Oh the glitz and glamour of show business! Right? That’s what I thought when I dreamed of life on the great stage. There were certainly many times when I felt like hot stuff in feathers and sequins under the perfect lighting. Oh the romance, the mystique, and the allure of the theater! What I didn’t realize was that I’d also have plenty of opportunities to make a complete fool of myself, as you’ll read below. When things go haywire and you feel humiliated, there’s no need to have a cow. Learning to laugh at yourself can be a lifesaver and keep you chipper until the cows come home.
Please enjoy your next excerpt from
by Kristi Lynn Davis
The Cow’s Behind (and Other Embarrassing Parts) cont’d
The following spring when auditions came around again for Starlight Bowl’s Summer Series, I was poised, ready, and waiting with a year of voice lessons under my belt and a new song prepared. Happily, Don and Bonnie Ward were at the helm again. “Your work on your singing has payed off. You’ve improved a lot, ” they announced after my vocal audition, like proud parents giving their nod of approval. Between my audition and my work on The Wizard of Oz the previous year, I must have done something right, because this time I was cast in all five shows for the summer stock season. They even cast me in Camelot, which everyone knew was a singer show not a dancer show. I was on cloud nine, my feet barely touching the ground. I was going to be performing and only performing–no more teaching aerobics or selling art–for the whole summer! Being one of only three gals and three guys cast for the entire season, I felt like I had won the lottery.
Summer stock–a series of plays performed over the course of the summer, mostly outdoors–served as an intensive musical theatre immersion course for me. Once the first show was up and running, we’d started rehearsing the next show during the day while performing the current one at night. Talk about a way to learn the ropes lickety-split. My salary–$200 a week per musical–didn’t get me far, but with paychecks from working two musicals at a time overlapping, I could get by. It was enough dough that I could afford moving into my own studio apartment in a two-story, eight-unit building in Hillcrest–a fashionably funky neighborhood in San Diego close to where I’d be performing. Hillcrest was a charming town chock full of cute shops, swanky restaurants, and flocks of gay men. Hence the charm, cute shops, and swanky restaurants! I adored it.
Every morning I’d cheerfully make coffee and put on my leotard, aerobics shorts, and terry cloth head band, channeling Olivia Newton John from her 1981 hit, “Physical.” I’d juice some apples, carrots, and celery in my juicer–a healthy California practice I had adopted–to take along with my sack lunch. I’d load up my large duffel bag with every type of dance shoe I owned plus a book, magazine, small tape recorder, pencil, notebook, and water bottle and joyfully head out to WORK at the rehearsal hall. I was happy to get up in the morning, to be able to dance and sing and hang out with outrageously fun people. I felt so alive!
Our first show of the season, Gypsy, was performed at the San Diego Civic Theatre where I’d done The Wizard of Oz. Gypsy is the true story of a famous stripper named “Gypsy Rose Lee” and is based on her memoirs from 1957. It tells the tale of the obnoxious stage mother, Rose, who pushes her two daughters to become famous vaudeville performers during the depression.
One daughter, Louise, is very shy and always takes a backseat to her outgoing sister, June, who is the highlight of the act in which they sing “Let Me Entertain You.” Eventually, June has enough of Mama Rose’s demands and runs off with a boy. Now all Rose’s dreams of stardom fall upon poor Louise. Pathetically, Mama Rose sings “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” to convince herself and Louise that they’ll be okay without June.
Everything comes up more thorns than roses, as vaudeville venues fade away and Louise’s act ends up at a burlesque house and she is introduced to the seduction of stripping. When one of the main strippers is arrested, Rose makes one last, desperate attempt to turn Louise into a star by making her fill the vacant stripper spot. It works, and Louise, who takes the stage name “Gypsy Rose Lee,” becomes famous for baring her body.
In an uncanny similarity to my real life situation, I got cast as one of the Hollywood blondes–an entourage of peroxide blondes attempting to become starlets in Hollywood. In one dance number, I was asked if I could hold my leg over my head and jump around in a circle. “Are you kidding? That’s my specialty!” I replied, this being the very move that had garnered me adulation as a kid in the dance recital at Josie’s. Unfortunately, this time my costume consisted of pajamas and a hideous hairpiece rolled up in curlers–not exactly the glamour-do I would have preferred.
Caroline the Cow
Unfairly, I also got cast in every other embarrassing part in the show. At rehearsal, our choreographer Toni Kaye called over to Dana (the gal with whom I’d flapped around as a big bird in The Wizard of Oz) and me. “What have we done?” I wondered. “I want you two to be Dainty June’s cow, Caroline, for the farm boy number,” Toni announced. “Dana, you will be the head and Kristi will be…” “The cow’s behind?” I blurted out in horror. My excitement about the show suddenly took a dump. I had to bend over and hold onto Dana’s waist, my head resting inches from her rear end, underneath a cow costume, and do a dance number with June. I could see the entire cast snickering, the cow and butt jokes formulating in their brains, and the relieved looks on their faces that they were not chosen to be bovine buttocks.
Staying crouched beneath a sweltering cowhide, into and out of which we had to be snapped by wardrobe, was extremely uncomfortable. My part was certainly easier—Dana had the tricky job of maneuvering the animal’s mouth and blinking eyes while dancing—but far more dangerous being in such a precarious face-to-fanny position.
Toni was apologetic and tried to ease the pain by promising to never make us be animals again. In spite of her asinine assignment, she became one of my favorite choreographers of all time. She was talented, kind, and respectful. I was thoroughly spoiled with my bosses. The funny thing is, being the cow’s caboose was the highlight of my show in the end. The part garnered us so much attention from the rest of the cast that it became a wonderful ice breaker. Cast members gave me cow-related gifts including a cow magnet for my fridge, and, in return, I made everyone cow-shaped cookies for opening night.
As if being the udder half of a cow wasn’t bad enough, Dana and I were also chosen to be Roman gladiators. Set in a burlesque house, we were no ordinary gladiators, however. We were strippers dressed loosely as gladiators, wearing little more than a feather-bedecked helmet and knee-high lace-up heels. As does any warrior worth her weight in gold, we carried a shield and spear for protection. Other than that, we were fairly vulnerable and exposed to the elements.
When the wardrobe mistress handed us our costumes, I butted in, “Where is the rest of it?” The top was a shrunken, pseudo bikini top with clear plastic straps, so we would appear nude behind the shield. For the bottom, we were to wear a gold G-string, which consisted of a one-half inch strip of fabric that went around the hips, embellished with a few, miniscule, dangling sequined decorations, connected by another half-inch strip that went under the crotch and butted up against a tiny triangle of fabric concealing the front. I’m no astronomer, but I’d say this was about as close to a full moon as one should ever get. During the show, we walked across stage safely hidden behind our shields until we turned around to exit, at which point the audience caught a view of our bare backsides. Great. Once again, I was the butt of jokes. Why me? Why was it always me? Shouldn’t the degrading bits have been doled out a little more fairly? It was amazing how many crew members managed to show up in time to see us strut across stage every night. We fought them off left and right.
I was mortified at having to prance around half naked while being leered at, but eventually I learned to make the most fun out of an embarrassing situation as possible. Everyone else was having a good laugh at our expense: we might as well join them and throw it back at them. Herbie–the lead male and Mama Rose’s love interest–had to wait in the wings for his cue at the same time we were there for our gladiator cross, so he always got an eye full, too. He was a sweet, sexy, blond guy close to fifty who had done soap operas and TV shows. I thought, ‘Wow! Here is a real star!” To counteract our embarrassment, Dana and I would try to embarrass him instead. One night we drew heart tatoos on our heinies with black eyeliner and red lipstick that read “Herbie, TLA (true love always).”
In addition to the cringeworthy roles, the directors were kind enough to offer me several tasty bit parts including that of Gypsy Rose Lee’s French maid. Although I had only one line which consisted of two words, “Oui, Madame,” I agonized over how to say it. Should I use a French accent? Should I put the emphasis on the “Ma'” or the “dame”? Should I use Method acting and did deep into my previous travels in Paris, recalling all my conversations with Parisians? When I was fifteen and visiting a McDonald’s fast food joint in Paris while on vacation, I tried ordering dinner for my family in French, being the most proficient speaker of the bunch with two years of middle school français under my belt. My request for “deux Big Macs et un cheeseburger” received the response, “That will be 75 francs,” spoken in perfect English by the French cashier. I felt incredibly stupid. The real question is, what on earth were we doing eating McDonald’s while in one of the greatest culinary cities in the world?
I had two, simple words to say in the show, and I struggled with how to perform them. What a disaster. Acting did not come naturally to me. Maybe I should have stuck with stirring fake coffee and trying not to attract attention. In any case, I was too shy to ask the directors how to perform my line, so I just said the words as fast as I could and got it over with. “Perhaps I should take some acting classes,” I advised myself.
Besides turmoil over the dialogue, the French maid bit presented another challenge–the quickest fast changes I had ever experienced or witnessed. In a matter of seconds I had to get out of one costume, into the maid costume, dash on stage, and say my line. Then I had seconds to rush off stage, get out of the maid costume, into another costume, and return to the stage for the next scene. And every costume included a different wig. To save precious time, these transformative miracles had to be performed in the wings as close to my entrance as possible. As such, modesty was not an option. With a team of five dressers poised to strip me down and build me back up, I was like an Indy 500 race car running off stage to take a pit stop where my pit crew descended upon me, fixed me up, and sent me off in record time. I was amazed at and completely dependent upon their skills and “presets.” I held my arms out like a scarecrow while they unzipped, unsnapped, unhooked, and unpinned. One group yanked off the costume, while another disassembled the wig and hat. They’d signal me when to step out of and into shoes and pants or skirts. Shoes were preset directly under the leg holes of rolled-down pants or skirts, so all I had to do was step in, and they’d pull up and zip up the next costume. It was a masterful process.
After the quick change, I would run to the stage, my heart beating wildly, hoping I was fully clothed and that my wig wasn’t too far askew, which it occasionally was. What an adrenaline rush. Missing my entrance meant leaving the star, Gypsy Rose Lee, on stage in a deadly, awkward silence. Talk about pressure to be on time for work! As soon as I opened the set door and walked into her boudoir, I had to act calm, cool, and collected and smoothly deliver my line, “Oui, Madame,” regardless of whether or not my hairpiece was hanging off the side of my head. Actors need to have complete control over their autonomic nervous system.
Garden of Eden
Our costumes were from the original Broadway production, and I felt like a star simply wearing the same clothing as the talented performers who donned them before me. As far as I was concerned, it was the next best thing to being on Broadway. Our “Garden of Eden” scene get-up caused me consternation, however, being that it was yet another miscroscopic bikini. This time it was adorned in cloth apples and leaves, but there was no shield to hide behind. The long, bleach blonde wavy wigs we women wore provided more coverage than the entire rest of the outfit put together. I was far too modest for the theatre but was relishing my first opportunity to be seductive, nonetheless.
The guys in the “Garden of Eden” scene were also nearly naked–the effect desired–except for a pair of small, nude trunks (that were little more than skimpy underwear) and a stuffed cobra in Mardi Gras colors that wound all the way from one ankle, around the midriff, and ended with the reptile head atop their human head. It was hard not to stare at these young, serpentined, hot bods and easy to see why Eve gave in to temptation and ate the forbidden fruit.
Lesson learned: When signing a theatre contract, one never knew exactly what one might be getting oneself into (the back end of a cow costume) or out of (nearly all manner of clothing). It was painfully obvious I needed to be prepared for anything if I planned to stay in show business. This career was stretching me out of my comfort zone, indeed. Unlike Gypsy Rose Lee, however, I hoped my future shows would be far less revealing.
There’s nothing like dancing as a cow’s patootie or showing off your birthday suit to help prevent you from taking yourself too seriously. But don’t try this at home, kiddos. You can find much less dramatic ways to stay humble. Thanks for reading.
Moooooooooove on,
Kristi
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