"Tina's Audition"

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Aaron Netsky

No one else was going to clean up this mess. The actors were not going to fix the uneven lights anymore than the lighting designer and electricians were going to fix the actors’ stumbles. The director and set/props designer were never going to agree 100% on the look of the play. The playwright was not going to stop hounding the sound designer about the clarity of the lines and volume of the music and the sound designer was never going to talk to anybody, which meant that Tina had to squeeze the information she needed out of him like the juice from shreds of potato that were destined to become a latke.

Because Tina was the Stage Manager; all messes were her messes to clean up.

And as she looked down from her booth, over the 89 seat theatre, at the chaos below that was the union mandated ten minute break following the rehearsal of a crucial scene, she fought off the instinct to ponder how she had gotten herself into this one. That was not the way to look at things. Tina was one of the few theatre people who had learned that no matter how bad things got in rehearsals, things would come together for the opening. It wasn’t magic, it was will, an unspoken agreement that no one would do anything wrong this time. Small mistakes would come later: forgotten props, flubbed lines, missed cues. Nothing that would be repeated, but small hiccups as everyone got comfortable with the machine they were part of. It wouldn’t be a disaster.

Tina knew this. She had danced this dance many times. This time was no different. Except it was. It was because of the interview she had had the morning of the day before. An interview for a job on Broadway.

“And the biggest space you’ve stage managed in was how big?” the director asked.

“About six hundred seats. That was the Ramsdell back in Manistee. But the house is bigger. It originally sat twice as many, but they don’t seat people in the gallery anymore.”

“The Ramsdell. Isn’t that where James Earl Jones got his start?”

“Yup. We’re proud of our native son.”

“I worked with him, oh, thirty years ago. Great guy. But in New York, what’s the biggest?”

“I think it was two fifty.”

“Broadway’s different. I mean, your credits are amazing, but this is a big show I’m directing. I need someone really solid.”

“I understand.”

“What are you doing now? Is it this at the top here?”

“Yeah.”

“When does that open?”

“A week from Thursday.”

“Why don’t I come see a preview? See you in action. A kind of audition.”

“Would you be in the booth with me?”

“No.” He laughed. Tina was relieved that he laughed. “I wouldn’t impose on your presumably already cramped workspace. I’ll be in the audience. But I’ll know how you’re doing. I’ll sense it.”

“I’ll have them hold you a ticket. What day?”

“Oh, a show like this needs as many paying audience members as it can get. Am I right? Besides, if I buy it for myself, you won’t know when I’m coming. I think that’s better.”

It was better, but also worse. Tina didn’t know if she had a week or a few days to make the show run perfectly, and it was not like she wouldn’t have anyway. It was her job to. This just added extra pressure.

But she really wanted that Broadway job.

She picked up the god mic. “Back to work, ladies and gentlemen, back to work. Places for top of act two.”

By the first preview, a few days later, the play was running from start to finish. That was good.

But the young male lead, a tall and conventionally handsome Yale graduate named Jordan, was still missing lines. He would stare at his female counterparts (a young one who was older than him by a few years named Jenny and a much older one, and an old friend of Tina’s, named Michelle) until either he remembered it, which was rare, or they took the hint and moved the scene along without it, which Michelle, from decades of experience, had a much easier time with than Jenny had.

At the production meeting afterward, as the team sat in the top two rows of the audience, Tina asked her production assistant, “Zach, do you have time to run lines with him back stage?” She knew he did, but it wasn’t her style to just command him to.

“Yeah, I can do that. Any particular parts?”

Tina gave a tight lipped but still warm smile and said, “Nope, just as much as you can from the beginning. At least for a few nights. Next on the agenda?”

The director spoke up. “Are we on set now? Can we get different curtains for the kitchen scene? I just don’t think brown is the right color, especially against a lighter brown wall.”

“It’s all in shades of brown,” the set designer said. “That’s the idea.”

“Well, maybe black, or just…”

“Black is not brown, and is going to really stick out under those lights.”

“If we can get them to point in the right direction,” the director muttered. The lighting designer, a nervous woman a few years younger than Tina, scribbled the note, and Tina thought it must be in her notebook several times already. Tina wished the lighting designer would stick up for herself more, but hadn’t had time in the busy production schedule to say anything to her.

“I will look into gray curtains for the kitchen scene. Maybe dirty gray curtains, grimy, so there’s still some brown.”

“Dark gray,” the director threw in.

“The gray that I think works.”

“The gray that is available,” Tina broke in, attempting to make peace, “and that we can get before we freeze the show.” Tina made her own note. Both men looked sharply at her, but she would not look back. Still pretending to be writing, she said, “Anything else from set and props.”

“I don’t like the pot in the corner,” the director quipped.

“It was your idea, and I agreed, we can’t have a bare corner there,” the set designer said.

“I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to see a run with the emptiness.”

“I made that specifically for…”

Eventually, Tina moved on to lights. “Anything Cathy? Or anything for Cathy?”

Cathy looked up. “Um, I know what I need to work on.”

“There were some shadows,” the director began, and Tina took up the comment so as to spare Cathy the director’s tone. “Yes, um, from that light tree in the corner. Not big, terribly noticeable shadows, just in the wrong place, visible just on the wall. Maybe put that light up a little higher and angle it down a little more.”

“Ok.” Cathy made the note and Tina turned back to the rest of the group. “Anything else for lights? Other than the adjustments we discussed earlier.” No one said anything. “Right. Sound?”

“It was beautiful, Robby, really.” The director was always extra complimentary to the sound designer. Tina wished he would throw some of that Cathy’s way.

Robby very quietly said, “Thank you.”

“Joan, you were saying that it’s a real hustle to do the transition from the third scene to the fourth?”

The assistant stage manager joined the discussion. “Yeah, is there any way we can get more time?”

“What do you say, Robby, can you give us a bit more music there?” Tina asked.

“I like it the way it is,” the director said. “It flows nicely.”

“Maybe from what you can see,” Tina said, “but Michelle nearly fell in the melee backstage tonight, and it was a direct result of how fast everything was going back there.”

“You weren’t back there to see, how do you know what the cause was?”

“I trust my run crew when they tell me the situation is unsafe. I’m just asking for, maybe, fifteen extra seconds, is that ok? Robby, can you do that?”

Robby nodded, and typed the note into his computer. It shouldn’t be too hard, Tina thought, it’s mostly a vamp anyway. The director was not happy, but he knew that safety was a priority with Tina. She’d injured her foot backstage on a previous production of his.

“Alright, if that is all, and we know, as we’ve established, that we need to start wiping the windows before each run now that there is light behind them and we can see handprints, and that we have new chairs on the way, more period appropriate…”

“Not tomorrow, because I’m working all day on another set, but by Saturday,” the set designer said.

“That’s fine. I think we’re set. Go home, get rest. There’s painting on the stage happening in the morning, so the earlier you get here, the less you should touch things. Look for my e-mails. Good night.” Tina closed the meeting, and watched everyone leave before getting up herself and locking up.

In her apartment that night, after sending out her production report and daily call, she snuggled up with her Himalayan, Dusk, and put on a Harry Potter movie in the background as she looked around on the internet.

She had already known all about Jack T. Doyle before the interview, but she could not get enough of him. He had had a stunning career. James Earl Jones was just the start; he had worked with Brian Dennehy, Lynn Redgrave, Chita Rivera, Joel Grey, even Robert Preston right before he died. He had worked with everyone and everyone wanted to work with him.

Tina had originally wanted to direct plays, but had found stage management more exhilarating. Still, she could appreciate the work of a good director, and she had worked with some fine ones, but she wanted to move up in the world. Applying to work on Jack Doyle’s next musical, not even as a stage manager, initially, but as an assistant, had been one of those shot-in-the-dark, high-reaching moves that one never expects to actually yield results. But someone had given her résumé a good, thorough looking-over, and she had been called for an interview by the man himself right before going into tech.

He had worked with Arthur Miller. Oh, the stories he must have.

She closed her computer and let the magical movie wash over her as she fell asleep. Her cat leapt down from the bed, bored and ready for his nightly hunt, which rarely had any significant catches, since Tina kept a clean apartment, but was fun for him nonetheless.

Doyle hadn’t been at the first preview. She knew she should just stop thinking about him coming and get the show walking on its own two feet, but she knew she’d know when he was there. It was a small theatre, and from her booth she could see everyone who came in. And he’d probably be recognized, and people would flock to him, wonder why he was there.

Tina hadn’t told anyone on the production, not even Michelle, what was happening with her. She felt it was her responsibility to make sure no one came to suspect anything.

She had to want to do the small job more than she wanted the big job in order to get the big job, or at least she had to convince herself of that.

She could do it.

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