Last Dance with Mary Jane; Part II

I do not sleep for days. How can I get out of this debacle? Surely I cannot be expected to get up on stage and sing in front of thousands of people? No one would be so sadistic as to expect this from an ugly monstrosity such as myself. Monstrosities have feelings too.

Leah assures me everything will be fine. She has been cast as the lead, of course, and will play a scrappy young hoofer doing all she can to make it on Broadway. It is Leah's dream to make a profession of this infernal art form, and it does not occur to her, the way it does to me, that dreams are for losers and first graders. However, it does occur to me that Leah's a lot closer to her dream of becoming a star on stage than I am to my dream of finally killing myself with Carbon Monoxide poisoning in the garage, so I am rooting for her.

On the eve of our first practice, we sit indian-style on the stage in our auditorium. A large woman with dramatic hair, black with a skunk of white fore and aft, floats over and introduces herself. She wears a purple sweater and a shitload of eye makeup. She smiles, catlike, and makes calculated arm movements, and though she may be large, she can hold her body in an impressive posture. At half her size I slump like a wilted green.

She proceeds to tell us many things, that we are beautiful and unique snowflakes, that we will walk together hand-in-hand to greatness, and that when we lend our internal candles to the production, we can "make the theater shine like the sun." That last one feels like a punch to the crotch. Who is this woman who has ordered pyrotechnics for a high school show? What sort of bitch would miscast me so sadistically in a singing role?

This woman is Michelle Constantino, director of the annual Jamestown High School musical, and she, along with Mary Jane, will drive us batty for the next six months. The result of their endless pursuit of stage perfection, will be recorded in the annals of Jamestown lore.

--

I cannot sing this song.

I cannot sing at all, of course, but more importantly, I cannot sing this motherfucking song. It hurts my soul just to read it.

Lucille, the Octogenarian piano player, taps it out, and we, the cast, sit indian-style and sing it from our booklets. My booklet reads "Erin Tyler: Lorainne" on the front, and I feel that it is mocking me. Throughout the pages, little lines are highlighted, my lines I'm supposed to speak. I learn that there are thirty core tap numbers, and I am in all them, including "A Little Hotcha," the lyrical abortion we are signing right now, the abortion I will be forced to sing by myself. It is an anti-feminist whore tome. I froth at the mouth when I read:

Men do things that are marvelous,
Men are always so smart,
In politics, in Science, in Art.

But men need a little inspiration,
That much you must understand,
A woman holds the situation,
In the palm of her hand.

I assume that "inspiration" is a twenties way of saying "fucking," and that "palm of her hand" means "musculature of her vagina." I lean into Leah and say, "So let me get this straight. I have to prance around in a low cut cocktail dress, frolick, really, while I sing about men being so much smarter than women. Then I have to follow those sentiments with what really boils down to, 'but we've got pussy?' I can't do this. I. Cannot. Do. This."

Leah laughs and says, "At least you don't have wear a blonde wig like me."

--

We are being fitted for little blonde wigs. I credit Michelle Constantino's Aryan Disney fantasies with the blame. Betsy, the costume and prop master, cannot find a blonde wig big enough for my melon, so she yanks the largest one down as far as it will go--only halfway to my ears--and sends me back out on stage. I am dizzy from the pressure. Mary Jane runs us through a number entitled "Go into your Dance" slowly because she has chosen to pepper the choreography with extra toes and heels, and foot changes so quick and without meaning, we are left dazed. Because of these intracacies, we are a qualified mess of a tap crew, stomping off beat and obscuring the music with our noise. We are also tired. This is the seventeenth consecutive day of rehearsal (Saturdays and Sundays too), and we could really use a night off, but that is not in the cards. Michelle and Mary Jane are nazis. Mary Jane bangs her tap shoe into the stage to count out the beat, and Michelle stands in the corner hooking one of the Freshman boys up to wires. He looks to our direction completely terrified.

"HOIST HIM UP, BARRY!"

He is hoisted, and we all watch and laugh as his package protrudes through the harness. He covers it with his hands as he hangs there.

"IT'S OKAY, HON! WE'LL PUT YOU IN A TUNIC OR SOMETHING. THAT WON'T SHOW."

In two weeks, we move rehearsal from the shabby JHS auditorium to the Reg Lennae Civic Center, a renovated vaudeville house that seats three thousand and maintains a crew of union workers who can manage pyrotechnics, high wire hurling, rain machines and the twenty-seven set blocks that stack and unstack, comprising Michelle Constantino's vision of Manhattan.

It doesn't matter how hard my wig is pulled down. With the tapping, it never stays. It jiggles with every hop and stomp of my feet, and soon it will pop upward, pulling my eyes slanty and sitting atop my head like a pillbox hat. It tends to fall off during the eighty count, head-reeling run of waltz clock turns (with extra steps of course) in the middle of "Go into your dance." Nearly every member of this number stomps on it with her dusty shoes. Then I have to put it back on my head.

There is a thud at stage left. A Sophomore boy has, yet again, dropped Rhonda Friedman on her head while attempting to lift her over his own head. His hands keep slipping in her silk dress. She goes crashing down. I Time Step along and consider that we should have signed liability waivers before joining this show; or at least Rhonda Friedman surely should have.

"RHONDA! TRY IT WITHOUT THE BOA THIS TIME! MAYBE THAT WILL WORK BETTER!"

We are exhausted, but we are exhausted together, in a group, as a whole. To date, I had never been a part of anything communal in high school. I find our simultaneous shin splints and blisters oddly comforting.

What won't be comforting? The audience booing our horrific tapping and my off key singing. This musical must be cancelled.

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