The Crying Show

Drained, emotionally drained.

I already knew going in, before rehearsals started, that I would be crying quite a bit while learning the music and blocking for Miss Saigon. Even just in first vocal rehearsals, sitting around a piano with the cast, I had to bow my head to weep as quietly as possible while Nicole, our "Kim," sang the moving solo, "I'd Give My Life for You," a heart wrenching song of love and devotion sung to the character's small son, "Tam."

I was glad I was sitting in the back row.

Tam is played by Kyle, a six-year-old actor. He looks like and reminds me of my nephew, who is the same age. Kyle also looks the way my college-age nephew, Shane, did so many years ago, when Shane had auditioned for the very same role.

It's difficult for me to handle when Nicole/Kim is singing to Kyle/Tam in rehearsals. I see my own mother's face as I watch Nicole sing about parental devotion and sacrifice to Kyle, who is a tangible and corporeal representation of my inner child and vulnerability.

And I am absolutely loving the entire rehearsal process. I am trying to be consciously aware of how much I appreciate the opportunity to be part of this amazing and special project. Many of the cast members, from as young as 17-years-old to almost-my-age, have done the show before. A few of them were in the national tour. The directing and creative team sincerely care about and respect the story of the show and the way it's told.

It is not a "happy show," but it is a joy and a privilege to be part of this cast that is synchronized in unspoken understanding and a willing, mutual effort. Everyone demonstrates a high level of professionalism in that they all know how to show up, and shut up, and focus on the task at hand.

I told a coworker that one of the reasons I'm enjoying the rehearsal process so much is because this is one of the first times in my life that I feel as though I'm in the middle of a storybook, bringing it to life.

But oh, how we cry. During a climatic scene in the second act, when the iconic helicopter swoops in from above, we are screaming at an uppermost level of desperation as Vietnamese villagers, pleading with American G.I. soldiers to let us in past the border gates and fences, begging them to save and rescue us. Every cast member has been so genuine in their individual performances that we all seem to feed off of and support each other. The only way I know how to pull off the level of desperation needed for that scene is to think of my late pug, Caesar, as I scream to be united with my son. With the heartbreaking cries and pleas of the other cast members, the desperate tears flow easily.

I am exhausted. And I am at my happiest, my most content, from the fulfillment of doing what I love best and from the satisfaction of getting to be part of such a high quality production. It has been worth the lack of sleep. It hasn't been too bad during the daytime, sleepy at my job's desk, and yet, feeling peaceful and grateful while I anticipate the evening's pending rehearsal.

I have been listening to the music from this show for two decades, now. I should have made more effort to get into a production of it much earlier in my life, even for the national tour. But I have lived a lot of my life in the "better late than never" mode. Now, as an older performer, the young women of the cast affectionately call me "Auntie," partially because of the "mama-san" character I play in the opening bar scene. It is an endearing moniker that warms my overly-emotional heart, reassuring me of the bond we have already formed in our little theater family.

Yes, better late than never.

For information about tickets and show times, please visit Candlelight Pavilion's web site.

(The photo above is from the rehearsal of of yet another emotionally-charged scene where soldiers intimidate and abuse the main character, Kim)

Call Me Aunt Peter

An interracial baby boy was born, recently, to two of my coworkers. "Aunt Peter loves that you had an Asian baby!" I joked. Neither the mother nor the father, who both laughed (thank goodness), are of Asian descent. Their newborn son just looked rather Asiatic in his first twenty-four hours.

I'm glad I can make people laugh with my feminine nickname. And I'm glad I feel relaxed about making fun of myself . . . now. There was a time when I didn't laugh about my silly moniker.

"Prissy, your Aunt Peter is here," Jerry would say to his cat when I came to visit.

Years ago, Jerry and I had become close friends at work. He was very supportive when I first came out of the closet and struggled, as a young adult, to try to find a compromise for my sexuality and Christianity. He had always been there for me when I needed a shoulder to lean on, especially the shoulder of a Christian friend.

Jerry was also willing to provide a listening ear when I started attending a weekly support group for ex-gays. It was a twelve-step program for Christian men who wanted their sexuality to stop interfering with their spirituality, however that may be interpreted.

In our effort to become complete as heterosexual men, one of the key theories we learned was the importance of shunning all things feminine from our personalities. I explained this to Jerry, and pointed out how damaging it was for him to address me with a feminine title.

And I had to emphasize that I was being completely serious.

The irony is that Jerry was not the most masculine of my friends, although he swore he was straight, from the day I had met him. Compounding the irony was the fact that we had worked together in entertainment - for Disney. Most of my friends from Disney and theater naturally had a finely tuned sense of gaydar. And most of those same people thought Jerry was very, um, "sweet."

Years later, as a single man, Jerry was still maintaining his heterosexual status. And it was years later that I finally went back to school to major in Gender Studies. Two years of soaking up the liberal and interesting perspectives of this field made me more open-minded about people's sexuality, including Jerry's.

Having been raised in a Christian family, it took a while for me to detach from a "black or white" lens. You were either straight or gay. You were either Christian or you were not. Learning about human sexuality helped me to appreciate all of the in between shades of greys, and pinks, and lavenders of people, including Jerry.

I also learned to appreciate the notion that "shunning all things feminine" is rather misogynistic. In the simplest nutshell, some men don't want to identify with women because it is beneath them. If women are inferior to men, then men should not want to be associated with any of their traits or qualities.

Balderdash!

I love being Uncle Peter to my nieces and nephews. And I adore being an honorary auntie to my friends' children. I look up to quite a few women in my life: my own Aunt Pat, my dance teacher, Dede, and the CEO of our workplace, a role model for graciousness. It is an honor to emulate them, knowing even just a small part of the obstacles they have had to overcome.

So, I embrace the feminine in me, and the masculine. I love and accept that which is one hundred percent Peter Varvel.

(The photo above is of BFF Kathy's two children, Abby and Jonah, and me. At least they still call me Uncle Peter . . . for now).

That Other Place

Someone had asked me, years ago, if dancing took me to an almost spiritual level. He had heard that performing could be a religious experience for professional dancers. I regretted having to tell him that while I had enjoyed performing on stage, I hadn't experienced that euphoric ideal yet. I hated having to disappoint him.

Although I was 23-years-old, at the time, I was emotionally young, still. But I wasn't truly a professional dancer, even after achieving my desired status as a paid performer - at a dinner theater! I had started late in life as a dancer, getting my formal training after I had turned eighteen and had moved out of my parents' house. It would be years before I would even begin to comprehend the spirituality of dancing.

But I did enjoy those performing-induced endorphins early on. The natural high from physically exerting my body while performing live for an audience was addicting. I wanted more.

That was a long time ago. In the last few years I have been feeling a little angry, now and then, about my dancing days being behind me. Having started so late, I realize how lucky I am that I got to dance at all.

But it wasn't enough. I had wanted more, so much more. So I've started performing again this year, age be damned.

I will start rehearsals soon for "Miss Saigon." I have been walking around work feeling a quiet joy of anticipation, walking from my office past cubicles, thinking about the most recent dance audition that helped me get cast as one of the ensemble.

Now that I am older, I'm just grateful that my body can still "do it" when I go to the rare dance audition, grateful that I can still pick up the steps and execute them at a fairly strong level (thank goodness for all of the workouts of lifting weights, jogging, and Pilates). It is mortally exhausting, and yet I still have the urge, the drive to dance, to perform!

I think about the martial artsy/military-esque routine for "Miss Saigon's" audition, and the angry Vietnamese soldier I was trying to put forth. It was almost like a removal of my conscious self, in typical actor fashion. I got out of my own way to let another persona inhabit the dance and the movements and the storytelling.

While going over the dance audition in my mind this week, I realized that I was able go to that other place outside of myself, and into performance euphoria.

And I think, finally, at my age, I'm beginning to understand more about what it means to reach a more spiritual level via dancing.

Better late than never.

Marsha Grisham, or What I Learned from JB

"Marsha Grisham?" he asked. "Oh, I've worked with her. I was one of her dancers"

JB meant Martha Graham. He was pretending to be a name dropping braggadocio, a character that made me and other coworkers laugh. We knew by his barely perceptible tone of sarcasm that JB was well aware of getting the name wrong.

"I've also worked with Alan Hayley. I was in one of his original dance troupes."

I'll always keep a special place in my heart for JB, and not just because we can carry on entire conversations by quoting Bette Midler lines from Beaches, or from the Divine Miss M's comedy album "Mud Will Be Flung Tonight!"

JB: "One time I mixed Midol with speed - I had my period six times in one day!"
Me: "But I had to give up speed . . . I started to understand what Charo was saying."
JB: "Where're those Hebe's that wrote this act?"

JB taught me something important about comedy that I will never forget. I am not naturally funny, as much as I would like to be. I admire funny people, people like JB that can keep us in stitches.

"If you're going to make a comment in jest," JB explained, "if you're just being facetious, make sure to say it in a character voice, so people will know you're joking."

I can be one of the most inappropriate people I know, with what comes out of my mouth. I'm still learning, even at my age, the balance of when it's okay to let loose with inappropriate remarks, and when to censor myself. JB's advice has been useful more than once while trying to achieve this balance. I'll always be grateful to him for that.

When working with dancers and talking about favorite shows, the jazz and burlesque styles of Fosse inevitably come up. And JB would inevitably pipe in.

"Bob Foster? Oh, I've worked with him."

JB is also a skilled and talented photographer. The photo above is a kind of spontaneous moment that he had captured of the two of us.

Stronger

I was resistant to the film version of The Hunger Games when it first came out, earlier this year. I hadn't even read the book, yet, but I didn't want to indulge the concept of teenagers murdering each other, even in fictional form. Even so, I knew I would give in to this most recent book-to-movie fad immediately if I just gave it a chance, judging by the comments I had read on facebook.

And hooked I was, when I read the first book cover to cover during my vacation.

I appreciated the symbolism of the lethal competition, especially in the main character's rebellion against government control. So many graphic, vivid, and even shocking scenes described in the book, scenes that I couldn't stop thinking about.

When I returned from vacation I found myself replaying the gruesome attacks in my mind, while jogging, including the venom-induced death by Tracker Jacker mutant wasps. The deadly insects seemed to be a corporal representation of the slings and arrows we endure in life, emotional and otherwise.

While jogging, another favorite fairytale death came to mind: the iocane powder scene from The Princess Bride. I thought about how the hero, Wesley, masquerading as the Dread Pirate Roberts, had spent some time slowly building up an immunity to iocane powder.

I told BFF Kathy that maybe we are able to build up an equivalent immunity of the emotional iocane powder in our lives. Whatever upsets us, whatever our own version of Tracker Jacker wasps are that we feel attacked by, maybe we need to embrace it. Maybe we can absorb the pain and venom of some situations, and process it in order to survive it, become stronger.

I don't want to hurt other people, but neither do I want to be hurt. I would not want to kill competitors in something as severe as the "Hunger Games," but neither would I want to be killed.

On an emotional level, instead of deliberately hurting others, even in self defense, can't I just build up enough strength and immunity to be able to withstand minor attacks? Given a choice, I would rather not, of course.

But we all know that we don't always have a choice in these matters, in our own individual lives. So I aim to make constant effort, to continually improve the odds in my favor.

"I have spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder."
~Wesley, The Princess Bride

Schizo-FUN!-ia

It's been a good year for shows, so far.

After singing in the geek chorus for Geeks! The Musical, I got to be part of Inland Valley Repertory Theatre's production of Hairspray. I didn't get the part I had auditioned for, Corny Collins, the television host. But later, I was asked to fill in for the role of Male Authority Figure, a role that covers the bit parts of school principal, prison guard, and Mr. Pinky, the flamboyant dress shop owner.

The role also included Mr. Spritzer, the president of the Spritzer Hairspray company, who is in cahoots with the villainous Velma. Boy, did I have a good time! Once again, I felt lucky that things worked out the way that they did. Most of my performing experience has been singing and dancing, so I value the opportunity to do any non-singing, non-dancing parts.

Mr. Spritzer turned out to my favorite character. He ended up being a prissy, uptight, mousey, and nervous conservative, the way he came out of me. At first, all I could hear in my head was Droopy's voice (that nasally, sad sack cartoon dog) in the way that I vocalized the company president. Spritzer's posture was perpetually hunched over in the way I "felt" him, physically, constantly wringing his hands in worry, and always wrinkling his nose, as if he smelt something distasteful. He was also very jumpy, startled by any sudden dance movements of the teenagers-on-TV, or flinching at any musical outbursts during the songs.

I was a little disappointed not to be in any of the dance numbers, age-inappropriate as it may be for me, for this particular show of nostalgia. But I was happy just to be in rehearsals, watching the younger cast members dance . . . dancers half my age or younger, many of them young enough to be my daughters or sons.

My mother attended a performance with my Aunt Pat. She said, more than once, "I can't believe I'm old enough to have a son playing older characters on stage!"

Yep. I'm just glad that there are age-appropriate parts for me to audition for, still. I'm grateful for this production of Hairspray. Each and every cast member was amazingly talented. The production and directing team was on top of their game. I was impressed with how efficient and organized they were. And we all bonded so quickly, in a supportive atmosphere of mutual respect and admiration.

I'm sorry I missed the chance to be part of their production last year - Chicago! - but I'm grateful to get my foot in the door with them this year, and to have the chance to make a good impression.

I hope I did.

It's been a good year for shows. I was just cast in an upcoming production of Miss Saigon, as part of the Vietnamese ensemble. This is a show I have always wanted to do, and I continue to be grateful for performing opportunities, for dreams come true.

I can cross a couple more wishes off of my bucket list.

The photo above is of my new friends Jamie, as Velma Von Tussle, and Cesare, as Corny Collins, in Inland Valley Repertory Theatre's production of Hairspray. The one on the left with the squinty-eyed sourpuss face is yours truly. Photo credit: James Isaac Creative

Mallorca, Baby!

♪♪ Vacation, all I ever wanted . . . vacation - had to get away! ♫

It was a week of sleeping in, a week of overeating and underexcercising. It was a week of doing nothing except swimming and laying out by the pool during the day, and talking around the dinner table late into the night. There were a couple of day trips, but mostly, it was a week of catching up and just enjoying each other's company.

It was the second reunion with the dancers from my first cruise ship contract. It was also an anniversary of sorts. It has been twenty years since we were all first hired for Princess Cruises; two decades since we had first met each other in Los Angeles for rehearsals.

The women all look as young and fit as they did at the last reunion a few years ago. They could literally fit into their show costumes, still. It was the boys who had put on the weight, I must confess.

Susanna, originally from England, is currently living on the island of Mallorca with her partner and their son. Located near the coast of Spain, we all agreed that it would be a fun and affordable destination for our get together. Susanna found a marvelous rental home with ten bedrooms, and more importantly, right next to the beach! (pictures to follow in a future post).

Rather than going out every night for dinner, we order a truckload of groceries and mostly cook and clean together, morning, noon, and night, during our reunion week (I mostly help clean - mostly - since I don't actually cook). We have always worked well together and played well together, this little group of ours. In our first contract, we had organized cruise ship activities during the day and danced in stage shows at night. And we discovered that we genuinely enjoy each other's company.

Staying in for most meals made it easier to feed the six children that came to Mallorca with their "mums" (as the English say). The kids, ranging in ages 3 to 11, were content to divide their time between the backyard pool, the pool table indoors, and the Wii video games. I enjoyed watching them play a new video game called "Skylanders," complete with collectible, electronic-interactive figures.

There's not much to report about our week on the island. It was not an exciting trip, which is exactly what I wanted in a get-away excursion. We took the kids to a local pool park, and went on several water slides. Incredibly, they were anxious to get back to the pool at the villa (as they called it). "Look around you. You're surrounded by pools!" one of the Mums pointed out.

I was anxious to get back to the villa to finish reading "The Hunger Games," which Dan-from-Chicago had brought. He's not from Chicago, actually, just the greater Chicago area. But that is the five syllable moniker I have been using for almost two decades, now.

I loved going to buy groceries with Susanna at the local supermarket. I heard both the local Castellano Spanish that Mallorcans speak, as well as Catalan. The latter, though musical to the ear, was all Greek to me.

I also loved the many scooters that islanders drove on the roads. In addition to the smaller sized engines, I saw many maxi-scooters similar to the Kymco scooter that I ride, as well as other brands similar to the Suzuki Burgman and Honda Reflex. As I had heard was common in Europe, I saw many more smart cars on the island than I do in Los Angeles. Mini Coopers were abundant. Hummers would have been out of place there, especially on the smaller roads.

Jo's husband, Paddy, joined us for a few days. We had met him in the past, an Englishman who has both our friendship and our admiration for his continuing career. Paddy has been performing as Amos (AKA "Mr. Cellophane") in the current West Side production of "Chicago." During our holiday (as they also say) Paddy encouraged me, more than once, to continue blogging again. He was very complimentary about my writing and posts.

So, here I am, writing about "what I did over my summer vacation." And I thank you for it, Paddy. I'm thankful for the continued support and love of such fun friendships, for more than twenty years, now.

Here's to twenty more and beyond.