The audience gasped. Time slowed. As I staggered up, I remember noticing how everyone was leaning forward in their seats. It was suddenly very exciting to be an actor.
“Is she hurt?” “Was it part of the play?” the crowd murmured as I stood there, stunned. My aunt had told me a true thespian never breaks character. So I decided to use the moment like Meryl Streep: I burst into tears and ran offstage yelling, “MOMMY!”
The screaming match between my mom and his after the show would rival any sweeps-winning episode of Dance Moms. Carnations and Chips Ahoy! were used as projectile weapons in the greenroom. The fight went on so long that eventually I started feeling guilty. Because Jackson looked so miserable sitting on the opposite side of the room and . . . okay, I’ll admit it. He was cute and I had a crush on him.
WHATEVER, YOU GUYS!
Nothing got friendlier between us after that, but he never shoved me like an MMA fighter again, and I never corrected him on his lines again. (Even though he DID mess them up. A lot.) For years after that play, my family would tell the tale of how “That kid Jackson tried to murder Felicia,” and we were pretty convinced he was going to grow up to be a serial killer. I recently looked him up on Facebook. He became a dentist, so same difference.
Here’s the awesome irony, though. A local newspaper critic attended that specific matinee performance. Afterwards, we got an amazing review that singled out the “fantastic physical performance of the young actress playing Scout.” I even got an award that season! So basically, what I learned was that I love the stage, and that it’s advantageous to have slightly older men physically assault me. (Just KIDDING! Gawd.)
I’m sure my aunt would have mentored me through many a great role after that, helping me conquer the Northern Alabama theatre scene with my glorious skills, but it was not to be. My family moved to Mississippi right after the play ended. But I’d developed a taste for the stage, and I wanted to keep doing it. I couldn’t let go of the idea that I was pretty amazing.
We moved a lot during my childhood because of my dad’s medical training, but whenever we’d arrive in a new city, I’d immediately search the Pennysaver or community center bulletin boards for auditions. Of any kind. And no matter what little backwater town we landed in, people were putting on a show! Usually a revival of Oliver! (I was in that play four times as an orphan. I also played a prostitute twice in Sweet Charity before the age of fourteen.) Sometimes the productions were very small, like an 8x8 space behind someone’s garage, or at an old folks’ home where the star was an eighty-five-year-old with Alzheimer’s, but as long as they accepted me, I joined up. I couldn’t help it. Like tuberculosis, once you catch it, the need to perform is always inside of you.
Unfortunately, when you’re the “new kid,” you don’t get the juicy roles right away. There’s usually a seniority system, and sometimes I was passed over for a speaking part by someone who wasn’t great, which was disappointing to me but enraging to my mother.
“They only picked her because she was Jewish!”
Well, Mom, I was auditioning for Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank at the Louisville Jewish Recreation Center. I think maybe there were justifications.
As I mentioned before, my mother never had the follow-through to be a true stage mom, but she was supportive in pushing my performance career in strange and arbitrary directions. Around twelve, she signed me up for singing lessons with a woman named “Miss Hilda” who led a church choir and looked like she’d been a spinster since the late 1890s. The woman wore dickies with her sweat suits.
Miss Hilda taught me German art songs, which is SUPER useful when you’re auditioning for Tannh?user, but if you’re trying to rock a solo from the Who’s Tommy, not so much. My mom couldn’t tell the difference. Singing was singing, and her daughter was amazing at it, therefore everyone must listen! She became alert for opportunities for me to shine with my newfound skill, on stage and beyond.
One day we got in the car and started driving to Ohio. Randomly. My brother and I were confused.
“Where are we going?”
My mom had a copy of the newspaper in her lap and thrust it at me. “They’re rebooting The Mickey Mouse Club and searching for new talent! You’re auditioning!”
Panic. “But I don’t have a song prepared!”
“Just do that one Miss Hilda taught you last week!”
“Um . . . really?”
“Either that or ‘Happy Birthday.’ You have such a beautiful voice, it won’t matter, you’re a shoo-in, baby!”
I wrapped my mom’s faith around myself like a straightjacket as we drove three and a half hours to a nondescript Holiday Inn in Cincinnati. I marched into the run-down ballroom with a number 239 pinned to my shirt and, when prompted, began singing Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” for the touring Disney audition committee.
“Meine Ruh’ ist hin
Mein Herz ist schwer,
Ich finde, ich finde sie nimmer . . .”