We went to see a musical at the Intermediate School last night. The boy child wasn't in it, but many of his friends were. Theater geeks. It was the first time we'd gone to see a play there. In the cafetorium, with the acoustics as they are, we didn't really notice the breaking voices of puberty and the high notes not-quite-reached. There was something in the air. You could see it in the eyes of the actors as they took the stage. The passion. They were exactly where they wanted to be.
The boy child and the girl child are both professional actors. The boy child is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and if he gets another Equity job, he must join the union. This is a good thing. People work for years to become guild members. It is an honor, something to work toward. The boy child did not choose this. He was not the child that was always putting on a show. He did not dance around the house. He did not sing. This was all the girl child's fault, as many things are. She will deny being the cause of most of them, but she will not deny this.
The girl child starts with a voiceover evaluation, and moves on to "modeling." She never enjoyed having her picture taken and she was always kind of shy, so we are stumped. The boy child comes along for the ride. It is fun. If he or she gets a job, it could pay for his very expensive fencing lessons, her very expensive horseback riding classes. Camp. If not, it is a break from the school day, a chance to meet some interesting people. We do not know where it will lead.
They get managers. The girl child takes lessons: acting, musical theater. She tries out for a musical ensemble group in New York but does not get in. She goes to acting class but mostly watches. She does not like improv. She does not dance. She is not always comfortable inside her skin. Professional calls start coming. Most come for the boy child. She does not say anything. She goes to the auditions with him and watches the children. She is a pre-teen white girl from the suburbs in the body of mature Latina teen-ager with a city sense of style. She does not speak español. She is too white. She is too dark. She is perfect. She is beautiful. She has a body that is just right for an eleven-year-old. She is not stick skinny. She is not flat-chested. She will never get the job. I want it for her more than I can tell her. I want it for her because she wants it, and I want her to have everything she wants. I remind her to exercise and to stop eating when she is full. I am a jerk. Luckily, she does not pay any attention to what I say. Sometimes pre-teen rebellion is a good thing.
The boy child does nothing to enhance his "career." He plays soccer. He fences. He sings "Happy Birthday" to his manager and she sends him on auditions for Broadway. For Broadway. He gets callbacks, sometimes more than one for the same show. He gets down to the wire, down to three kids, two kids. He doesn't get the job. He doesn't mind. He moves on to the next one. He goes to acting class for one semester. The owner of the school writes parts for him in a movie, in a play. He is asked to join the junior company, even though he doesn't take class. He is a natural. He has "It." "It," the intangible thing. "It" is a presence. "It" makes people take notice.
The girl child asks to join the acting school company. She can't be there on the audition day. They tell her next time. They let others in without auditions, and when I say something about it they let her in, too. She does everything: she makes props, posters, does stage crew. She is excited. She fills in as an actor when she's needed. Later, they forget to call her, forget she is part of the group. She is not told about meetings. She is disappointed. She doesn't say a word.
The boy child is being taught how to tap dance in a hallway by Tommy Tune and Dick Cavett while the dancers of the Broadway musical Spider Man rehearse next door. He is reciting Pablo Neruda's Enigmas for Robert Wilson. He is moving for Lucinda Childs. This is not the description of a surreal dream I had last night because I ate too much Mexican food. This really happened. This was real.
The boy child starts singing lessons. He is sitting in a room of twenty children at a callback for the national tour of Mary Poppins. There are ten girls and ten boys. Two of each will be chosen. Many know each other from a theater school in Westchester. It is a Broadway baby making machine. It is a feeder to Disney productions. Others flew in from Ohio, from Atlanta, in a storm. One mother cut her Florida vacation short to be there. The children go into the other room and we parents hear them singing "Let's Go Fly a Kite" for the first time. It is beautiful. It is like they have been singing together for years. The casting director tells a mom: "At this level, it is not about talent anymore. It's about who is the best match for the boy/girl still on tour. It is about who best fits the costume." I wonder how we've gotten here. I don't quite know how this happened. This is a good thing, but it is strange. The girl child finally asks, "When will the calls come for me?" It breaks my heart.
The girl child goes with the boy child to everything she can. She sits on a sound stage in Secaucus and watches the director, talks to the woman in the production office. She hangs with the young actors and crew in a small apartment in Brooklyn. She becomes the set photographer. She gets a professional credit for that. She is thirteen. She meets directors, producers, script supervisors, wardrobe and makeup. She sees it all. When the girl child directs her first play, at fourteen, the director of the film comes to see it.
She is in a low budget industrial with about twenty other children. Someone tells them to line up in two lines. She asks,"Boys and girls together? Should we line up by height?" She organizes the children. I watch her. I am proud.
She is in Central Park watching the boy child kick a soccer ball into a net on the set of a movie. She watches the director. She talks to the producer. She auditions for a theater company in New York City. It is all about girl power. It is not all about what you look like, what you can do. It is more about who you are. She gets in. When she appears in a show at the NY International Fringe Festival, the director of the film comes to watch.
The boy child plays chess with the director on the set. He reads. He plays Minecraft on his computer with another boy who is sitting next to him playing Minecraft on his own computer. They do not speak. They chat online. He draws pictures and maps the story of the film he is in as a graph. Did I mention before that he is a nerd? High school acceptance letters arrive in the mail. I am at work, on the telephone with the girl child when the boy child's bus arrives at the house. She runs outside with the letter. I am still on the phone when I hear him screaming. He is running around in circles, emitting shrieks of delight. The children on the bus cheer. The boy child wants to be an engineer, and this school specializes in marine science and technology. They have advanced engineering courses. Later that week, the boy child looks through the course list for the school: engineering, math. I hear him say, "I am having such a major nerdgasm right now." I laugh, but I see in his eyes that this is exactly where he wants to be.
The girl child is a freshman at a high school that focuses on communication arts. She makes her first film, a required project. Her teacher reads her script at his desk. He looks up and says, surprised, "This is good." He says she can work with the juniors and seniors. He lends her a camera for another class. Her film is posted online and an upperclassman stops to ask her about it. She tells him it's only half of what it was supposed to be, because she didn't have time. It was for her freshman project. He looks at her, surprised, and asks, "You're a freshman?"
Tag, you're "It."
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