Anyone Can Whistle

Hello, everybody! My name is Rose! What's yours?

I have a dirty confession to make.

I was an Annie kid.

There. I typed it.

This is a statement I have seriously taken years to come to terms with: In short, when I was a child, I was obsessed with the movie Annie. I wanted to be Annie. I wanted to live in an orphanage, hassle Miss Hannigan, and hang out with Mr. Bundles and Sandy the Dog. Maybe, just maybe, a nice bazillionaire like Daddy Warbucks and the brilliant Ann Reinking would have taken me in, adopted me, put me in a nice dress, and called me his own...saved me from the underlying torture of an orphan's true life. I guess I had somewhat of an orphan-fetishization complex, if you want to get into the semantics of it - my other favorite movies were Oliver and Oliver and Company.

In some ways, this revelation was completely unexpected...and yet, we all saw it coming.

Since we're in such a confessional mode tonight, hello! My name is Louise. I am twenty-three years old, and I am currently attempting to pursue a career in musical theatre.

Let me try to retrace things back to where it all began...

I grew up in a small town in the Bible Belt. Granted, there was nothing much going on there - artistically or otherwise. Add to this the fact that I was a Jew and had to deal with a lot of anti-Semitism throughout my adolescence. I was also a fat, shy kid with braces and huge glasses, and very greasy hair. I suffered through every adolescent stigma you could possibly imagine. In short, I had no outlet for salvation.

Well, there was the Synagogue. But that's beside the point.

And then, we started doing shows at my school. I loved the thrill of performing. I watched movies and T.V. all the time, but there was very little emotional connection to it. And I didn't have much of a social life, so pop culture, in effect, became my life: Movies and T.V. shows and music. By the time I discovered Broadway, I immersed myself in it. Even though I was an all-around good kid who tested at genius-level, I yearned for more. Much more. I couldn't wait 'til I got out and discovered real, true, high culture for myself.

You have to understand that the corn-fed definition of "high culture" is not the same as New York City's, where I live right now: While Lincoln Center creams itself over the creative Renaissance provided by such new-generation composers as Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel. Michael John LaChiusa, and other guys you've never even heard of, we were, and still are, stuck in Rodgers & Hammersteinland. I started out in the local professional theatre doing summer stock that was completely unreflective of what Broadway is today. I mean, Disney and downsizing are in: Every show we had was happy, whitewashed, and completely made use of the actors, singers, dancers, and peerless Triple Threats that the Greater Midwest had to offer in the ensemble. Today, there is no chorus, there is no tapping, there is no real singing, even. For the most part, it's more like screaming.

But there is some salvation left to be gleaned from this. I think back to that scene in Jeffrey, where Nathan Lane, as a "hilarious gay priest" (per the video box!) attempts to inflict the original cast album of La Cage aux Folles on his congregants. There needs to be a lesson here. I just don't know what it is.

This wasn't something I immediately decided was going to work in my favor. Actually, the odds were, and quite posssibly, still are against me. See, I come from a family of doctors and lawyers. I had to take the sensible path, and they pretty much barred me from majoring in Musical Theatre in college - who needs it? What kind of a career could you have with that? I went to an excellent, east coast Ivy-level liberal arts school that is consistently top-ranked in the country. But I ended up majoring in "straight" Drama, and ultimately hated it there. Sure, I did a few musicals in between, but I was still depressed. I locked myself in my room and watched comedy DVDs in between studying. Forget theatre: The only things that made me happy then were "Mr. Show," Tenacious D, and the Upright Citizens Brigade. They were being funny and having fun performing. I wasn't. I was resentful, bitter, and combative. And, yet, it took me five years to pinpoint the root cause of my depression.

I wasn't like the other kids in college. I was always weird. And, in an atmosphere that is meant to foster idosyncrasy, you'd think someone would at least understand...

I should have taken the hint. While everyone else found their muses in Equus, Charles Ludlam, Bernarda Alba, and Blood Wedding, the one performance that inspired me to go into the acting profession was Nathan Lane in The Producers my senior year in high school. I mean, I couldn't study Shakespeare because I was undisciplined. I cried every night, and the depression took a toll on my physical health, as well: It's a long bloody story I don't usually get into, but, maybe my journey will provide some depth into the explanation, where it will eventually lead. But that's not the point. The point is: This is a journey. And, somewhere along the way, it became quite clear that I didn't have the stuff to excel as a serious dramatic actress. After a stint at the famed Neighborhood Playhouse, and a fuckload of soul-searching, I found out that I had a natural idiom all along, an idiom I've just been ignoring and ignoring for five whole years. This is going to take a lot of self-reacquaintance to fully comphrehend.

Admittedly, when you transplant from the Midwest, move to New York City with a Bachelor of Arts tucked firmly under your arm, and live on the East side, you're starting all over again.

So, I'm broadening my definition and going back to rebuilding those fundamental blocks of what got me interested and engaged in theatre in the first place. I'm training again, I'm learning new things, and I'm coming up with stories to share. I'm on a path. After all, I could have majored in film instead, and been even more depressed, unknowing of who Ethel Merman was, or why Stephen Sondheim even mattered. Or why I was ever happy in the first place. Today, I can't fathom ever being bitter or resentful.

Today, I study at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and practice with a musical improv group. They haven't really known my whole story, and, frankly, neither has anyone else in the creative community. Hopefully, this blog will clear up some misunderstanding about who I am, where my interests lie, and why I do what I do with my life. I have found a remarkable support system, I feel completely in my musical-comedic element, and I have never been happier.

And, yes, I'll explain every reference. Remember, this is a reacquaintance. In some ways, I'm finally getting back to doing what I love: And, yet, I never really gave up on it anyway. It has been exactly five years since I saw Nathan Lane in The Producers, and, watching the DVD tonight, no matter how scary-plastic the medium of film makes his big, funny face out to be, it still resonates. Sure, I'm too old to play Annie Warbucks now, but, then again, there's always Maria Von Trapp!

Hello, again. It's great to be back!

[Blog title taken from the brilliant Gypsy: A Musical Fable. Perhaps either this or Sweet Charity was the first real musical I ever saw...it was a local production. I don't remember who played Mama Rose. Definitely wasn't Merman. Although, it was my mom who reminded me that the college kid who played Tulsa went on to star in a Broadway musical version of Little Women. And he was Jewish! Killer.]