Grease

My days in Grease Part Two: WOW, THAT TEEN ANGEL JUST DROPPED IT LIKE IT WAS HOT!!!

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Earlier, I told you about my antics in a college production of Grease and now I’m back with another helping. After getting slimed by Crista like I was on Double Dare, I wasn’t sure it was safe (or sanitary) for me to ever have a part in Grease again. Despite that, I ended up stepping in to direct the official Fat Camp version of Grease with my friend Rhea after the original director hired had an emergency and couldn’t come to camp.

As we were discussing the play over many drinks at lunch, Rhea convinced a more intoxicated version of my regular self that I should be the Teen Angel. Figuring it would be a blast, I forgot for a second that I can’t sing and immediately agreed to it. Who doesn’t love a Beauty School Dropout and, really, does it matter if it sounds good?

After a few rehearsals, the show started coming together nicely but we felt like my entrance was a bit boring and should have a wow factor (or about as wow as you can get at Fat Camp)…We discussed it and were throwing out ideas about how to spice it up, when her face lit up and she said “Oh My God, the Teen Angel appears to Frencie to offer advice and look out for her, so how funny would it be if he was dressed like a Fairy Godmother in a big frilly dress? Sarcastically, I replied “Why don’t you just hang me from the ceiling like Peter Pan while you’re at it” and as soon as it was out loud, we both knew how funny it could be. I had said it more as a joke, but the more we discussed it, the cooler it sounded to lower me from the back balcony over the audience while I entered singing.

Imagine the looks I got as we went from one woman’s store to the next so I could try on dresses and find the “perfect” one. Tell me which part you think is more embarrassing: A) That I was guy in all these women’s stores trying on dresses or B) That when questioned about what we were doing, Rhea said “What’s so weird about it? It’s for Fat Camp” as if that answer provided any sort of clarity.

It’s always so hard to find the right fit…

Back at camp, we spoke to the maintenance guys and they thought it was hysterical and got to work on creating a swing for my entrance. My vision was of a chariot being lowered from the rafters by professional machinery; their vision was a piece of wood with a rope tied to it. Guess what we got? The latter vision. Obvious red flags should have went up – but I was sober very little that summer and you know how I commit to a role!

On the night of the show, I got into costume and went up in the balcony to wait for my sound cue. As I sat there hunched over, so that no one would see me or realize that I was up there, I couldn’t help but have second thoughts about this whole stupid idea and the scenario that was playing out. I had a bad feeling about my entrance and then became horribly aware of just how awful I looked. Sure, I was a guy in a woman’s dress and floppy wig, but it wasn’t even funny-ugly – it was just an ugly sight. I had frills everywhere and realized a little too late that maybe pink wasn’t my color after all. With my albino white skin and that light pink dress, I looked like a deformed porcelain doll…I was in good shape back then with a full head of hair mind you, but dressed as a woman, I looked like Lady Gaga without the ya ya’s. Who lets a guy with a flat chest wear a dress and forgets about the knockers?

I looked like Lady Gaga without the ya ya’s!

As we were coming up on my cue, the guys holding the ropes couldn’t even look at me without laughing. I was seated on the swing waiting for Frenchie to say “If only I had a guardian angel tell me what to do” and I then I would say “You got your wish sister!” and launch into Beauty School Dropout. That’s what’s was supposed to happen – but as I said “You got your wish sister!” everyone in the audience turned and looked up at me and the music started to play. The guys that were supposed to lower me on the swing over the lip of the balcony and then down to the ground pushed my backside instead of pushing the swing, causing me to fall out of it.

No one screamed louder than me because it almost scared the shit out of me as I was pushed off the swing and grabbed at the ropes to hold on. As I fell, one of the guys holding the rope grabbed my hand and I was dangling there like Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger. Needless to say, trying to sing the song through the screams (mostly mine) and hysterical laughter (everyone else’s) was to no avail. The music played on and at first, I still tried to keep singing the song as they were trying to pull me back up into the balcony.

As I was dangling there like a pendulum, I couldn’t help but think a) good thing I wore underwear and b) good thing the pair of underwear I chose wasn’t my festive American Flag G-string and then c) fucking let me go already!

I checked afterwards to make sure, but it’s not actually written in the stage directions on the script to scream “Asshole, let me go” at the crew members during the show but sometimes you have to improvise. I also never learned the old tuck and roll trick either because when I got my wish – and they released me – I dropped the rest of the way down and hit the ground like a rock to even louder laughter and clapping. I wasn’t really mad that not even one person in that audience tried to catch me or tried help me before, during, or even after the fall, and I also wasn’t mad at the piano player who didn’t think to stop playing the song at all during it either. I know what you’re thinking “It could have been worse” but that’s not the end of it.

I didn’t get hurt in the fall unless you count my pride – cause that bitch was a-hurtin’ fo Sure! I also didn’t get hurt by the dangling swing that I fell out of repeatedly smacking me in the face and noggin as I dangled there. All of that might not have been so bad or embarrassing if at the exact moment that I was shifted out of the swing and started to plummet, my dress hadn’t gotten caught on the balcony ledge and started to ceremoniously rip off me layer by layer. After they finally let me go and I fell to my descent, the remaining tattered material just gave way around me. Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark let me tell you something: you are not innovative – I was falling out of the rafters during a show years before you!!!

I did my best to try and keep some parcel of my dignity intact as I did what I could with the performance but imagine how difficult it was to try to get up off the ground and make your way to the stage in boxers and a few strands of taffeta around your neck and chest. God only knows when and where I lost the wig, but I was a mess. I held my head up high, tried to keep from laughing and sing the rest of the song and exited stage right.

After bearing witness to one of the best spectacles she said she has ever seen, my sister Marlene came backstage with her arms overflowing with the multiple pieces of material she had recovered from the wall, floor, and along my trail through the auditorium. With tears in her eyes and trying to hold in her laughter, she said (handing me the pile of material) “I think you forgot this out there…Words cannot even describe…Was it supposed to happen like that?…I thought you might have really gotten hurt there for a second there but…” and then we just burst out laughing. We didn’t even wait until the end of the show, we literally left right then and went to the bar. Not the best tactic if you’re the director of said show, but I had enough and needed alcohol immediately.

I must have been out of my mind to think that it would work in the first place – me and coordination go together like asparagus and a golden shower…Even though it didn’t go as smoothly as I had planned – I was more like Frank the Tank than Frankie Avalon – it was really funny and everyone loved it. You know the old saying: It may not be Broadway, but even at Fat Camp – the show must go on!

I was more like Frank the Tank than Frankie Avalon!

 

My days in Grease Part One: CRISTA – I WISH THAT WOULD HAVE MISSED-A MY FACE!

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Cha Cha from the movie Grease died last week which made me think about when I was younger and still had delusions of grandeur that I was going straight from college to Broadway and then directly to Hollywood. I was in a few productions here and there and (like the ladies said) – I had big parts. More often than not, it was smaller roles and one-liners, but believe it or not – I was also cast in a few musicals. If you know me or have heard my voice on the audio posts  I’ve dropped here, you’re probably just as surprised as I was. I might revisit some of the other productions I was in at another time, but in honor of Annette Charles, this week I’ll tell you about two of my experiences when I was in two dramatically different versions of Grease.

R.I.P. Cha Cha

In my college production I was cast as Vince Fontaine. He’s the smarmy DJ that flirts with Marty at the dance and the director wanted to find me a costume that would be over the top and I knew just where to look. My aunt at the Fat Camp was a little bit of an eccentric when it came to clothing and no one had more “character” or randomly odd pieces in their everyday wardrobe than her. It may seem weird to go through a woman’s closet looking for a man’s costume – but you don’t know my aunt.   

 

After a quick scan through her closest, I immediately honed in on her green, leopard print (almost snakeskin looking) business suit. I know exactly what you’re thinking and I was thinking it too – would it be too hot to wear wool under those bright stage lights? I figured it was better to show her than ask her, so I slipped it on and headed towards the kitchen to find her. Her response was a mixture of two parts disgust and one part confusion that I had chosen a black shoe and not the “appropriately matching brown shoes” because she felt like a brown would work better on me. Other women might be concerned if their nephew came home from college for the weekend and started trying on her clothing, but the only thing my aunt was concerned with was the proper pants-shoes coordination.

 

It’s odd that she would only mention the shoes as her concern because when you remove her big heels and hairpieces, I look like Wilt Chamberlain standing next to her. To say that the suit was a little ill-fitting was an understatement. By ill-fitting, I mean that because of our height difference, her pants were so short on me that they made me look like a lederhosen-clad Hummel figurine.  The short pants were quickly kicked to the curb, but oddly enough the jacket was an almost perfect fit which was strange since my aunt had about forty pounds on me. In my opinion, the jacket’s shoulder pads really did give my build a little definition and needless to say, one look and the director loved it.

 

 

This is about how short her pants were on me...

 

During the school dance scene, the stage directions were for me and Crista (the girl that played Marty) to stand off to the side, towards the edge of the stage, and pretend to make out. Of course, me being the immature ass that I am, I kept lifting the red ruffles on the back of her dress while grabbing for a seat at the same time. She is a really cool girl and didn’t care about it during rehearsals, but come opening night, she said that I couldn’t grab her ass or lift her dress because her parents, grandparents, and whole family would be sitting there in the front row not even three feet from us. She stressed this to let me know that she was serious and I am a gentleman and totally understood where she was coming from, and told her that I wouldn’t do it.

 

I often joke around, but this is actually me from that version of Grease.

 

To me, being a dedicated thespian means truly being “in” the scene, so on opening night, I was “in” the scene. I told her I wouldn’t do it, but I felt like that might be cheating the audience in some way so when it came time, I lifted her dress, grabbed her ass, and then didn’t fake it – I slipped her the tongue! This was not how the rehearsals went, but I thought it might make her reaction to it more authentic if I surprised her and basically, I was immature. I was thinking that I was so funny and that she’d get a kick out of it, but when I slipped her the tongue (And just in case I never said it to you back then: You’re welcome Crista) a not so funny thing happened. Karma!

 

 

 

Her surprised response to my uninvited cat-burglarish tongue being thrust upon her: She gasped and exhaled out through her nose thrusting a disgusting snot loogie right out of her nostril and onto my cheek with the force of a small Jedi Knight. Talk about ruining a moment…I was violated. I mean, call me crazy, but here I was committing to the scene and my character and look what happens; in no version of Grease that you’ve ever seen was there Snot-ilogical warfare…Obviously, I deserved it in some way and was lucky she didn’t pop me right in the chops, but after the assault I missed a part of another scene because I was in the bathroom scrubbing the skin off my face leaving my cheek red as a smacked ass to get that boogie off me. She told me afterwards that she didn’t do it on purpose and I’d like to hope that it wasn’t intentional – I mean what kind of sick individual has boogers locked and loaded as an alarm system in case someone tries to break in, but who knows?

 

I see a bright future on the stage for you my dear...

 

 

The point of this isn’t that I got what I deserved or that justice was served or even that when you do stupid things stupid things happen back to you – The point of this is that Thank God I had a lot of stage makeup on or I’d still be scrubbing that booger off my face. Stage makeup saves lives people!!! Embrace the Theatre!!!

 
As hard as it is to believe that my stupidity would almost disrupt one production of Grease, read later this week about how I ruined another production of Grease outright. A little hint to tide you over until then: No, there’s not a boogie in sight but it does involve stunt work, partial nudity, and yes, of course – Fat Camp!