On Writing, Not Singing

Over the weekend, I went to an LGBT themed brunch, where I must admit, I felt like a bit of a hypocrite; on the other hand, I still certainly count as solidly B.

In any event, I met someone there who is a high-level Broadway producer, and when another one of the guests mentioned that he had written something and the producer politely agreed to look at it, I just bit the bullet and told him about my play Duet. (If anyone is interested in reading it, you can post a comment with your real email address - which I will delete later if you ask me to). I don't actually know how this play got written. My mother always wanted me to "be" a writer (I - to my disappointment - got the English medal not the music medal when I graduated from High School) so I probably do write a lot better than I sing, but I had never written fiction before.

But when all the brouhaha was going on with The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed, and there was really no one I could talk to because everyone I knew was either a friend of my partner's or of his, this play just sort of wrote itself. I mean he was very funny and a bit pretentious. An excellent voice teacher, yes, but besides his not knowing the difference between being seductive and being supportive, or being seductive and being appreciative, or what you will, he also did spout a lot of new-agey claptrap that was quite funny when I put it all down on paper.

The line of the decade (after hearing me sing "Mon Coeur)":

TMWSNBD: What are you singing about there. Translate it for me.

ME: My heart opens at your voice like a flower at the kiss of dawn.

TMWSNBD: Sooooooo. What kind of flower do you think she's talking about?

This play did have its world premier at a small community theater in Texas and sitting in the audience hearing people laugh at the lines I had written, which came from the torment I had suffered, just put me over the moon. I think the play is really good. It's funny and well-written. If it were a movie it would be called a "chick flick". The off-Broadway theaters I had sent it to weren't interested....not edgy enough, but even people from there seemed to be impressed with it.

So who knows? Maybe that tortured and transformative phase of my life will live on forever?

The Shop Around the Corner

At the end of the month I have an audition for a role in a Handel opera (a long shot, of course, since the character is a romantic love interest and the production was advertised as avante garde) so when I wasn't able to find a CD of it at The Lincoln Center Library, I decided to buy one at The Juilliard Store.

Which brings me to a subject I have pondered for quite some time. What's a gal with a modest talent to do when her "local" this, that, and the other are Lincoln Center, the Met, and Juilliard??

Many's the time I wished I lived in "East Eggshell, Iowa", a generic catchword used by one of my former coworkers for small town America. If nothing else, I could be a working comprimaria at their local opera house and a minor celebrity in the grocery store.

Many readers know that, in addition to singing opera, I have also written a play. It's called Duet and is the story of a young church singer whose life is transformed forever by singing Dalila's "Mon Coeur S'Ouvre a ta Voix" under the tutelage of a charismatic voice coach. The play was produced in a tiny town in Texas and there was a story about me in their local paper. When I was interviewed, the interviewer asked if I would like a copy of the story sent to my "hometown paper". "Won't the people back home be proud of you?" he said. Well, I just burst out laughing. "My hometown paper is The New York TIMES", I said. "And no, I don't think they'd be interested."

So why haven't I moved? First of all, New York is where I come from so there's noplace to go back to. I wasn't strictly born in the Big Apple itself. I was born in Brooklyn Heights which used to be a lot like a small town, but now rents are prohibitive (my apartment in the armpit of Lincoln Center is rent stabilized), and it has lost its small town flavor. When I was growing up there was a theater troupe called The Heights Players which really was for the locals (in those days primarily housewives who had once dreamed of being actresses)and I and other local children sang in the chorus if they did a musical, but now as I understand it's overrun with people from the tristate area who are serious about having careers in the theatuh, much as the no-pay no-fee opera groups that used to comprise the Opera Underground several decades ago have now re-emerged as prep schools for yappers and resting places for managed professional singers between gigs.

So Brooklyn Heights really isn't an option. And when I add to the mix that there really is noplace I could live more cheaply, not to mention that I've never learned to drive, I'm sort of stuck here. Which is fine, most of the time, I just sometimes have these yearnings not to be such a tiny fish that I can't even really swim my way into a tiny pond.

Unless you count church fundraisers of course.

If I haven't mentioned it, my profile picture shows me hanging out in a minister's office preferatory to entertaining the congregation and their friends with the Habanera. An hour of dressing, including professionally applied stage makeup and a wig, for less than 10 minutes of singing, but I had a ball.

Some people idolize celebrities. I idolize "working singers" in my fach who sing medium sized roles and cover larger roles in medium size opera houses. I laugh when I read their postings about "coming to New York". For them, New York is the Promised Land, and my "nabe" is the Holy Grail. Maybe sometime I'll run into one of them on their way to an audition while I'm grocery shopping in my jeans, big hair, and stage makeup.

Oh, if I didn't mention it, even though I'm not a real diva, I always dress like one, even in the grocery store.

Now It's back to listening closely to my audition aria and coming up with solid ornamentation for the da capo.

A bientot.