I went on the stage, but the safety pins were not doing the job. Everyone must have laughed as I sang and tried to hold myself together and keep the suit from falling down. “Are you okay?” they asked.
“No. This isn’t my bathing suit. I borrowed it.” They laughed again. Luckily, I did not panic during the performance, and was spared the nightmare of a wardrobe malfunction.
“Will you come back in a week and sing for us again? And bring a bathing suit that fits!” More laughter.
So that is what I did. I came back. I had purchased a bathing suit that fit. There is a lot that can go wrong during a live performance. Who knows? Perhaps the fact that I showed some fearlessness and spontaneity under that pressure and turned the negative situation into an advantage gave me the decisive edge. I got in the show. I won the role of the New Girl. I would sing in the chorus. I would also be given one line: “Can I still see the game?” I will never forget that line!
After the audition, I went back to the head of the school to get his advice. I had only completed a year, but had been invited back for the second year and was loath to quit. I explained to him that I had been offered the job and asked him if I should take it or stay in school.
“What, are you crazy? That’s why you’re here!”
Out of school and starting off in the play, I was so eager and exuberant that some of the older chorus girls said some mean things, trying to put me down for my desire to be good and get better. It was ironic in this new phase of my life how the deprivation of my childhood proved to be an unexpected ally, not just in this situation, but other times when things could feel threatening or overwhelming. It maybe also helps explain why the bathing suit debacle did not take me off my game.
It was a consequence of that law of the jungle, how only the fit survive, mixed in with another axiom—how what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I had learned the hard way as a small child to not be dependent on other people. Away from my immediate family and close friends back home, I had no one I could count on. It forced me to become very resilient. When things were especially tough, I had to somehow find a way to sustain enough courage to keep going every day. With that life experience, I was not going to let the chorus girls’ comments affect me or take me down to that level. I was prepared with a good stockpile of fortitude, something that would prove very useful as my career soon began a rapid upward trajectory.
Being on my own without much cushion of support, I had another resource that kicked into high gear. I put my faith into action, that tremendous faith that I retained since childhood, and it did not disappoint. I had seen how God would help you, but it wasn’t for the lazy. You had to pitch in and do the work too. I went to church almost every morning. I knelt down every night and said my prayers. I asked for guidance. I asked for success. It was not a hollow, naïve, or egotistical mental concept or fantasy, but a mystical presence that I felt deep in my core. I did not feel alone, even back during the hardest moments of my childhood. Honestly, I felt that I was protected, and that I had a special pipeline to a greater force that could help me, assuming that I had talent. And by this time, judging by the reactions of people, it appeared that I did have something to offer.
Although my formal schooling ended when I joined the cast of Wish You Were Here, the real education began when I entered the stage door and began learning from the great masters, the best of the best. Josh Logan was one of them, a very brilliant but also a troubled man who suffered from a bipolar disorder. After the play finished its run, he had a total breakdown. Some people were afraid of him, but I never was. You could learn a lot if you just listened and watched how he worked.
The girl who was the lead was fired. She was apparently a malcontent from the start. “He’s putting his tongue in my mouth,” she complained about the guy with whom she was doing the kissing scene. Josh put up with that for the time being, but soon his patience ran out. When she was onstage in full rehearsal and failed to step into her spotlight he had had enough. “If you can’t find the light on the stage, then you don’t belong on that stage,” he told her as she was let go.
I may have only had that one spoken line in the play, but Josh taught me a valuable thing: “Make sure the audience can understand you. If they can’t hear you or don’t understand what you’re saying, they immediately dislike you.” That’s true in life as well. Similarly, I learned that whoever had the strongest intention on the stage is whom the audience would find most compelling. Having performed in one way or another since I was a small child, I knew how to get attention, and I loved it when I did. But advice like this and practice applying it took things to a more refined level.
I also learned that when you entered that stage door, whether you were in the chorus or were the leading lady, it was a responsibility and a privilege not to be taken for granted but cherished
