Chapter 1 #2
I found my way into the Jaffe Theatre and smiled my way past security and into the lobby. A theatre employee glanced up from her station and smiled, and I beamed exactly like Professional Actress Tess Gardner would.
“Do you need any help finding the rehearsal space, Ms. Gardner?” she asked.
I smiled and shook my head. “My team sent directions, but thank you.”
“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t, but …?” She held up her phone, and I nodded and waited for her to join me and snap several selfies of the two of us.
By the time she stepped away, thanking me, the seal was broken.
More employees—including security—trickled over, and I took photo after photo, smiling as if I wasn’t thinking about the time I was expected to be at my first rehearsal.
Finally, the crowd ebbed, and I headed to the elevator that would take me up to the rehearsal space.
The buzz of conversation was loud as I arrived, and I walked calmly toward it even though I was desperate to see if the new director had arrived and if it would be someone with anything close to Geoffrey Gordan’s résumé and if anyone had noticed I was two minutes late.
The rehearsal space was already set up for the table read, though no one was sitting.
Small groups of people clustered throughout the room.
Even though I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying, there was a sharpened urgency to the din of voices.
Was everyone as shocked as I was about the allegations, or was it an open secret in this world?
Was everyone wondering who’d replace him, or was I the last to know?
It had been nearly a decade and a half ago, the summer after college, the last time I’d been in a space like this—though to call the rehearsal room at Applewoods Summer Theatre a space like this was being incredibly generous.
It was basically a modified cabin; the lighting was dim, and the air smelled consistently like cold cuts even though the mess hall was at the other end of the property.
The air in the Jaffe’s rehearsal room was fresh in the way well-ventilated offices were.
The chairs all matched one another, and the lighting—while fluorescent and not particularly flattering—had no resemblance to a haunted house.
My film career had gently ascended, from the role in the sleeper hit comedy that I’d booked a month after moving to Los Angeles to the supporting role in the drama with more money behind it.
By the time the audition for Princess Platinum arrived, it was easy to see that my path had led me exactly there.
My theatrical path, though, Applewoods to the Jaffe without a stop in between? It boggled my mind.
I noticed Michael Madden, triple Tony Award winner, standing in a small circle of people, and I made a beeline. He’d already been cast in a leading role—as my character’s father—when I’d received the offer, and I couldn’t believe I’d be sharing the stage with theatre royalty.
I’d all but joined the circle, but no one had noticed, so I hovered just outside of the radius, waiting.
“It’s like the first day of school,” actor Henry Bowman said, as the others chuckled and agreed. Every movement from every person pulled straight from the stage, playing to the back row, broadcasting that the theatre was deep inside of them, while I stood and took up a very small amount of space.
“Oh,” Michael said, glancing at me. A few feet away from me, he was as commanding as he was onstage.
His brown hair was flecked with silver in the way that society said worked for men, and his denim-button-down-with-jeans look crafted an air of Americana thespian, the nicer if less-authentic version of how my brothers back home dressed all the time. “Princess Platinum’s here.”
The others turned to look at me, and I smiled as if Michael Madden’s tone had been pleasant and as if he’d referred to me by name.
“Hi, good morning,” I said. “It’s so good to be here. I’m Tess. Michael, I’m such a huge fan, and I’m so excited—”
I cut myself off when I realized he was speaking softly to Henry, who laughed and avoided meeting my eyes, and that the circle hadn’t widened and I was still a point near but not on the radius, like some baffling geometry problem I couldn’t have solved back in high school and definitely not now.
“What have you heard about Gordan’s replacement?
” asked a woman with short, no-nonsense, light brown hair I recognized as Kathleen Addams, who was playing my father’s new wife.
I’d seen her a couple years ago in a new play at Manhattan Theatre Club that I’d liked, not loved, but her performance had riveted me.
Riveted me and, of course, filled me with an intensive pulse of jealousy for the work I wished I’d been doing instead of more press for the streaming release of the second Vindicators movie.
I could tell from her vowel sounds, flatter than the average person’s, that she was probably from somewhere smack-dab in the middle of the country like I was, and I was drawn to her the way I’d wanted my teachers to not only give me A-pluses but also to like me, to think I was a good person, even if I wasn’t.
I opened my mouth to say I’d only heard it was some wunderkind, but realized quickly enough not to embarrass myself that no one was talking to me and no one wanted my input. Plus, in any business, information was power, and at this very moment it felt like maybe that was all I had.
“If you ask me,” said Michael, though no one had, “the whole thing seems like a lot of bullshit.”
The thing about Hollywood was that things had gotten a little better, a few people had taken a few steps back, but many things hadn’t changed at all. Most of the men who’d taken steps back had simply stepped forward again. Theatre, though, I’d assumed, would be different. More civilized.
“Who do you think this so-called wunderkind is?” asked Henry, who was playing my brother.
He was over a decade older than me, but read younger onstage and onscreen.
His hair was a little darker than mine, but there was something about his build and his posture that was familiar; us as onstage siblings made sense.
The remaining member of the cast, Ashlee Romero, shrugged lightly, the kind of small movement you could later claim hadn’t been intentional.
She was the youngest member of the cast, playing my character’s brother’s vaguely inappropriately younger girlfriend, blonde and pretty but, unlike me, had a packed résumé of stage experience.
“Who said anything about a wunderkind?” asked Kathleen.
“That’s the rumor,” I added, potentially unhelpfully.
I was good as an observer, saying enough to blend in and to indicate I knew my role in any given scenario.
I was great at being the center of attention, firing off publicity-approved anecdotes and making everyone feel entertained.
Cast aside to the margins of a conversation, however, was not the role I knew how to play.
“Fantastic.” Kathleen said it like a curse word, and I bit the inside of my cheek to show restraint. “I love it when young men with little life experience get incredible opportunities.”
“Someone young,” Michael mused. “Maybe Ken Argyle. Everyone loved his Doll’s House last season.”
Kathleen all but snorted. I tried to get myself more in her sightline without moving, without signaling to anyone else that I was doing it.
I wanted to shoot back a gesture, a can you believe the way they still let men tell stories about women like we should be grateful?
But Kathleen didn’t look my way; my gesture didn’t stand a chance.
“What about you?” Michael asked, and once he was looking directly at me, everyone else was too.
“All I heard was the wunderkind thing too,” I said, casually, even though nothing felt comfortable about the sudden shift in everyone’s focus, four sets of experienced stage eyes on me.
“No,” Michael said, a mocking blur at the edge of the word. “Have you ever done theatre before?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” I said. “I’m actually trained for the stage. Juilliard. And—I know it’s barely professional, but Applewoods—the summer stock theatre in Ohio—was my first paid acting gig.”
“I did Applewoods too,” Kathleen said, smiling at me. “That’s where I met my ex-husband, actually. Hard not to fall in love with your Romeo.”
“I would have loved seeing you as Juliet,” I said, though I wondered if I was too effusive. Too effusive was the most honest part of my brand, though!
“Oh, no, I was the Nurse,” Kathleen said with a cackle. “You know there’s always one girl they give all the old person roles to.”
I did know, though it hadn’t been me.
“Professional theatre,” Michael said.
“It was all very professional,” Kathleen said, “if you know what I mean.”
I did know what she meant, even if I’d devoted a lot of energy to forgetting about the fact that I’d once fallen in love at Applewoods, too.
Michael crossed his arms over his chest, a move so we’d know he’d given up but not due to defeat. His focus shifted, and the rest of us turned like a Greek chorus, as a group passed through the doorway.
It was no entitled man. A shimmer of glossy dark hair and a flash off a pair of glasses caught light between two people—DTA’s artistic director, Neil Bryant, and Hometown’s playwright, Stephanie Hoff—as a Tony-nominated and Obie-winning director whose Arcadia revival had garnered a slew of critical raves and whose wardrobe had merited two separate pieces on The Cut strode in.
Though the most significant thing to me about Rebecca Frisch was that about a dozen years ago we’d fallen in love, and then I’d wholly broken her heart.