On Making Off: Misadventures Off-Off Broadway

I like to make theater. I always have. Once, in the fifth grade, I turned a jungle gym into a walk-through haunted house and enlisted dozens of kids to be ghouls. We constructed a maze with our jackets and sent buskers out to the playground to drum up an audience. Nobody told me how to do all this. I just did it because it made me happy. I didn’t know it when I was 10, but I do know it now. Making theater makes me happy.

I’m usually pretty good at beginnings. Endings give me more trouble. For me, beginnings are easy to generate. I find a place to start, create an engaging hook, and then work like mad—until I find myself looking for an ending. That’s where I get into trouble. I suppose if I knew the ending, I could just as easily create a good beginning and work like mad toward that ending. But this isn’t just about making theater. It’s about making a life. And the best part about life is that we don’t know the ending. So, we’ll leave the ending to chance and just get on with it.

This story begins in Los Angeles, 18 months after my college graduation. From the backyard of the house I shared with some friends, I watched our neighbors film a poolside porn scene as I slurped my bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce. I couldn’t actually see much through the slats of the wooden fence, but I could hear enough to give my imagination fodder. This was far more entertaining than daytime television.

I’d taken the day off from my “day job” at a stock-footage company to work on my acting career, which I would describe as stalled—but that would infer it had been, at some point, moving. So, I focused an entire day each week on getting my career on track. It had been a difficult year and a half. I was having a lot of trouble getting a foothold in the City of Angels and had begun questioning my decision to move there. Happiness seemed as elusive as my acting career.

After finishing my spaghetti, I jumped into my Nissan Sentra, cranked the AC, and drove down Santa Monica Boulevard in the oppressive mid-day sun.

The sun is not my friend. I’m a quarter northern Italian, a quarter Swedish, a quarter English (by way of Virginia), and a quarter… Detroit. While the flexibility of my “day job”—cooped up in a cold, windowless room watching sunsets, moonrises, and time-lapse urban panoramas over and over—did not make up for the lousy pay and monotony, at least it kept me out of the sun.

I stopped at the theater I worked at to drop off my dues check. A year before, I had auditioned for, and been accepted by, a theater company in Hollywood. Since then, I’d produced two shows, built a set for another, and ushered practically every weekend—all for the bargain price of $35 a month. And no, they weren’t paying
me
. That is what I was paying
them.
They had yet to invite me to audition for a show, though my time was coming, they assured me.

This theater company
was really more of a club than a theater company, but I’m a joiner. It gave me a sense of community, which was a bit difficult to find in the suburban sprawl of L.A. After calculating a quick cost/benefit analysis in my head, I dropped the envelope through the knee-high mail slot and got back into my car.

This wasn’t how I imagined my life after college. As someone who hates car culture, I never pictured myself pulling into a gas station. Since I’d never owned a television set, scanning stock footage wasn’t exactly my ideal profession. And I never envisioned paying a monthly fee for the potential privilege of performing with a theater company that used me for free labor. People were supposed to be paying
me
. Wasn’t that the point of getting a college degree?

In my mind, I’d be performing on stage, not taking tickets at the door. Afterwards, I’d be wearing a black peacoat, taking one last drag off a cigarette, and then joining my cast mates in an Irish pub to celebrate our success. In my mind, I’d be running through New York City, having one wild adventure after another. But instead—out of fear, I suppose—I chose to get lost in a maze of freeways, search for exterior office building shots in a windowless office, and watch backyard porn shoots through the slats of a fence.

My next stop was an appointment with Patty, my agent of six months. Patty was a chain-smoking, Diet Coke–drinking, raspy-voiced broad, with a slightly collapsed ’60s hairdo. She was right out of central casting—and a little slow to ramp up my career. She sent me on a couple of auditions a month, usually for crime-show re-enactments or minor commercials. Although people told me that going on a couple of auditions a month was good, I didn’t believe them. I’d discovered that L.A. folks would tell you anything, so I believed nothing. I pulled into Ralph’s, picked up a six-pack of Diet Coke, and headed over the hill.

Patty’s single-room office was buried deep inside a converted apartment complex, which was buried deep inside the cleft of a hill, which was located just outside the right side of town. She had no receptionist and no staff, save for an occasional intern I’d see darting from her office. Stacks of headshots, piled waist-high on the floor, exposed parts of a carpet that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. Her desk was littered with yellow Post-its and shards of paper peppered with indecipherable scribble.

“
Come in! Have a seat,” Patty invited. “How can I help you?” She always sounded busy, though I never heard her phone ring.

“
I’m Randy,” I said, pausing at her blank expression. “Randy Anderson.” She remained silent, but I could see her mind working. “One of your clients. I brought you some Diet Coke.”

“
Oh, yes, Randy. Thank you very much!”

I always brought her Diet Coke. It was her mnemonic for me.

“
Would you like a cigarette?” she offered, as if it were a quid pro quo. She placed a Virginia Slim in her mouth and lit it. I noticed two cigarettes still burning in the ashtray.

“
No thanks, I’m cutting back,” I lied. I loved smoking, but what was the point of lighting up with the smoke of three cigarettes already filling the room?

“
So, what can I do for you today?” she asked, as she futilely rifled through her desk to find my information.

“
Well, I’m concerned about the lack of auditions you’re sending me on, and I’d like to maybe think of some ways we can change that.”

A true passive-aggressive, I spoke these words to her back as she bent over, looking for my file.

“
What do you mean?” she asked without sitting up.

“
Well, I’m an attractive, well-trained 22-year-old who can act, and I want to understand why I’m not getting called in to read more often.”

“
You’re nice,” she said as she pulled herself up, cigarette still burning between her lips.

“
What do you mean?” I asked.

“
You’re nice-looking,” she replied. “Don’t call yourself attractive. You’re not attractive. You’re nice-looking. Here, let’s look at your file.”

She pulled out one of my headshots with what appeared to be seven or eight Post-it notes stuck on my face. This was my “file.”

“
Nice-looking, attractive…is there a difference?” I asked.

“
Of course, there is! I don’t send nice-looking people on auditions for attractive roles.”

“
Fine. Then why aren’t I going out on more nice-looking auditions?”

“
Oh, sweetheart, there aren’t that many nice-looking roles.”

People in Hollywood like to say shit like that all the time—shit that endows the speaker with being “in the know,” while placing the subject clearly on the outside of that knowledge. I refused to participate.

“
What do you mean?” I asked.

“
You know what I mean,” Patty quickly replied.

“
No, I don’t. That’s why I asked. What do you mean?”

I didn’t raise my voice, but clearly, I needed to become a Scientologist or something because I wasn’t getting what this town was pushing.

“
Randy, there are roles for attractive people, and there are roles for nice-looking people. Just like there are roles for black people and roles for white people. You don’t expect me to send you out for a black-person role do you?”

I decided to ignore the ridiculous analogy and stay focused.

“
I find it hard to believe there are so few nice-looking people roles.” I paused to adjust my strategy. “What about normal-looking people roles? Are there many normal-looking people roles?”

“
You wanna go out for normal-looking people roles?”

I was stunned. I thought I was making a joke. I had no idea there was a “normal-looking” category.

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