Adventures in Hair

I'm generally an affable, easy-going sort of fellow. But my recent stories about shaving my head have brought to mind some experiences I've had in theatre that are worth telling here. I'm not sure how many of these stories I'll tell today. I may restrict it to one, as I suspect that my overlong blogs turn off those of you with a third-grade attention span.

I drive through Walnut Creek every day en route to Solano College, where I am currently faculty in the Actor Training Program. I teach Musical Theatre Audition Technique. Like anything, you get out of it what you put into it. Like Walnut Creek, it has its nice parts and its not-so-nice parts. CTA/Crossroads was in a set of buildings in a not-so-nice part of Walnut Creek that aspired to the status of strip mall on Olympic Way, across from a 7/11. I heard recently that it had shut down. I don't know if that's true or not.

These buildings, nestled up against 680 Northbound, housed mostly automotive, florist, art supply businesses. And a theatre academy. With a theatre attached to it. The theatre itself had been a pet shop. This posed some problems, as apparently the stage manager -- someone's Dad, as I remember -- didn't think it was necessary to sweep or mop anywhere before, during or after it had been converted into a theatre space. Even when actors were sneezing and having asthma attacks, action was deemed unnecessary.

This tiny little theatre had chosen as its inaugural production the sophisticated Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music. This is a show about infidelity, familial love triangles, courtesans and suicide -- among other things. The theatre was run by Mormons. Many of you might see a disconnect there; the management did not. However, they had lost their director and the fellow playing Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm the day before they were to start rehearsing. Or perhaps when I arrived they'd been rehearsing for a week. I know they were freaking out, looking for someone to play Carl-Magnus. I got a call, so I figured I would go audition for them. I had never heard of the company, but then, I had been living and doing theatre on the East Coast since 1995. This was 2001.

Lesson Number One: Always Do Your Research
A theatre in a third-world strip mall, next to a freeway, in a former pet store, run by Mormons. I would never have gone anywhere near the place, had I known. (I think my then girlfriend knew some things, but she hesitated to tell me, as there were reflective surfaces in the vicinity.) I want to be clear: the only reason I took the job was out of boredom and because I hadn't actually done any theatre since 1998. Long story, I'll safe it for another post.

Lesson Number Two: $tick To Your Gun$
When you ask for $1,500.00. stick to it. If they refuse, thank them politely and leave. They will either capitulate or they will not. If they pay you what you ask, that's great. Invite whom you will. But if you give in to their offer of a third of that amount, do not invite anyone. You have sealed your own doom.

Lesson Number Three: Hold Them To The Dates They Give You
Write down performance dates the moment you get them. Do not trust the management to stick to those dates. They will probably extend the show without telling you, and when your performances conflict with rehearsals for your next project, you might find yourself in conflict with the Artistic Director of a far better company. Note: if you are ever in a situation where Crappy Group's show conflicts with Superb Group's show, choose Superb Group. Crappy group will probably fold due to financial mismanagement within five years.

So I was playing opposite a woman who was a little bit older than me. The management were concerned that I looked too young next to her, and in an effort to remedy this they brought a professional hairdresser in to "frost" my hair. I told them I could easily do it with makeup and they said, no, no, it's our pleasure. She's the real deal. She'll frost it and it will look natural and everything will be fine.

Next thing I know, there's this borderline morbidly obese woman in a tube top crowding into a handicap restroom with me, mixing some sort of paste in a plastic cup. It starts to smell, the fumes burn my eyes, and she's telling me, "We're going to just brush this on and see how it looks."

I'm assuming that this is step one of frosting. The paste begins to burn my skin. I can smell burning hair. I mention this, she doesn't seem concerned, I rinse my hair out and I have orange patches at each temple and an orange patch in the center of the hair above my forehead. I look like a Smoky Calico.

"What's step two?"
"Step two of what?"
"Of the frosting process."
"The what process?"
"Aren't we frosting my hair?"
"Maybe we can add some more ..."

So she daubs more caustic paste onto my hair. By the time it rinses out, it's made very large light yellow patches in my hair. I look like an idiot who has mated with a clown. A large clown. In a tube top.

One of the management people sees what has happened to my hair and does not immediately take steps to intervene. After rinsing my hair again, and again, and again, I ask what the next step is.

"That's it. There is no next step."
"What?"
"You're done. Don't you like it?"
"Well, it's not terribly natural-looking, is it?"
"Edward, trust me: our audiences don't care."

When I walk into the theatre to rehearse that evening, it goes quiet. The actress playing Anne gets oh-my-God eyes and starts studying her script very closely. I still don't understand where the hairdresser lady has gone and why she didn't finish the job. I ask someone if she'll be back, but rehearsal gets started and I forget about my hair until I get back to my parents' house and my sister Hillary says, "Tad, what THE FUCK did you do to your hair?"

The woman playing my wife wears enough makeup in the role that our age difference is hardly noticeable. But now I have to darken my hair with brown makeup and try to silver over that to cover the orange patches. On stage, my grey looks a deep, chlorinated green. In certain lights, because not all of the lighting is for theatre and some pieces are outdoor flood lamps, my hair seems to glow dully, like irradiated old copper. I look dead, possessed or cancerous by turns.

The production is generally terrible, but it does lead to further employment for me: because of a connection I make in that cast, I eventually direct The Cocktail Hour at Pleasanton Playhouse. But that's down the road. And, frankly, everything else is eclipsed by the savory tidbit they saved for opening night.

"Edward, we'd like to ask you not to say a couple of words in your performance."
"I'm sorry?"
"Our audience is very conservative and there are a couple of words we'd like you not to say."
"What words are these?" I'm polite, but now my hackles are really starting to rise. Do they point to the words or say them? I don't remember. I choose say:
"God-damn, please don't say God-damn."
"But it's in the script."
"We'd just like to ask you to consider not saying it, please. You can say anything else you want, just not those words."
"Have you asked Sondheim's permission?"

Silence.

This polite pressure continues. I agree to replace the word. Ordinarily, I would sing,
"The papers ... he mentioned papers,
Some legal papers which I didn't see there.
Where were they, the goddamn papers she had to sign?"

That night, and ever after, I sing something like this:
"The frongly-brongly papers ... he mentioned papers,
Some legal papers which I didn't see there.
Where were they, the krinkly-frankle papers she had to sign?"

Other variations include the golly-gee-whillikers papers, the baby-eating papers, the dog-fart papers, the invisible papers, the fly papers, the oofly-doodler papers, the penis papers. Anything is fine, as long as I don't say God-damn. And they never bat an eye. Neither the audience nor the management seems to notice.

The best and simplest substitution comes to me on closing night. It comes to me right before the line. One word, to perfectly describe my experience with that production:

Toilet.

The audience doesn't even twitch. I'd say my hair had them in its cobra-like gaze, but by this time Hillary had dyed it for me and the silver looked normal. No more Boris Karloff toupee for me, alas. So I must assume that this conservative audience simply had no idea what they were watching. They were there to be polite. They neither cared nor understood. Just stupid Americans, sitting in an old pet store, trying not to sneeze as the Liebeslieders shriek off-pitch at them and the ingenue runs around with band-aids up her shin from the giant hole backstage next to the stairs that the Stage Manager (someone's Dad) couldn't be troubled to patch.