Chapter 22
Not Canon
Erica called me a couple days before tech started, while I was on my way to rehearsal. The piece on Hometown pitched by Rebecca’s publicist had gone up yesterday on Vulture, including a photo of Rebecca, Stephanie, and me looking into the camera like we were in charge of everything.
Also I’d never looped in Erica at all, let Sasha handle the whole thing.
“How’s everything?” Erica asked, and I didn’t reply because certainly she didn’t care about my answer. “And who do I yell at about this Vulture thing? Did DTA set this up for you? I knew that little social media person was going to be a problem.”
“Verne didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said, merging onto the freeway. “Rebecca needed a push so I told her to let her publicist use me to pitch a piece.”
“Tess, I made you aware that the topic of Hometown’s director is a sensitive one,” Erica said.
“It doesn’t look good for you to champion Rebecca Frisch so …
vigorously. The money’s with the producers, and the producers may have different ideas about the show’s future.
They’ve asked me to limit pieces like this moving forward. ”
“Sure,” I said, because it would be a worse look for Erica to try to pull the story that was already out there, so what did I care?
“And on the topic of Rebecca Frisch …” Erica sighed loudly. “There was some talk after your most recent donor dinner. The two of you certainly seemed cozy.”
“Talk where?” I asked, wondering if wealthy senior citizens posted lesbian rumors to social media. “And of course we seemed cozy! We spend almost every day together. The bond of a show’s team—”
“Cut the bullshit, Tess,” she said. “What am I going to read next, you marching in some parade wearing assless chaps?”
“You can just say chaps,” I muttered. “They’re all assless.”
“It’d be a good idea to bring a date to your opening night party in a couple weeks,” Erica continued as if I hadn’t said anything. “And I don’t mean your brother or Aisha Ward. Since you’re not currently seeing someone—”
I knew that I should have been terrified about whatever buzz was out there, but instead I pulsed with this feral energy that made me want to push the truth right into Erica’s face. “I actually am currently seeing someone.”
“And I have a feeling,” Erica said, “that I’ll do my job better if I don’t know anything about that. Surely you’re aware that there have always been whispers about you”—frankly too gay to be ignored—“and all those memes about Princess Platinum’s more secret superpowers—”
I stifled a laugh, though apparently not as well as I’d intended.
“Pantheon does not consider that canon,” she said sharply, which unfortunately made me laugh for real.
I hated that Max wasn’t on this call with me; the texts we would have sent!
“Though, speaking of Pantheon, my original reason for this call was to make sure you’re prepared for the event on Thursday morning. ”
To announce Vindicators 4, the main cast would be part of a surprise Instagram Live on People’s account.
Since Hometown was going into tech that day, somehow it had been arranged for the three guys to come to the Jaffe beforehand for the announcement.
It was the most rank I’d ever managed to pull, and I couldn’t deny that—while I wished we could have held this off until after the play opened—I was excited to see everyone.
“I’m all set,” I said. “And you’ll be there.”
“That I will.” Erica sighed again. “Tess—”
“Sorry, I’m about to pull into the parking garage,” I said, though I was still on the 110. “See you in a couple of days.”
Erica was not the only one to have seen the Vulture piece, or at least the timing seemed too convenient when only a day later, an interview was published on The New York Times site with none other than Geoffrey Gordan.
I’d just finished my morning yoga when my phone rang, Rebecca’s name, even though normally we only texted. I’m sending you the link, she’d said in lieu of a greeting, and then we sat silently and read it on our phones at the same time.
“This apology,” Rebecca muttered.
“I wish I could hit something,” I said, which made her laugh.
Gordan acknowledges the precarious lines between professional and personal relationships, but disagrees with the nature of the accusations against him.
“Those outside of it don’t understand the intimate bonds of theatre.
I’m sorry if anyone misconstrued my intentions, but I still believe that the stage is a place where we can build incredible things together that may involve some uncomfortable situations.
Anyone looking for comfort should stay out of the arts. ”
I thought about intimate bonds, sitting in a big pile in between scenework, scream-singing songs not originally duets into each other’s mouths at karaoke, finishing off piles of wine bottles while venting about microaggressions.
It was disgusting to excuse blurring the lines of sexual consent with any of that.
“Oh,” Rebecca said, “Steph’s texting me. Can I add her to the call?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Hi,” Stephanie said a few moments later. “I want to hit something.”
“Gardner just said the same thing,” Rebecca said, managing to sound light without being disrespectful to the situation at hand.
“I want you both to know,” Stephanie said, “that I never wanted to work with Geoffrey Gordan in the first place. But the opportunity was so good—when the script was selected by the grant committee last year and it all came together—I couldn’t turn it down.”
“Of course not,” Rebecca said. “If they kill this production and mount it in a couple years on Broadway without me, when all the Gordan dust has settled, I know that’s all Patrick Miles and the rest of the producers.
His plays come closer to turning profits than most these days.
Meanwhile people still say I got lucky with Arcadia. ”
Gordan had been slated to helm the upcoming premiere production of Stephanie Hoff’s Hometown at Los Angeles’s Jaffe Theatre but stepped aside in light of the controversy.
While the Tony-nominated Rebecca Frisch (Arcadia) has stepped in to direct the Jaffe production, producers are hesitant to label this a permanent change.
“We’re thrilled with Rebecca’s work in this last-minute change-up,” says producer Patrick Russell Miles, “but this production was built on Geoffrey’s vision, and it would be a shame if a handful of unhappy relationships derailed that.
The future of Hometown is open, which I think is really exciting.
Theatre is a living animal, and life can be beautiful and unexpected. ”
“Fuck that,” Stephanie said. “Your Arcadia was an incredible production. And it made people money, I’m assuming.”
“I can negotiate,” I said. “I’ll let my team know that I won’t work with Geoffrey Gordan given … everything, so I’ll no longer be attached for Broadway in a couple years if it’s him. I know it wouldn’t technically be a transfer, but given ticket sales I’m certainly still—”
“What do you mean?” Stephanie asked. “You were never transferring to Broadway, Tess.”
I jumped up from the floor, my heart thundering through my body. Rosie raced into the room to see what the matter was. “Wait, how do you already know that?”
“Your team said even though contractually you’d get the offer, that due to your previous commitments you’d never be able to,” Stephanie said.
“Oh,” I said, thinking about the years of films spread out in front of me, and also the fact that Broadway had for a brief beautiful moment been an actual possibility—one of my literal childhood dreams coming true—and it had been taken away from me before I’d even known it had existed.
And that was on top of the fact that Geoffrey Gordan was seemingly making some kind of power play to ensure that Hometown would eventually be back in his hands and out of Rebecca’s, which would have made me nauseated even if Rebecca wasn’t my—my something.
Not that she’d be then, I knew, once the show was on Broadway, even if I managed to get myself out of whatever the next movie was to be there.
I’d be playing straight for the press and surely by then she would have found her tethered wife and her happily-ever-after that had nothing to do with me.
“I—I didn’t ask for that,” I said, “and I didn’t know. I feel like an idiot.”
“Don’t,” Rebecca said. “I didn’t know either, Gardner.”
“I have to go,” I said. “Sorry, I need to try to fix this.”
“Tess,” Stephanie said. She wasn’t smooth like Rebecca but her voice still commanded attention.
“There’s still so much up in the air right now.
Maybe we just go have a good rehearsal, get ready to get into tech tomorrow, prove that this is the right team for the show, and—just, fuck Geoffrey Gordan.
And fuck Patrick Miles, who we’ll smile nicely in front of today. ”
I agreed to that but dialed Joyce on the way in anyway.
It was exactly as Stephanie had said; no one wanted the possibility of me in New York for four to seven months given all the potential money to be made from potential movies.
And right now, with Vindicators 4 a done deal, I absolutely couldn’t commit.
Which meant that I could hate Geoffrey Gordan all I wanted, but I had no negotiation power; even if Broadway was in the cards for Hometown, it wasn’t for me.
Rebecca came over after rehearsal that evening, and I cooked the meal I’d planned before this had felt like a wake for the future of Hometown.
A New York transfer had never been a given for me, but I’d hoped for it.
Was there anything that would feel like more of a dream achieved than to perform on Broadway?
It was a good fantasy, but the whole time it had only been that.