It all began, I think, when I mentioned last summer to the local director, Doug, who later helmed the production, that I would have loved to have played the Wicked Witch of the West in the Canton Players Guild’s The Wizard of Oz…and it wasn’t for lack of trying that I didn’t actually get that role.  But that’s another story.  Doug remembered my willingness to step across the gender line, and when he was unable to cast an appropriate actress to play Vivian West (ironic, isn’t it?), he contacted me and asked if I was game.  Of course I was!  What was stopping me?  A fear of making a fool of myself?  Concerns about offending my extremely conservative parents?  Worries of offending other conservative members of the community?  Been there, done that, got all the T-shirts. 

I fell right into the character of Vivian from the first reading.  And that’s not because I’m Laurence Olivier (or perhaps Sarah Bernhardt would be more fitting), but because I’ve been watching and studying performances in film and theatre by actresses like her since I was a young adolescent, lonely and at loose ends, passing long summer days by watching Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? or Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and reading avidly about Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and their many wicked stepsisters.  Frankly, as of this point in my life, I could have played Vivian in my sleep.  An added factor in my “chemical” suitability for the role is a certain coolness, distance, and reserve in my own character which has frequently been interpreted as snobbery.  Oh, well.  We can’t all be Ryan Seacrest, can we?

Early rehearsals weren’t a bit awkward, as I felt I was “playing” Vivian through the filter of my own safe, tried-and-true image…stubbly face…baseball cap…torn jeans or “Charlie Harper” cargo shorts and T-shirts, and the ever-present Chuck Taylor hightops which are a trademark for me, just as Crawford’s ankle-straps were for her.  Then, slowly, I began to be presented with articles of clothing and accessories which would eventually effect my physical transformation into Vivian West.  And in retrospect, it is interesting how I reacted to that inwardly. 

I am far from being overtly masculine-in fact, when I was in college, a rather tactless acquaintance of mine once posed the question, “Craig, you are a man, aren’t you?”-but nor do I go around waving a rainbow-colored flag and blowing kisses at friends and foes alike.  I am a man, and although I have often felt I would have been better off if born a girl-maybe even a lot prettier-I’ve never felt the urge to alter my gender status.  So the night when I first tried on the high heels, the fake bust, the wig…it all gave me pause. 

Why was I nervous?  Moreover, why did I feel just a teensy bit ashamed?

I had never gotten any opportunity to see what I would look like as a woman.  Friends had laughingly promised to “do me up” in drag, just for fun, but it never actually happened.  So, when it was time to complete the transformation-to really get down to the business of turning myself into Vivian West, outside as well as in-I did so with more than a slight sense of trepidation and “What could I possibly have been thinking?”

I needn’t have worried.  The hours and pains devoted to the selection of the wardrobe paid off-I didn’t look silly or like a walking joke.  In truth, I was quite attractive.  With makeup, a well-styled wig, a sleek, elegant outfit capped by a fur coat and feathered hat for my entrance, I might have been a young Lauren Bacall or an older Meryl Streep.  No, there was nothing to laugh at in my appearance.  To my immense relief, the laughter I did hear during the four performances in front of audiences was a result of the play itself, and Vivian’s life within it. 

My first drag role turned out to be a much different (and better) experience than I had ever expected in all the time I thought I would like to try it.  And as well as I thought I knew Vivian, she still taught me things about timing, interacting, and nonverbal communication that I had never yet explored.  She also taught me, I think, respect.  Any guy can go out there on the boards in a dress and boa and get laughs.  I wanted to make my audience (and fellow actors) see and respect Vivian, not Craig in drag.  That was, I see now, the true test I set for myself in my latest acting challenge.  And after I cast aside those first faint inhibitions,  I think I succeeded.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to test myself again someday-boa, heels, broomstick-whatever she requires.

I just completed a run of James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter at the Canal Fulton Players Theatre in the Canal Fulton Methodist Church in Canal Fulton, Ohio.  I played King Phillip of France–as previously noted, it’s a role I always wanted to do, and being that I was fourteen years too old for the part, I was damn lucky to get it.  The fact that they needed someone, pronto, because they had lost the actor initially cast, helped immensely.  The production was good, the other actors were great, the director, David Van Gaasbeek, was wonderful to work with…but…WHERE WAS THE FRIGGING AUDIENCE????

Opening night, we played to a house of six…closing night, eight.  The only decent audience we had was on this past Friday (luckily, that’s when all my family members came, so it wasn’t too humiliating), when about fifty people showed up.  But that was the only performance we did that actually felt like a performance instead of just another dress rehearsal.

David was very disappointed and frustrated, as were we all…but try as I might, I can’t think of a solution to this problem, which has become more and more thwarting in my recent years as a community player.  Why play at all when there’s nobody to play to?  Do community theatres really have to do only shows like  Annie and The Sound of Music  in order to bring the people in?  Are musicals full of children and dogs and Nazis really all they want to see?  I realize that times are bleak, but does that have to mean that the public stops thinking completely? 

The Lion in Winter is, of course, a straight play (oxymoron) with highly sophisticated language and little action.  If properly staged and played (and I would venture to say that our production was) it can be a tremendously intense, entertaining, and absorbing piece of theatre.  But no one in this area of northeast Ohio, within a hundred-mile radius, seemed convinced of that.  Didn’t anyone remember the classic 1968 film version, at least, with Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole?  Evidently not.  And even if they did, I suppose they preferred to sit at home in their living rooms and watch it through NetFlix.

The handwriting seems to be indelibly scrawled on the wall, much as I’ve tried to disregard it in the recent past.  When it comes to entertainment today, people only like what they know, because that means they don’t have to take the risk of shelling out money for something they aren’t familiar with and may not enjoy.  Our production cost only eight dollars a seat (six for students and seniors), but in a recession, I imagine even eight dollars is a lot to ask for an evening out. 

It’s too bad, because what this means is fewer and fewer opportunities for both audiences and actors to grow and learn through the magic of live theatre.  They say that Broadway is dead.  I don’t know if the virus has completely spread to the big cities like New York, where people are still sophisticated enough to know quality entertainment from reality show drek, but it certainly seems to have all but wiped out volunteer playhouses in the provinces. 

And what does this mean?  Regrettably, either more productions of well-known shows featuring orphans, dogs, Nazis and singing nuns, or no productions at all, unless actors and directors put them on solely for their own gratification, because you can’t compete with technology.  Why go to the theatre and pay to see a live production of The Lion in Winter when you can stay home and watch either the movie or another video-recorded production on YouTube for free?

A dying art form, indeed.

I’ve envisioned myself on a stage alone, singing up a storm to an enraptured audience, since I was a senior in high school.  Again, it was that damned Nancy in Oliver! who put the idea in my head.  I saw myself in drag, no less, got up in a whorey red dress and wig, with plenty of fake these and those, belting out “As Long As He Needs Me”.  I used to love to listen to that song, and the other ones that the character sings in the musical, and imagine how I might do them…cutting loose in the rowdy, rollicking manner of the old English music-hall, fun at last…instead of the drab, unsmiling, inhibited and miserable teenager I was.

As I grew older, the drag idea stayed with me…a couple of my friends commented at one time that I would be great at it.  “You’ve got the hips, anyway,”  said Fred, the actor who played Dracula to my Renfield in 2003.  And even now, I wouldn’t be opposed to doing drag…but only within the proscenium arch.  I am not the least bit interested or impressed by improvisational comedy–never have been–and so the notion of going around in public done up in some outrageous costume, flaunting my feminine side through some even more outrageous feminine persona, holds no attraction at all.  I would, however, love to play a character in drag within the context of a show…and among my top choices of characters that would allow me to do this is the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (a favorite fantasy since childhood)…

Margaret Hamilton as WWW

and Miss Hannigan in Annie…

Dorothy Loudon as Miss Hannigan in the original Broadway production of ANNIE

It could happen, I know…because it has happened.  I read online about an actor (not actress) who has played the WWW seven times onstage, and he’s not the only one.  And I’ve found at least one production through googling Annie images where Hannigan was, um, non-traditionally cast.

Aside from these exploits, I do have a very real and serious desire to sing and to entertain an audience without the security blanket of a surrounding cast and script.  I mentioned not having much use for improv, and so the idea of doing a one-man show is about “as fer as I can go” in that direction.  I’ve spent years thinking about the format this show/concert could take, and the content I would choose for it.

The video above is of Adam Pascal singing one of my all-time favorite songs, “Maybe This Time”, from Cabaret.  His look, with the ratty jeans and T-shirt and such, is about what I would adopt for the evening.  I would be content with a single accompanist behind me, because getting a group of musicians together is, I would guess, probably just as much of a pain in the ass as getting a group of actors together to do a community show.  Besides, I don’t know too many musicians, and I’ve never felt accepted by that crowd, anyway.  It may have something to do with the fact that I don’t play an instrument, but that’s just a thought.

I think, in the end, I’ve got the urge to pursue this crazy endeavor because I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with singing, and other singers.  When I was in choir in high school, I didn’t like it much.  I found it boring and tedious and annoying, what with the lack of focus around me and the constant bitchery of the “ahdvahnced singahs” who took not only chorus, but Varsity Chorale and Show Choir as well.  In retrospect, our choir wasn’t that great, really…and the elevated singing classes were no better.  They thought they were, though, and that’s what kept me down.  I was told by many people that I had an excellent singing voice, but it was a baritone voice.  All the best male songs and musical parts are written for tenors, and that’s just the way it is.  On the other side, altos have the same problem with sopranos.  Sopranos+tenors=bitches in my musical math book.  But I digress.  The point is, after watching the handful of tenors in our chorus groups getting all the accolades and attention and the best parts in the musicals (I’m still mad as hell that I got the role of Doc–read, “got screwed”–in West Side Story my senior year), I backed off and no longer thought of myself as a singer.

In college, I took some voice lessons, and that built up my confidence a little, but I still didn’t feel I had what it took to pursue a lead in any of the musicals done by the drama department.  As always, they were in a higher register than was comfortable for me, and as I cannot even fake my way as a dancer, I was, once again, shafted. 

But the dream never died; that of getting up there and just standing and belting my heart out.  And so I began to think to myself…fuck the musicals.  Why not just go out there alone and sing what I want to sing?

A little hobby of mine in recent years was to record tapes of different songs I would love to do in a concert format, in the order I would do them, and listen to them, miming my way through them and developing a performance style and movement for each one.  I’ve graduated now to making a master list of songs that I add to frequently.  These songs are obviously not your mainstream Top Forty hits; they’re all show songs (read “fag songs”) with the exception of a few.  Would you believe, that in addition to “Maybe This Time”, “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “Anything Goes”, I’ve always wanted to have a crack at Billy Joel’s “She’s Got a Way”, or that English group’s anthem, “Let It Be”?

Well, who knows?  I’ve made a friend within the past year who is a really good pianist, and I’ve already asked him, should the occasion ever arise, if he would be open to working with me on some selections.  Beyond that, the steps involved would be to narrow down my song choices to a reasonable evening’s worth of material, and to think up some halfway witty patter for in-between the numbers.  A venue would present itself when the time was right, I feel.  If I really want it, it’ll come along.  And I do want it.

As my grandfather says, I’m young yet.

So…I’m enjoying myself, having a good time playing this rather zany and effervescent, sarcastic yet stout-hearted part, even if it is secondary to the title ladies.  And after we close this coming weekend, I plan to go into hibernation for at least five months.  The batteries need recharged so badly it’s not even funny.

I am also two nights into rehearsals for the new one…Confessions from the Ladies’ Room at the North Canton Playhouse.  Wasn’t really prepared to jump right into this after opening D&L, nor was I happy about it, but I’ve begun to get used to the idea.  As it happens, I’m not playing Carlos, the beautiful latino boy-toy husband of Rachel Prince, but Matthew, the partner of Stephen, the Ladies’ Room show producer.  The character has more meat to it than Carlos, who is funny, but mainly just a clown.  More nuance to Matt, and I like that.  He kind of reminds me a bit of a gay male Maxine from The Night of the Iguana, so that is a definite plus. 

Ava Gardner as Maxine Faulk in the film version of Tennessee Williams's THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA

If the ladies can all remember their lines, the show should be a hit.