Dreamcast

By Catherine Hansen

What really goes on behind the scenes in the mysterious world of community theatre? Dreamcast is a look at the most underpaid volunteers on the planet, those who serve the muse of live theatre in the small towns and suburbs of America. A local amateur production of "The Sound of Music" unleashes vengeful nuns, a Korean beer connoisseur, a randy director, a flamboyant choreographer, an obsessive stalker, a brat who knows all the songs from "Wicked" and a pot-smoker who lives in a public bathroom. Love/life, comedy/drama, mayhem, backstage drama and onstage triumph are all here for the price of admission to Dreamcast.

This is my first novel and it is on a subject very dear to my heart. I have been doing community theatre since the age of 9. Why do I keep doing it? I don't get paid, in fact it costs me money. The glory is fleeting and the hours are awful. I wrote this book in part to answer that question.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 4, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595872435

Catherine Hansen

Community Theatre has absorbed so much (35 years) of my life that I thought it was about time someone wrote a book about it. I live in Kona Hawaii where the Aloha Community Players have helped me raise six wonderful children.

Book preview

1

The Hills are Alive

Her palms were sweating and her heart rate soared as Kristen rose from her seat. She should have asked for a blindfold, a cigarette, maybe a last minute stay of execution. Now it was too late. Why did I do it? the poor girl asked herself. How did I get myself into this horrible predicament? The moment of truth had come. Now she was forced to face the music. Actually she was facing away from the music, towards the audience. No matter how many times this veteran child actor auditioned, she always felt like a deer caught in the headlights at this moment.

Auditions at WHAT (West Harrison Actor’s Theater) are like open mike night and central casting call put together. People, potential audience members and actors alike, sit and watch as hundreds of their fellow community members strutand frett their hour upon the stage.

At such functions actors, singers, jugglers dancers and fire eaters always come, as they say, out of the woodwork. The woodwork is an interesting place. People are often hiding out there with their hidden talents and their little dogs too. If you are doing, say Showboat a large black man who just happens to be able to sing Old Man River will turn up one day at breakfast in the local cafe. When asked Where are you from? The woodwork is the inevitable answer. Whether you are looking for someone fat and silly or someone thin and serious the woodwork is the place to look. But where exactly is the woodwork? It is a magical realm, another dimension outside of time and space where the perfect people wait in suspended animation. An audition notice in the news turns up people in droves. Word of mouth also has the ability to help one venture into the uncharted realms of the woodwork.

David Knight, affectionately referred to as our director somehow always managed to get into a messy, ugly affair with someone in whatever show he was doing. It was his modus operendi and his raison d’etre. The backstage drama and romance appealed to David as much as what happened onstage. Often more so.

David Knight was the kind of director actors either adore or despise. Usually the ones he flirted with adored him and the rest, well, you know. He was a Shakespearean actor who had trained in England. His five-minute one-man version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was astonishing. He had only appeared on the community theatre stage once, as Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha. Even 15 years ago David was truly a director at heart. The director of that show had a difficult time with David in the lead role. David insisted on directing himself and everyone onstage with him leaving very little for the actual director to direct. David knew this tendency in himself. Looking back over the audition forms he held in his trembling hands he knew he’d have to be careful. As much as he loved himself and everything he stood for, he’d better not cast anyone remotely resembling that bossy know it all David Knight.

The usual suspects lined up before him with vast amounts of community theatre experience, but no real talent. Among these there were several potential affairs, both male and female. Better not get too far ahead of yourself David. Remember one does have to cast the play after all.

The play this time was that venerable old standby, The Sound of Music. He could direct this show in his sleep. In fact, he had done in 1975 and 1992. For community theatre this show was an emergency script. It sat behind glass in the theatre office with a little hammer on a chain and a sign that said, In case of financial emergency, break glass. Ticket sales had plummeted since WHAT had gone joy riding with such enjoyable fare as, Marat/Sade, where all the actors are insane and bloody and disgusting. The actors had such a good time being inmates in a mental institution, they had all gotten together and convinced the board of directors to do One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Now they were a merry band of brothers and sisters looking for more plays with lots of loonies in them. Something had to be done and quickly. The actors had taken over the play reading committee entirely and were proposing Jekyl and Hyde, Angry Housewives, Cabaret, and even the dreaded One Act Play Night. They had to be stopped or they would run the organization into the ground. What did they think this was, a college town? If one couldn’t even make money doing Oliver or Annie, then what were the odds of scoring big with Sweeney Todd for chris-sakes? Swaggering to the forefront at this point, came Jonathan Hartman, the one board member who didn’t give a crap what the actors wanted. He swung the tiny hammer and broke the glass. The Sound of Music was on the boards again.

The community theater scene in small town America mirrored the political scenery at the time. Bush was up for re-election on his elect me or the terrorists will blow up the whole country campaign, while Kerry promised that elusive

American quality, freedom. Now, given the choice, who would choose to be ruled by fear over freedom? Most people. So instead of the glorious freedom of being utterly insane, throwing corn flakes and hawking loogies into the audience, WHAT chose to frighten the populace with Nazis and nuns. Well, when it all boils down, it doesn’t really matter what show they do, does it? David thought cynically. As long as there are butts in the seats and the director gets a little nookie for his efforts. The show must go on.

In the past, these auditions were more chaotic. Singers performed at will with whatever backup and gimmicks or costumes they brought with them from the woodwork. Auditions then were a wonderful sort of festival/talent show that drew a crowd for their sheer excitement and entertainment value. Of course, this tendency had to be curtailed over the years in the interest of actually casting the show. The proceedings were much more focused now. In a way, though, David Knight missed the old days. The carnival atmosphere of auditions past had allowed him rare time to ruminate on the advantages and disadvantages of working with certain people. He used to be able to sit back in his seat, surrounded by audition forms, vaguely aware of the trapeze artists or contortionists or guitar wielding hippies singing Joni Mitchell and focus clearly on the task at hand: choosing actors he could sleep with and get away with it. David used to be able to get through the entire three night audition process without actually having to think about the play at all. He chose his cast entirely by their measurements. He didn’t really care if Nick Farnsworth had actually appeared on one episode of Magnum P.I. but gave him credit for listing it. What an actor claimed to have done in the past, although unreliable, often showed vast amounts of creativity.

The board had put their collective foot down and put a stop to those wild west auditions where men got in the show just because they showed up and women were cast according to their bra size. Honestly, men were still cast merely for walking through the door but they wanted David to be a little more selective about the women. Nowadays he had to read the play and cast people who could potentially act in it. What a bore.

What David liked about The Sound of Music was the amount of women involved. Up to thirty nuns could be cast depending on the availability of bored housewives and high school drama dorks in the community. Of course, our director preferred the latter, but usually had to make do with the former. The high school kids were just too risky, too picky, and much too taxing physically.

The Sound of Music only had three male leads. All of them could be gay. Considering the dirth of straight men in the theatre, it was good to have options. Looking around the room, he saw only two males. Dick Farnsworth, age 54, and a very attractive black man. Oh God, thought our director, tonight I’ll have to do another gay bar scouring to find my Nazis. He would be lucky if he didn’t end up putting the high school kids and middle-aged hausfraus in Nazi uniforms this time.

Where was that black man last year when WHAT was trying to cast Othello? The woodwork had delivered the right guy, just six months too late. Not a lot of call for handsome black men in 1930’s Austrian convents. I mean there would have been a call for them certainly, but would there have been any to answer?" At this point David flew off on the wings of a sexual fantasy involving nuns with black men huddled under their habits when he was rudely interrupted by his own introduction. His lovely assistant du jour, Amy, had just announced Le Directeur with great aplomb and panache. He must now stand up and begin the proceedings. David wondered for a moment if the drugs he had just taken had kicked in yet. Would the Maestro be able to rise to his feet and throw out the first ball at this shindig or would he simply sit slouching and defeated under the weight of all these amateur actors’ hopes and aspirations? Would the valium allow him to get up at all? This thought led to thoughts of later in the evening. Would the valium and the bourbon he would imbibe later allow him to rise to the demands of the after hours casting couch?

He stood, hesitating briefly to see if the posture would hold. It did. Since he didn’t fall down, he began. Welcome to WHAT. We at WHAT are extremely happy to invite the community along on a monumental adventure into Rogers and Hammerstein land. If you are cast, expect to give up any claim to home or family for the next two months. You will have no life outside of ‘The Sound of Music.’ If this prospect frightens any of you I suggest you leave quietly now. The rest of you must know that should you be cast you will be tortured, pummeled and abused by myself, the choreographer, musical director, and the musicians. Incidentally, this is an all volunteer organization, meaning you will not be paid. The only people who will be paid are your aforementioned abusers. That’s the way it works. If you have a problem with that please join the crowd now skulking towards the door. Having said that, welcome to night one of auditions for ‘The Sound of Music.’

Standard scare tactics intended to weed out the undesirables, i.e. professional actors or any one with a day job that meant anything to them.

At this point the choreographer and the music director were introduced. David Knight, of course, hated giving up any measure of control in what he considered his project. He could certainly have done the choreography himself and probably done a serviceable job with the music as well but the all powerful board insisted on hiring these supernumerary experts.

Expert number one, the choreographer, was James Gorgol, called the gargoyle by those who knew him. Gorgol was from St. Louis, initiated through the rites of Mardi Gras into the fabulous world of flamboyant feathers, fans and beads. He was a true queen among men, a fruit’s fruit, and a party animal of frightening proportions. He was of course the perfect man to whip these cloistered nuns into a Vegas showgirl sort of state. Scary was the general adage used to describe Gorgol. So very funny and so very scary. Christ, who had chosen him? Certainly not our director.

The musical director would be Miss Regina Rietow, the choir director at West Harrison Presbyterian. Miss Rietow had the advantage of incredible strength and single minded sadism which make for a good musical director. She would undoubtedly prove a suitable foil for the choreographer from Hell and provide no sexual temptation at all to distract the easily distractible director. In her case the board had chosen well.

The choosing of a choreographer and a musical director was much like the formation of a successful comedy team. Like Laurel and Hardy, Murray and Belushi, Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, the team should work together to provide the cast with much needed comic relief during the tedious rehearsal process. It was always hilarious, for instance, when the choreographer gave the cast dance steps which didn’t fit the song in question at all, when in fact, the choreographer didn’t even know the song. Equally amusing were the moments when the music director would demand that the singers watch him or her for a cut off at a time when inevitably they were choreographed facing the other direction executing some intricate step or standing on their heads. The fact that these wonderful mis-communications between the two facets of the production often erupted into fist fights was just another bonus for the bored actors.

The auditions began with the singing and dancing and finished up with readings from the script. These trials were actually more of a practice run for the choreographer, since he or she had to come up with a dance for everyone to try, basically choreographing an entire number before rehearsals had even started. The gargoyle had already been brainstorming mightily from the living room of his alcohol induced haze and had come up with all the required steps necessary to duplicate the Sixteen Going on Seventeen number exactly as it had been in the movie. This charming little waltz duet, since it was the only thing he had actually choreographed, served as audition piece for the singing Von-Trapps as well as, why the hell not? the nuns. The dance auditions therefore involved pretty much every woman waltzing across the stage with the one and only Rolf candidate, the black man. Since the captain would not have to dance and Dick Farnsworth was the only captain hopeful in evidence, he stood by to offer his advice on potential Liesls and Marias. Farnsworth’s input, albeit unwanted, went pretty much along the lines the director himself had in mind; that one has nice tits, or good legs, bad facial expressions. (To be fair, the woman in question had looked like she was sucking on a lemon throughout her stint.)

Auditioning the singers had become a chore so long ago that no one remembered when it had been fun. Ah, the good old days, when karaoke and accompanying oneself on a trap set had been the norm. Now it was sing two lines of something from the show or get out. In all fairness two lines of something from the show was