Malone looked in my direction and narrowed his eyes into slits. I stared right back at him, my round eyes as big as saucers, silently pleading with him for my lucky break. Finally, he shook his head and let out a sigh. “All right, girl, get your ass up here and we’ll see what you can do.”
I will say this: my role was as basic and minor as a role could get—so much so that we barely rehearsed it. Hell, it wasn’t even a role. All I had to do was walk across the stage. But you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t about to be the star of that stage. There was nothing in the script for this cross. But remember: I had already learned from Debbie Allen that there is no such thing as a small role. So I carped that damn diem. I created a character for the cross: I made myself a seamstress delivering Deena a potential show dress. So the excitement I exuded crossing from stage right to stage left could be seen and felt. Because I also had to cross back stage left to stage right, I decided to make that moment about being totally rejected by the diva Deena. And believe me, when I say all of that studying of Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball kicked in? It made my small but impactful role, which wasn’t even supposed to be a scene, one to remember.
Nothing in the script gave a description of this seamstress or her motivation beyond the fact that the dress she picks for Deena is rejected, but I spent countless hours considering that seamstress’s motivation nonetheless. What expression would she have while presenting the gown to Deena? How would she walk on the way to Deena? How would she slink away after the rejection? All of it. I even dreamed up her costume: little framed glasses, stockings under a frumpy dress with slouchy knee-high socks, a zaniness about the colors. She was nobody to everybody, but I made her somebody to me.
When opening night came, I was ready. My heart was beating so fast on the side of that stage waiting for my part, I’m surprised I didn’t pass out. Finally, Deena said the line that gave me my queue. I sashayed across that stage with a gown I thought was the most beautiful dress in the world, matched only by my wide, beaming grin. Everything about my body language said, “Yes, Deena, of course you will choose my dress for your world tour.”
Deena, unimpressed, opened the garment bag and angrily tossed it back at me, throwing in a few choice words for good measure and telling me to get the hell out of her sight. Devastated but convinced I’d been wronged, I stomped back across the stage, stopped midway, tossed a nasty side-eye at Deena, and then stomped out the door without saying a word.
I was on the other side of the curtain, giggling with nervous laughter, floating with excitement when my ears were finally able to focus on the audience’s reaction: they were hysterical with laughter. Out of everything that was happening onstage, it was my timing and foolery that they remembered—a moment that came at the end of a transition scene. I may have had a bit part, but I was in Dreamgirls, and folk who counted were paying attention, including my mother. She wasn’t convinced there was a career in acting, and having scrimped and saved to get three steps forward only to consistently fall two steps behind, she wanted something more secure for me than “starving artist.” That’s all she could see for me, her child who was born with neither silver spoon nor serious connection to Hollywood, a glittery mirage seemingly so far from reach it might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy. Her questions made sense: “I’m a single mom, how on earth can I support you in this? What if you can’t get a job? Then what?” It was hard to argue against her judgment. But on the opening night of Dreamgirls, when she watched me strutting across that stage, finally she saw me, and she pledged her unconditional support.
When I wasn’t working on my role, I was still prop mistress, but I continued studying everyone else’s roles, too; I knew every line, every song, every stage direction, where every prop lay. When a fellow student with a key role as a singer in the opening of the play had to drop out, I was ready. Professor Malone took to the stage to announce her part was open, and I jumped at the chance to play it.
“I got it! I can do it!” I shouted, raising my hand like some nerd eager to answer the teacher’s question.
Professor Malone shook his head, looked me up and down, and smirked. “Well, you better get your heels and come in here tomorrow ready to show me what you got.”
“I have my heels right here!” I said, reaching down into my knapsack.
“All right, then get your ass up here and sing the song,” he said.