by Mark Morelli
Do you know what the longest, most excruciating sound is?
(A 4 a.m. car alarm? Nails on a blackboard? Any movie dialogue from Rosie Perez?)
No, it is the sound of a camera rewinding. From a front row seat. In the Newell Theater. At the Quirk Cultural Center. In Cuyahoga Falls.
And I am on the stage.
Acting.
To an audience of 10 or 11 people all relatives and friends.
It was disheartening enough to go onstage to a virtually empty house. I had a pretty chunky part in the saccharine stage mystery "Rehearsal For Murder."
Hefty enough to waken at 5 a.m. for four weeks to drum-drum-drum the lines into my head. It is a tranquil time of day the two children and wife sleeping upstairs, my workday still a few hours in front of me a time of day when my brain is relaxed, my thoughts trickle unimpeded and gentle, and I am able to contemplate, with quicksilver clarity, questions like . . .
"Did I make coffee?"
It wasn't much fun. I felt like I was cramming for exams. But I knew the hard work would pay off when the show opened and the audience rolled in.
And then, a few weeks later, to go and perform to a small audience . . .well, it just curdled all that adrenaline. There was no real marketing the play, so the audience came via three ways:
Word of mouth. (Meaning: Virtually not a soul.)
Family and friends. (Favors cast members have to return by attending simila shows, games and helping people move.)
Co--workers. (Actually, this is a subset of the "friends" category, with one difference. This crew you gotta buy lunch.)
And the audiences, bless their heart, were teensy-weensy. So for all our preparation we hit the beach with no air cover.
And then I stood there, slackjawed and blankminded, while the whir of a
rewinding camera echoed off the walls.
There were four empty seats to every one filled. I could not only hear the
whispering in the audience, but I was more interested in what they were
saying than in our own onstage dialogue.
Some say you should do it whatever it is for yourself, to have fun. You
don't practice the cello to make albums, but to put heart into music. You
don't write poems to be the subject of a graduate school seminar, but to
create a lyrical thumbnail.
Yeah, still, this is different. David Mamet wrote, "Theater is a communal
art." It is courtship. That requires two parties. Nothing comes of wooing
the mirror but practice. What if Sinatra had remained timidly in Hoboken?
This theater experience yielded a surprising lesson for me. I gained a new
appreciation for marketing. Perhaps it was no coincidence that while our
show was running I read a People magazine article about singing nuns who
sell their album of spiritual songs online. Here's an excerpt:
"All the sisters at the Daughters of St. Paul in Boston consider themselves
to be in marketing. 'We might have a great message about God's love," says
development director Sister Christine Salvatore, "but if we don't package it
well, forget it!'"
Marketing as God's work.
Donald Margulies' recent play "Sight Unseen" depicts a heralded painter who
is accused by a journalist of unscrupulously manufacturing his career by
hiring, during his salad days, a PR firm.
Marketing as evil sellout.
Is it a sellout to want your voice heard? For me to turn journal jottings
into a web site?
Yes. If the mark of success is recognition first and pride in workmanship
second.
But, there onstage, it wasn't complicated. I just wanted to play to a crowd.
Still, we watch our two little girls in the living room twirl and spin and
hop and sing and dance in their rainbow playtime mufti to an
audience of just . . . well, it doesn't matter how many. The girls don't
even notice we are here.
Come back on the first of each month for a new issue of PAH! And guess what?
I got the part! I play Al Gore in the new Bill Clinton stage musical, "That
Woman, Miss Lewinsky." I am also thrilled to report that Al Gore himself
will be my understudy.
