After Meth: Understudying the Lead, from Dream to Nightmare

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 12 Part 3

In early 2009, three years clean from meth, I finished my Bachelors, but my first attempt to audition for a small selection of grad schools came up short.

I’d try again the next year, but in the meantime, I needed to start climbing the show business ladder again. Springfield Rep had been a blessing, allowing me to do good work and add some great roles to my resume, but it was a safe space and far from Broadway. I had to start putting myself out there again professionally.

Though, when it came to auditioning, I was never one for taking risks. Back in Illinois I’d done John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, and Shakespeare, yet when I scanned the auditions in Backstage, it was for musical theater and musical theater only.

If the audition was for a show I’d already done, even better. Which is how I came to audition for a Long Island theater’s production of Crazy for You.

It was the perfect storm of circumstances.

First, I’d done the show. It was my first tour fresh out of AMDA back in 2000.

Second, there was some other major audition happening across town that drew a large portion of the male talent that day, leaving those casting Crazy for You with a smaller pool to pull from.

Third, they were using the original Broadway choreography created by director/choreographer Susan Stroman for the audition and for the show, the same choreography I had done on tour! Even though it had been nine years, that muscle memory was still there, so I nailed every combination they threw at me.

When I got the call, I wasn’t prepared for just how hard I nailed it.

“We’d like to offer you a role in the ensemble… “

My heart jumped!

“And Bobby understudy.”

My heart stopped.

Bobby?

Bobby was the lead.

They want me to understudy Bobby?

They want me to understudy the lead?!

When I auditioned for the tour of Crazy for You back in 2000, that company didn’t use Stroman’s choreography for their auditions. They used new choreography they’d created specifically for that audition. They wanted to see how quickly we could pick up choreography that we didn’t know. They wanted to see skill.

When this Long Island theater used Stroman’s choreography for their audition, in me, they didn’t see skill. They saw the muscle memory of a performer who had already lived with the choreography in their body for the better part of four months. It was crisp, it was clean, it was show ready…but it wasn’t skill. It was muscle memory.

Thank you so much. I’m honored, but I’m afraid I can’t understudy Bobby. I’m not a skilled enough dancer. Specifically, the “Shall We Dance” pas de deux. I have little to no experience with that level of partner dancing. I’m more than happy to accept the ensemble role, but if you need that track to understudy Bobby, then I regretfully have to pass.…is what I should have said!

Instead, I said, “Sure! Absolutely! Thank you so much!”

I showed up for rehearsals ready to work. I took my job as understudy as seriously as a heart attack — a heart attack I would certainly have if I actually went on. Every rehearsal Bobby was called, I was there taking notes. Whenever a break was called, I would walk through the blocking and choreography for the scene they’d been working on, all while learning my own ensemble track.

I was most anxious for the “Shall We Dance” pas de deux. That was going to be the steepest hill to climb. I needed all the time in the room I could get. I waited for the day to come where “Shall We Dance” appeared on the schedule.

The day came.

Bobby and Polly were rehearsing “Shall We Dance” in Studio A…

And the rest of the company — including me — were rehearsing an ensemble scene in Studio B.

When shows work on a short two week rehearsal schedule, there is only time to teach everything once. Period.

And I was fucking missing it! Trapped in Studio B.

When we broke for lunch, I caught the choreographer as he came out of Studio A. He was a short 2nd or 3rd generation Italian in his 50s, a bit thicker around the middle with a somewhat gaunt face. Over his shoulder I could see Bobby and Polly drilling some of the choreography they had just learned.

“Can I ask? Sorry, but when are me and (the understudy for Polly) going to have a chance to learn ‘Shall We Dance’?”

He looked at me and matter-of-factly said, “Oh, there’s no time for that. You’ll just have to pick it up.” He then walked past me and off to lunch.

My heart sank.

Still, all was not lost. This was an Equity production with a Non-Equity ensemble. That means certain things were required to happen: including put-in rehearsals. Once the show is up and running, they start calling in understudies to run their scenes, giving them a chance to do it on stage before potentially doing it in the show.

As I was understudying the male lead, I had priority…that is until someone actually called out.

For the first few weeks of the run, when we’d get to put-in rehearsals, one of the supporting leads would be out and we’d have to give the put-in rehearsal to their understudy who would be going on that evening, or someone in the ensemble would be out and we’d have to take the put-in rehearsal to respace all the numbers to cover the holes.

With each week, with each put-in rehearsal that went to someone else, the fewer chances I had to make up for my pas de deux deficit.

Everything else about going on for Bobby would be fine. Not amazing. I was never going to be one of those Broadway understudy stories like Sutton Foster or Shirley MacLaine. I could sing the role in my sleep, the scenes would be fine, the solo dancing would be…riding the struggle bus. No one was going to mistake me for anything but an understudy.

And, of course, Bobby would have to call out. It was only a two month run, and we were nearly halfway through. Perhaps I was worrying for nothing.

Yet, with every rehearsal I didn’t have a chance to work on — hell, to fucking learn — “Shall We Dance,” the real life nightmare of going on and not knowing any of the lines seemed more and more possible.

A tweaker’s luck is Murphy’s Law even after you stop tweaking it would seem.

My insecurity started creeping into my ensemble work.

The end of Act 1 is the big production number ”I Got Rhythm.” In the middle of the number, all the guys end up in a line at the front of the stage dancing on metal pans with Bobby at the center and me to Bobby’s left. The choreography had us stepping off either side of the pan.

Again, I’d done the show. I did this exact number for three months on tour with no problem. And I hadn’t had a problem with this run till the beginning of about the fourth week.

When we all stepped off the right side of our pans, my tap shoe slipped, and I kicked Bobby’s pan out from under him. He covered as best he could, but I’d fucked him up for that section. We all slid the pans behind us and I continued on with the rest of the number with the inner monologue of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

The next night, it happened again!

I was mortified and embarrassed. Before the third show that week I grabbed a pan and practiced, but I was still slipping. I didn’t understand it. What changed? What was I doing differently? The entire first act, all I could think about was that one moment of pan choreography.

The moment came.

And I did it again.

And again for the fourth show in a row.

I ran into Bobby backstage. “I’m so sorry, I really…I don’t know what…”

He cut me off. “Fuck, John. Every fucking time!” He stormed off. I just stood there. I couldn’t blame him for his frustration, and I was already feeling tremendously incompetent, but I wasn’t prepared for how much that hurt. I honestly didn’t think I could feel worse.

I was called in early for the next show, not to work on Bobby, but to work on the pan choreography. The Dance Captain, who was a tall and gorgeous Rockette, worked with me. She was wonderfully gentle. I think she could sense my anxiety so she knew that adding to it wasn’t going to help anyone.

“So when you step to the side, right? Don’t think of it as stepping sideways, but stepping straight down. Put the weight straight down on the foot. That should keep you from slipping.”

We practiced for about a half hour and her adjustment made sense. It was a struggle to work against muscle memory, but I did find more stability stepping down off the side of the pan and not sideways.

The true test came with that evening’s show. Would this be the fifth fuck up in a row? Or was a capable enough to do fucking step touch choreography.

We got to pans.

We started dancing on the pans.

And…success!

When I didn’t slip and didn’t kick Bobby’s pan out from under him, I was thrilled. I was quite literally dancing for absolute joy for the remainder of the number. As we hit the final pose, frozen, sweating, and panting, my smile was the most genuine it had ever been.

Still, the feeling of incompetence remained, like a strummed chord that wouldn’t quit vibrating. I was embarrassed that I was fucking up something so basic. In a professional production, in a cast that included Broadway veterans, I needed a coaching session like I was a ten year old at my first tap lesson.

So the last thing I was hoping for as we played our last show of the week was for the stage manager to come to me and say, “So Bobby has a previous back injury that’s acting up. He thinks he can do most of the shows next week, but he wants to call out of the last show so he can have more than one day to recover.”

Fuck.

They brought me in before each show that week — finally — for put-in rehearsals.

Again, I was prepared for nearly all of it. I knew the songs. I knew the scenes. I knew the blocking. I would go out there a nobody and come back…still a nobody, but alive.

There were even parts I was looking forward to. I’d become good friends with Brian who was playing Zangler, the Hungarian producer. In the show, Bobby had dressed up as Zangler to convince people of Deadrock, Nevada, to put on a show when the actual Zangler comes to town. In the second act, Zangler and Bobby, dressed exactly alike, sing a duet, drunk, while perfectly mirroring each other.

“I’m so depressed,” says Bobby.

Zangler responds, “You’re depressed? I’m beside myself.”

I was looking forward to that scene because it would just be Brian and me on stage, and I knew, whatever happened, he had my back, and everything was going to be ok. It would be a moment of ease, a moment to breath, in a show that would otherwise feel like a runaway train.

But the mother fucking “Shall We Dance” pas de fucking deux!

I tried.

I tried really hard.

I’d done the best I could to pick up “Shall We Dance.”

But when I finally got to rehearse with Polly and the Dance Captain, it was worse than I had feared. Much worse.

I struggled with most of it, but it was the “death spiral” where I crashed and burned every time.

Bobby and Polly, facing each other, clasping each other’s hands, start spinning around. Bobby then lowers Polly, counterbalancing her, till she is nearly parallel with the floor floating only inches above it as they continue to spin.

We’d get to the death spiral and I’d drop her.

“Ok,” she’d say. Getting up, brushing herself off. “Ok, that’s ok.”

“Let’s try it again,” said the Dance Captain.

We’d try it again. I’d drop her again.

“Ok,” she’d say again. Getting up again, brushing herself off again. With me, she was the consummate professional, polite, and very gracious. Meanwhile, with every crash and burn, the growing fear and anxiety was plain on my face.

We did the show that night with me still in my ensemble role. Outside, I did my normal show. Inside, I was paralyzed.

I was set to go on for the lead and I didn’t know what I was doing. My literal nightmare was about to come true.

As we left the show that night, the stage manager pulled me aside. “Don’t shave until you hear from me tomorrow morning.” As we were playing cowboys in the middle of Nevada, all the guys except Bobby had grown out their beards including me.

“Ok,” I said. It sounded like I might be off the hook? Oh God, please let me be off the hook!

The next morning, the stage manager called.

I answered with, “Can I put down the razor?” I honestly meant this innocently, referring to shaving off my beard, but when the words came out I flinched. Fuck, that’s dark.

“You can put down the razor.”

Bobby wasn’t calling out. I was off the hook!

A little birdy would later tell me that, for as professional as Polly was with me, she had apparently stormed into the Male Principle dressing room, shoved Bobby up against a wall, and yelled, “You can’t do this to me!” She then told management that if I was going on, she wasn’t.

So Bobby, back injury and all, finished out the week as well as the final couple weeks of the run.

Some friends have said that wasn’t her call to make, but, honestly, let’s be real: it was the right call.

Yet, my relief was short lived, replaced by thick, itchy blankets of incompetence and shame.

I could argue that it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t have a chance to learn the choreography, that they shouldn’t have used Stroman’s choreography for the audition, or some other excuse.

But, in the end, I had said yes to a job that I knew — I knew — I couldn’t perform. And because of that, Bobby didn’t have the option of calling out, having to perform through an injury, which wasn’t fair to him.

Now, I will say, Bobby wasn’t the nicest guy I’d ever worked with. Pan kicking and failed understudy-ing aside, we were never going to be best friends.

But he was a real capital “D” Dancer.

I was not.

I had been pretending to be.

AMDA had me convinced that my singing and acting wasn’t enough, that I needed to sell myself as a triple threat or I wouldn’t get work.

So I leaned into my ability to tap dance and faked the rest.

I faked it good enough to get that tour of Crazy for You when I first started.

I faked it good enough to get that production of 42nd Street where the stage manager tried to tell me “John, you’re not a dancer.”

I faked it so much that I honestly thought I was a capital “D” dancer, despite my lack of training, technique, and skill.

I faked it so much I nearly went on for the lead in a dance show, risking a level of humiliation that only existed in my nightmares.

Well, I was done faking it. I was done pretending. I was done dancing.

From now on, I was a “mover,” and nothing more.

After the final show, we packed into vans to make the trip back to the city. I was relieved the ordeal was over.

“John.”

I was looking forward to my next gig.

“John.”

A production of Cabaret (not a dance show) down in South Carolina where I’d done 42nd Street six years earlier.

“John!”

The cacophony of conversations in the van went quiet as the short Italian choreographer sitting shotgun finally got my attention.

“Yeah?” I answered from the back of the van.

“Get your jaw checked out.”

I didn’t quite understand what he said. “What?”

“Your jaw. Get your jaw checked out. It’s very distracting.”

“Oh.” My meth jaw. He was talking about my meth jaw which still hadn’t gone away even three years clean. “…ok.”

“We nearly went with someone else.”

This felt like a parting shot. A cheap parting shot.

And it found its target.

Setting aside never receiving a single note about my jaw or you nearly went with someone else but instead you had me understudy the fucking lead?

He was saying my meth jaw nearly cost me a job.

I didn’t think I could feel worse, but there it was. I was glad the cab of the van was dark, because the tears flowed freely for the remainder of the ride.

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