Home > Reel (Hollywood Renaissance #1)(6)

Reel (Hollywood Renaissance #1)(6)
Author: Kennedy Ryan

Sweat sprouts around my hairline and my breath stutters.

“Bye,” Takira says, and slips from the dressing room.

And then it’s just me, sitting with a cup of tea, room temperature water, and all the possible ways I could screw this up. The faint buzz of preparation beyond my door sifts into the silence. The bees working in the hive backstage while the patrons wait, bellies full from a pre-show dinner, or relaxed after a drink or two. I watch theater on an empty stomach and completely sober. I don’t want a thing dulling my senses or making me slow. There could be something I miss. I consume a show like a starved animal, like a tremoring addict chasing a high. Hard to believe I thought I wanted a different life when now this, performing, is everything to me.

Since graduating from Rutgers, I’ve done regional tours, some commercials, done swing for a couple of smaller shows, but this is my first time stepping onto a Broadway stage. In the years since that awful day with Terry and Brandon, I’ve learned a lot about myself. My view of the world, of what was possible, was so limited then. It’s like I was looking at life with one eye open. I might have stayed in my small town, done community theater, married Brandon and been content with two or three kids. Maybe taught drama at our local high school. That is a path my life could have taken and I might have been fine.

They ran me from that life, though, Terry and Brandon. They kicked me out of the nest and sent me soaring. On some level I’m grateful things happened the way they did, but most times when I think of them, it’s hard to find goodwill, and as much as I hate to admit it, grace has been scarce. A wound left untended festers, and that’s what’s happened with my family.

“Five minutes,” the stage manager intones over the intercom.

I close my eyes, blocking out old hurts and moldy memories. Even cutting off the roads my mind would take to the future and what doing well tonight, this week while Elise is on vacation, could mean for my career. I whittle my thoughts down to one thing.

Splendor.

This play. This character. This performance. This moment.

I’ve been in the wings, backstage every night for months. Always prepared, but never put on. Every line and lyric lives in my pores now, runs through my veins. I want to give myself to that stage tonight. I want to pour out every emotion this story demands.

Theater has the power to transform, to transport. For every person waiting for curtains to rise, this story is the vehicle to escape the mundane, the grind, the pressures life imposes on us. I know because I feel those same pressures. I feel the weight of life and I want to be lifted as badly as they do. For someone tonight, I’m the getaway.

And just like that, my perspective shifts and it’s not about the tightness in my chest or the shortness of breath or the sweat running down my back. It’s not about my fear of what could go wrong for me. It’s about what I can do for them. What we can create together tonight.

I stare at the same girl in the mirror, but now in her eyes, there’s a mingling of peace and fire.

“Places, everyone!” the stage manager urges. “Places!”

 

 

3

 

 

Canon

 

 

I prefer film.

I like months to mold a story into my preferred shape, to manipulate with light or reconstruct with editing.

I like takes.

A few chances for my actors to find their best.

I like time.

Theater is immediate. With a movie, I’m bringing something to life. With theater, it’s breathing on me. It’s already alive. I know it takes months, sometimes years bringing a work to the Broadway stage, so I respect the process and appreciate its rigors, but the experience is very different from film.

And I prefer film.

But from the moment she steps onstage, this understudy, something kindles inside of me. At first it’s merely a flicker of recognition. Not that I know her or have seen her before. I recognize this feeling of finding something unexpected and exceptional.

Discovery.

After a while, beauty blurs. In my business, you’ve seen one pretty face . . . so for me, a well-constructed face doesn’t necessarily hold my attention the way it did when I was younger. Surgeons can construct a great face. Beauty can be bought.

This. What she has, what she does, is not about beauty.

She’s attractive, I guess. Even under the thick layer of stage makeup and the wig and the costume, there’s an arresting quality to her.

I mentally strip every performer when I meet them. Remove the makeup, costume, whatever identity they’ve assumed to examine what lies beneath. The bones under the skin. The soul under the flesh. It’s a knee-jerk response after years of casting for movies. I automatically disassemble them into their smallest parts. Even when I’m not working with an actor, I assess them to see what’s there for me to use.

There’s so much here.

If she were a room, all the windows and doors would be flung open. There is an unboundedness to her, even as she exhibits the restraint of craft. She’s obviously well-trained and disciplined, but her spirit gallops like a horse given its head, lengthening the reins until it runs wild. Her face tells the story before she delivers one line. She’s adularescent, the glow of a stone that comes from beneath the surface—like all the brightest parts of her aren’t available to the naked eye, and onstage she brings it out for the audience to see.

For much of the play, she interacts with other characters, but near the middle, the stage clears until she stands alone in the spotlight. The stage is vast, and she seems so small, it could easily swallow her, but it doesn’t. She commands the space and when she reaches the pivotal monologue, anyone else onstage would only be in her way.

Splendor

There’s splendor in our kisses

And awe in every breath

When you touch me, just like that,

just like that right there, the world stops

Beneath your fingers, I shiver. I crumble. Your caress leaves me boneless, weightless

One glance from you, the sun stands still in my chest

High noon, high rise, high on you

My field of poppies, my field of dreams

My splendor in the grass

Splendor, splendor, splendor

Chase me. Catch me. Wrap me in your fantasies.

Feed me from the storehouse of your love.

Let’s sustain each other. Let’s enjoy each other. Let’s find forever.

Each and every eternity.

I’ll trade my heart for yours.

And we will be splendor, you and me.

 

* * *

 

She and I are not alone in the theater. I know hundreds of people around me hear her words, too, but somehow, it feels like she delivers the words to me. To only me. I wonder if everyone listening feels that way, too.

That’s the alchemy of this actress. She reaches you. With an audience this large, she makes it personal. In a story that is pretend, she makes it feel true.

And in a moment when I wasn’t looking, I’ve found exactly what I was looking for.

 

 

4

 

 

Neevah

 

 

When the show reaches its climax, at the very end, the song pries the final note from my diaphragm, pulls it from my throat and suspends it—leaves it throbbing in the air. The theater goes quiet for the space of a breath held by 800 people and then explodes.

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