting woman continues, “this could be
quite a long day, and I encourage everyone to make use of the snack shop down the hall, or to get outside and get some fresh air.”

A mom with a smoker’s voice raises her hand and wails, “Is the director in there?” Her son has on one of those surgical masks that Chinese people wear so they don’t catch diseases on trains and stuff.

“I have a creative team list, here,” the casting woman says, really shouting, actually, “of the adults in the room today. But when your children go in for the type-out, they will be introduced in person.” She sits back down, and the hallway descends into a panicked demiroar.

“What’s a type-out?” I say to Uncle Robert.

“It’s where they line you all up,” Robert starts.

“Like you’re a criminal, accused of stealing cookies,” Nephew Shawn says, stupid Nephew Shawn who actually thinks stealing cookies is a crime. Maybe it
is
in Florida. Who knows. They have alligators in pools there, so anything’s possible.

“They line you up and decide,” Uncle Robert says, “simply upon your looks and heritage and
type
, whether you are even appropriate to
sing
for them. To advance to the
actual
audition portion. It’s ridiculous and very old-school.” He takes out a swatch of knitting and bounces his leg. “When I lived here in the seventies, it was all the rage: You’d audition for
Michael Bennett and you couldn’t even get through the door without them practically throwing boiling water at you.” Uncle Robert’s lips have gone frothy white, spittle forming.

Also, I had no idea men were allowed to knit.

I lean back in my chair. So I guess an “audition type-out” is a lot like gym class, where student captains are chosen (never me) and one at a time you’re picked for their team (never me). A month ago, Danny Brooks, the eighth grader with a scoliosis brace, was picked six slots ahead of me for a round of dodgeball. Not even kidding.

“Silence, please!” the blonde casting assistant screams, bellowing over the buzz of mothers putting makeup on their girls; of boys singing scales; of every other child nervously retucking-in his or her shirt. (For some reason, when people are very nervous, they untuck and retuck their shirts.) “Please return your application as soon as possible, because I have to get the team lunch.”

The
team
. What does that even mean?

Back to the application.

STUDIO:
Robert Poppins School of Performing Arts

It’s a minor lie, a white one, and looking up at Uncle Robert, I can tell—his hair is
just
this fake-shade-of-red enough—that he isn’t a big enough deal in the dance world for anyone to cross-reference my
fib. This Uncle Robert guy doesn’t know anyone on Broadway, I can just sense it.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE MOVIE E.T.?
Yes, it is my favorite movie.

(It is, too, not lying.)

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PART IN THE MOVIE, AND WHAT DO YOU CONNECT TO MOST IN THE STORY?

Oh, Lord, this is like psychology. This is the kind of thing people in Jankburg make fun of, the kind of flamboyant stuff that got the arts funding all but cut from my school in the first place.
The only thing children should be connecting to
, my dad would say,
is each other, in a football uniform. Or connecting to a blasted
scholarship.
I’d like Nathan to connect to a nice pre-med scholarship before he ups and connects to a flipping movie about a bunch of queer kids and their pet alien friend
.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PART IN THE MOVIE, AND WHAT DO YOU CONNECT TO MOST IN THE STORY?

I liked how the dad was never around.

WHAT IS YOUR AUDITION SONG TODAY:

“Bigger Isn’t Better” from the Broadway musical Barnum

HOMETOWN:

I think on this one. They’re probably looking for
Broadway-savvy people who won’t get lost on subways and be late for rehearsals. But I decide on a seven-lie limit for this application, and calling myself twenty-one probably counts as four. I wish Anthony’s fake ID weren’t such a stretch. I could probably pull off eighteen, blaming it on a condition, some shrinking-boy thing, but twenty-one . . . I dunno.

HOMETOWN:
Jankburg, Pennsylvania

IF YOU ARE HIRED FOR E.T., AND AREN’T FROM NEW YORK, WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO RELOCATE TO NEW YORK CITY?
If I don’t get hired for E.T., I’d be willing to relocate to New York City.

ARE YOU A MEMBER OF ANY ACTORS’ UNIONS?

I pause.

“An actors’ union,” Uncle Robert says, and I realize he’s looking over my shoulder, “is what professional actors belong to, with years of authentic training and time spent in the trenches, slaving away in New York, trying their hardest to make it.” The froth is back on his lips. “So you can put
no
, you’re not a member of any actors’ unions.”

“Okay.” Union
s
, plural. There are multiple. Wow. Probably separate unions altogether for child jugglers and people who can do the splits.

“And then,” he continues, “you can erase my
performing arts studio as a reference. Unless,” and Uncle Robert stands and clears aside a horrible little hallway throw rug, “you’d like to get up and have a pirouette competition with my nephew Shawn, right here. And if you can beat
him
, by all means.” The black girl with the flute is staring at us now, having finished the polishing business and begun nibbling celery. “If you can beat my Shawn, I’d love to claim you as a student.”

Nephew Shawn does a knee bend and cricks his neck from side to side, like he’s done this a billion times. If a pirouette actually
were
a pastry, I’d be delighted to have a pirouette competition with Shawn. I could out-eat anyone here, I bet you.

“No, thank you,” I say, the crowd of auditioning onlookers moaning in disappointment, “I don’t want to twist my knee in these new Adidas.” I wave them for everyone and erase Robert Poppins School of Performing Arts from the application, feeling a total moron. “Sorry about that, Professor Poppins.”

“Okay!” the large flowy man from before sing-songs, shocking me out of my embarrassment, forcing a scratched line across the whole audition form. “We want the first fifty kids, lined up single file outside this door. And, moms! That means you have to put away your iPads and your purses and your
own
dreams!” This gets a tremendous roar from all the moms. “And
clear this aisle so your kid can be the next big thing. But listen!” Everything is exclamation points with this guy. “We only want kids who really,
really
want to be here, who go to bed at night and dream of Broadway and wake up in the morning and cry for Broadway! Who eat, bathe, and juggle Broadway.” Here, he pats one of the juggling boys on the head, like he already knows him from Juggling Union membership meetings. “So please, please, only line up if you and you
alone
want to be here, kiddos!”

All the kiddos, everyone but me, who is horrified at this clown, jump up and down like he’s handing out chocolate-covered cotton candy, and Uncle Robert takes Shawn’s hand and starts toward the lineup.

“Where are you going?” I say, and Uncle Robert turns back and sneers, “We were here at dawn. Shawn is in the first group,” and I go back to my application and finish up.

SPECIAL SKILLS:
Lying on applications
, I’d love to write, debating further entries:
Stealing brother’s ID; Wearing inappropriate clothes to auditions
, and finally,
Great admirer of children who can do multiple pirouettes
. But I decide to be simple and honest.

SPECIAL SKILLS:
I thought a pirouette was a pastry, before this audition, and if that’s any indication of how much I could learn in New York, I hope I have a chance to live here.

I take the form to the casting assistant woman and slide it over facedown, hoping she won’t look too closely.