Unnaturally Green (25 page)

“Good idea,” said Etai.

I explained to him that, as far as I was concerned, it was exactly like moving into a college dorm. You knew you were going to leave after two semesters and that people were going to throw up on your floor, so what was the point? (Still, it would be nice to hang that bookstore-bought French print over your bunk.)

Soon we’d switched seats, which meant it was my turn to give Etai his massage comeuppance. On the TV, the aliens had appeared and were slinking around an underground bunker, gangly and disoriented.

“But what I really don’t understand,” I said, wringing his shoulders, “is how these sickly aliens built those huge tripod spaceships. I mean, they can’t even walk straight without freaking out.”

“It’s true,” said Etai, sitting up. “They invented machines with human-evaporating death rays and, look, they’re confused by a bicycle wheel.”

“Can you imagine them actually building any of their machinery?”

“I can’t. Unless one of them is like, ‘Hand me the monkey wrench, Beeblethrox,’” said Etai.

I snapped my fingers.

“‘Beeblethrox!’ That is now the name of my Citizen of Oz character,” I said. “I couldn’t settle on anything weird enough for that Act I barrel costume, but I think you just nailed it.”

“Glad I could help, Beeblethrox.”

The takeaways from this conversation:

1)
War of the Worlds
is a flawed film.

2) For a small man, Etai packed a mean karate chop.

3) My ensemble character was thusly dubbed Beeblethrox.

4) With a closing date in sight, there was no easy way to feel settled.

This last one was a biggie. In San Francisco, cast members who had cultivated a life—with apartments, pets, favorite coffee shops—would, in a matter of months, have to kiss those constants goodbye. And then what?
In my ensemble days, I wrestled with this paradox of temporariness—of wanting and needing to feel at home, but knowing I was just passing through—over the rainbow and back.

After my promotion to standby, I was presented with a new psychological challenge. With an unpredictable day-to-day schedule, Libby and I lived in a kind of limbo, suspended between two states of extremes. While 5% of our job consisted of high-stakes heart-thumping excitement, 95% consisted of doing absolutely nothing.

You heard me: nothing.

To pass the time, Libby and I had to get creative.

“What should we do today?” she would ask, every single time we met backstage.

“Hmm.”

It was a good question. The world was our oyster! Well, the world within five blocks, anyway. We could do anything our hearts desired! Provided we could perform at a moment’s notice.

“I guess I could blog?” I would say.

“Or we could do a workout
DVD
,” Libby would reply.

“Or we could start another puzzle?”

“Sounds good. Let’s do that.”

When I felt a surge of productivity, I kept up with my writing, which had languished when I was busy rehearsing for Elphaba. Other times I would paint, something I used to do a lot in high school. With my mini easel, canvas, acrylics, and brushes I painted Chuck Close-inspired portraits of people’s faces, including Kyle the prop guy’s baby who, according to first-violinist Cary, had the same name as a 1970s porn star (Taylor Rain).

Now, I respectfully ask that you resist the urge to conclude that getting paid to do nothing was, in fact, awesome. I can see why you might. Heck, before I was standby, that’s what I thought, too! But do take a leap of faith with me here—and just believe it when I say that being a standby got to be a bit…much.

There was just.

So much.

Endless…

…waiting!

Libby had been doing
Wicked
for longer than I had, but nothing could prepare either of us for the sudden change of going from nightly ensemble performances to the idle life of a standby. Even worse was the letdown of going from playing Elphaba or Glinda to having to retreat back to the dressing room, our holding cell. There we would wait, separate from the rest of the cast, with a lingering pressure always hanging over our heads.

We weathered long stretches of this schizophrenic limbo: always mostly calm but, under the surface, mildly agitated.

(What’s the line from that depressing Emily Dickinson poem?
It goads me, like the goblin bee / That will not state its sting.
)

To cope, Libby and I spent our time chatting on the couch—about our families, favorite fad diets, dating histories. It was essentially like being at a seven month-long slumber party (the kind where you learned the true meaning of over-sharing). We even ordered zebra and leopard print Snuggies online to wear backstage (did you think I was joking?), which helped make the slumber-party experience fully immersive.

To make the space our own, and more cozy, we pinned photos along our vanity mirrors and on the outside of the door, and draped Christmas lights along the “wall” we shared with the female ensemble.

I put quotation marks around the word “wall” because the top of said “wall” didn’t actually reach the ceiling, but rather left a two-foot gap that let us hear everything the girls next door were saying. All the chatter, laughter, stereo music, and rise and fall of the show’s energy as the girls trickled in and out between scenes came wafting into our space like the delicious smells of a dinner party to which we hadn’t been invited. As we listened, we tried to imagine how fun the party must be for everyone who got to go inside: sampling
hors d’oeuvres
, drinking red wine, gossiping about the neighbors.

Occasionally, we would work up the courage to visit. It always began and ended the same: Libby and I would tiptoe in, make a few minutes of small talk, then quickly wrap around through the exit.

Maybe it had to do with the “wall,” or the fact that we’d said goodbye to our ensemble days, but for us there was an implicit divide—and that infamous “wall” was a constant reminder: on one side there was a show to do; on the other side was the far-off wish we could join.

Each time, before Libby and I left the girls’ room, I couldn’t help but cast a look at Alyssa. While training to be Elphaba, she’d taken over my ensemble track—wearing my costumes and wigs, and holding my props. It was like looking at a family portrait to find my face had been scratched out and replaced with a friend of mine’s, who was living in my room, playing with my toys, and getting her nose wiped by my mom. I knew it wasn’t her fault—no, it was just the way things were.

But if I believed I’d reconciled leaving the ensemble, when I saw Alyssa sitting at my old station I felt a faint, residual sting.

Goblin bee! Buzz off already.

Most nights, Libby and I would don our Snuggies, venture into the hallway, and make visitation rounds to the rest of the cast.

Etai’s dressing room was one of our frequent pit stops. He had it all to himself and had decorated the space to look exceedingly masculine, with only a lone gray couch in the center that looked like a deflated elephant. Libby and I would invade this masculine hideaway without knocking and plop down on the elephant, at which point we would usually find Etai in his underwear, working on a crossword puzzle, or wooing various ladies on instant messenger. 

Catty-cornered to Etai was French Nic’s room. Nic and I had grown closer since he and Marshall had started lifting weights, drinking protein shakes, and reveling in their manly bromance and whatnot. It was fun to pay him pre-show visits, during which we would chat about (1) Marshall, (2) the latest computer technologies, (3) Marshall. We always had a jolly time, and it was not infrequent that during these conversations he would gift me with a free program to upload to my computer. “For to install Photoshop,” he would say, Frenchly, handing me a USB cord.

As I downloaded, Nic’s stunning girlfriend Neka would often appear, sweeping into the dressing room in some manner of high heel and vintage frock, even if it was minutes before curtain. Neka and I had become sort-of friends during our ensemble days, but many weeks later I still wanted to run, hide, and put on lipstick every time I saw her. Neka was, you see, intimidating: ridiculously pretty, smart, and unafraid to speak her mind. No topic was off-limits—from her opinions of anything, to the trials of being a dancer, to the most personal and otherwise repugnant bodily ailments.

(She and I had actually discussed these bodily ailments while physically onstage, back when I was in the ensemble. Dressed in our elaborate Ozian costumes, in front of thousands of people, our conversations went something like:

FELICIA: Man, I am so bloated.

NEKA: Did you have salty food before the show?

FELICIA: Are corn chips salty?

NEKA: Salt will give you chapped lips, that’s for sure. Look at mine, they’re shriveled.

FELICIA: I’m constipated.

NEKA: Sometimes when I’m constipated I like to massage my own abdomen, to get things moving.

FELICIA: That is a great idea. Also, what is a yeast infection?)

Next to French Nic was Tom, our Wizard, who was like a more fun version of everybody’s uncle. Despite all of his professional success (from
The Birdcage
to
Frasier
to
Heavyweights)
, he was not at all aloof in that movie-star kind of way. He usually kept me posted on his latest workout exploits, sometimes going so far as to demonstrate his favorite moves on the carpet (burpees, mountain climbers, jumping jacks) as Libby and I cheered him on.

After completing our rounds, it was back to the drawing board. We’d only wasted 20 minutes. What to do with the remaining 150?

When the dressing room walls got to be too confining, Libby and I would return to our respective apartments, within five blocks of the theater. But things were more tolerable if we stuck together, wallowing in the underwhelming trauma of our shared experience.

During said wallowing I would regress to the college student version of myself, returning to all my favorite procrastinatorial hobbies, like playing Snood or Text Twist, Facebook stalking, or writing rap lyrics that made no sense. Sometimes I would regress as far back as middle school, acting like a possessed freak and scrawling on paper in the secret language I invented in seventh grade—and still use to this day. (I’d made up this language so my friend Kat and I could pass confidential notes in Spanish class. She never learned it, so I was forced to pass notes with myself.)

Even worse was when Libby and I wandered our way to YouTube, keeping tabs on ourselves and various other
Wicked
actresses, falling down the rabbit hole of comparison and competition—which I’d tried so hard to resist.

After these lapses, we would self-flagellate by doing Tracy Anderson workout DVDs—painful not only due to their endless arm and leg raises, but because I found Tracy Anderson to be insufferable.

(Libby would disagree, since to this day she is a sworn Tracy Anderson disciple. But I maintain that her DVDs are the
worst! My standby wife and I had many heated debates about this very topic, mid-workout—while Tracy would be like, “This is really good for your body” (instead of giving us actual
cues
)—and I’d be like, “Gee, thanks, Tracy, for being so scientific!”—and Libby would be like, “This woman changed my life! My body is a different body!”)

(But I digress.)

When we weren’t bickering over Tracy Anderson, sometimes Libby and I would feel inspired to practice our
Wicked
songs. It was important, after all, to maintain the muscle memory required to sing Elphaba and Glinda. The tricky thing about this, however, was  that there weren’t any soundproof studio spaces—not even the vocal rehearsal room, which itself was surrounded by incomplete “walls.”

So, we found the best place to hide was in the women’s restroom, belting amongst the stalls in cadence with the live show, whose audio emanated from speakers near the ceiling.

Sometimes we’d switch off, with Libby singing Elphaba and me singing Glinda. Sometimes we’d reminisce about the last time we got to perform together, reenacting certain moments. Sometimes we’d prance around on the tile, dancing with the shower curtains, performing the ensemble routines we used to do onstage every night.

Each time when we were done, we’d erupt into a fit of giggles—so amused that this (the frivolity, the aimlessness, the waiting) was our
job
.

Then, the reality would sink in.

This was our
job
.

And we had many more months to go.