So, I got the Job...

My first ship job was for a small cruise line, and I was hired as a replacement. That means that, for some reason or another, one of the current cast members is leaving or has already left the ship, and they need some poor, clueless sucker to sweep in and save the day, quickly.

In this case, that poor, clueless sucker would be me.

I knew nothing about ships, nothing about production shows*, nothing about Production companies*, and nothing about they journey that I was about to undertake, but I was excited and eager and ready to perform and nothing else mattered. I had traded in my waitressing uniform for an adventure, and I was going to be paid to sing, and that was all I cared about. I kissed my NYC-turned-LA boyfriend good-bye and left him in a city that was brand new to him, something for which he never forgave me, and headed out to my new life.

Rehearsals took place in Cocoa Florida. No, not Cocoa Beach Florida, just Cocoa. In the middle of nowhere, in Florida, in August. Nice. But, because I was a replacement and my cast was already on the ship I was given a rental car all to myself, and a hotel room that was, well, not the greatest, but it was all mine. In ship life, having your own space is a highly-prized commodity.

Each morning I would go into the studio and spend half of the day learning music and the other half learning choreography though because this was a small production it was mostly just staging. Now, for most people, this is difficult enough when there is a full cast present and everyone is learning their parts together, but here I am, all alone with the teacher in a big studio, trying to learn my parts and imagine where the rest of the cast will be. The lesson usually went something like this:

'Ok, so this is where all of you walk onstage. You will go stage left after Heather but before Mike.'

Keep in mind that I have no idea who Heather or Mike are yet.

'You stand here until you see Heather put her left arm up to about here, then yours goes up, then Mike's. Then, you all turn around and face center. Then, you will do a sort of weave until you get to about center stage right.

Keep in mind that I have no idea where stage right actually will be

'Like this, but then, pretend there's a person behind me, and in front of me. Okay?

What?

Then, Mike sings his first note and you all start singing. I forget what the words are, but you'll know when you hear it'

And so on and so forth.

The funniest thing about learning a show with no other cast members, no band, no set, and no stage, is that you become very good at being flexible in your expectations. You become open, quick, and aware, and it was honestly a great skill to learn right away, and one that I used many, many times in my years at sea.

You may wonder why I would be learning a show in Florida at all, in a studio, by myself when the whole production, including the cast was at sea? Well, it's a good question, but the answer is simple- money. Ships are expensive, cabins are expensive, flights are expensive, and it is neither practical nor economical to send me and a bunch of teachers out to the ship, where they will all need flights and cabins (hence taking cabins away from paying passengers) This essentially applies to all production shows. So, as a pre-requisite most production shows are taught in a studio on land, and then transplanted to the ship later either as a large company or, as in my case, one cast member at a time.

In the case of a replacement, it is especially challenging because you have to learn not one, but many, shows all by yourself and then get plugged into a team that is already working as a cohesive whole. In some ways it is a total nightmare because you have to play catch up with the chemistry already in motion. But, in others, it is a blessing because the people around you already know what they are doing and if you are quick enough and aware enough you can avoid getting crushed in an onslaught of rambunctious, hyped-up performers and just go along for the ride. Sometimes, it can be good..

So, anyway, there I am in Cocoa Florida in August. The temperature is at least 110º and I am trying to learn 5 different production shows in two weeks. Now, in these days, this was before production shows were performed to a pre-recorded track (we will get to that later) and the bands onboard were live so, to learn my parts, the company had recorded a learning tape that was kind of like singing to karaoke, although that wasn't around yet either, that I could practice to. In addition, I was given another tape of the musical director, a man, singing all of my parts into a small tape recorder, so I could learn my harmonies for each and every song. Of course, hearing a man sing Ariel in The Little Mermaid is not the ideal way of learning, but in those days we did what we could and we made it work.

Wanting to do a great job, I was eager to learn all of my parts as flawlessly as possible, so I carried those tapes around with me everywhere I went. They were with me in the bathroom, the kitchen, the car, the supermarket, everywhere I was, those tapes would be playing in my ear. And I would be singing, singing, singing, until I got each part exactly right. If I got one note wrong, it would be rewind and sing it again, and again, and again until it was fixed into my brain. This is where having my own hotel room and car was fortunate because I was basically singing non-stop, and I'm sure it was not altogether pretty but by the end of my rehearsal I had no idea who Mike or Heather was but, dammit, I knew those songs backwards and forwards. And, that method of learning stayed with me for all of my performances hereafter. It was also my first introduction to rehearsing in my sleep, where even an innocent middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom becomes a tormenting experience because it is accompanied by a cheesy ship rendition of 'Toot Toot Tootsie' that you are learning and cannot get out of your head.

For 2 weeks, rehearsals would go from 10 to 6, or until my brain was too full of information, and the evening was spent in the hotel room going over what I had learned during the day. That was my existence. Occasionally I would treat myself to a movie or go shopping at the nearby mall, but most of this time was spent learning, and sweating in the Florida heat.

A few times, when I came back to my hotel, I would see rats roaming around outside the hotel room doors, big fat rats and, because I was deathly afraid of them, I would try to shoo them away by banging walls and swinging my arms. But theses rats weren't scared of me and no matter how much noise I made, they wouldn't budge. They just sat there in the middle of the walkway, motionless, staring, and for a brief moment, I could see them plotting something, something horrible. I saw a future of me being eaten by rats outside my hotel room in Cocoa Florida and no one knowing whatever happened to me, except for the carcass left in front of room #106, rotting in the 110º Florida sun. I never get to go on the ship, I never get to sing for a living. This is it, it ends here, I'm doomed, I'm rat chow....

But, luckily, they weren't interested in having me for dinner, and I was able to slide by them without incidence, though not without a mighty squeal on my part.

Little did I know, there were plenty more rats waiting for me on the ship.

* Production Shows are what the cruise shows are called, you know, the big splashy Vegas-cum-Broadway-style shows they try to pass off as being original.

**Production Companies are outside entertainment companies hired to produce the Production Shows. Some cruise lines produce their own shows. Those are called in-house productions. Some companies do both.

Falling Bass-Ackwards into Cruising

 Flash forward and it's 1992 and I have just moved to Los Angeles. I spent 8 years in NYC, waiting tables and going to countless cattle calls, and in that time I did get some jobs as a singer; I joined a small repertory company and did some children's theatre, I put together a horrible cabaret for a local club, I recorded some demos for songwriters, and I got hired by a large children's theatre touring company where I played Harriet the Spy for thousands of screaming children (at 9 in the morning) and was lucky enough to get my actor's union card. I made a little money performing but mostly lived week-to-week, as most actors/waiters do. I was still waiting for my big break.

But NYC was harder then than it is now, neighborhoods were far more dangerous, and crime was way up. There was no Giuliani to rid the city of evil, and every day was a test of endurance. I was a young girl from a small town (with big boobs, mind you- hence a constant target) and NYC was a difficult place to thrive. I loved New York, but I can't say that I was happy there.

But I didn't move to LA because of that. I moved because I had the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance at something every New Yorker, including me, coveted, yearned for, and would kill to get- a cheap apartment! My father had used this great apartment for business for 20 years, and now he was thinking of getting rid of it. He told me over the phone about his plans and, before I could even think about it, I snagged it.

In New York, I had had a succession of interesting living arrangements. First, after my brief stay at an NYU dorm, I responded to an ad and took a room in another couple's apartment, but the room (which was a horrible peach color) had no window and was right above a nightclub that had live music until 3am. That lasted a month. Next, I lived in a tiny 8x10' apartment that no kitchen, but a small hot plate in the window. When my mother came to visit, she had to get up to fold the futon just so I could get ready for work. After that, I moved in with a co-worker from one of my restaurants but, as it turned out, she never gave the rent I paid her to the landlord, so, after a month or two, she left with all of my money, and I got kicked out. Then, thanks to some helpful connections, I landed a great rent-controlled studio on 64^th & Central Park West, where I was very comfortable and stayed for several years.

But, still, the apartment in NYC was a small studio, and the allure of a big apartment in LA was very strong. It was a beautiful, huge, 2-bedroom Spanish-style with dark wood floors, and French doors that opened out onto a garden. (My New York apartment looked out into an alley where one night, I heard a man jump out the window and fall to his death, seriously) The bedrooms were each big enough to hold a King-sized bed, and then some, and it had an adorable blue and white French-tiled kitchen, a real kitchen, with a dishwasher! On top of that, it would remain furnished with all of my Dad's gorgeous antiques, and it was in a perfect West Hollywood location. The nail in the coffin? The rent was only $650! Can you say SOLD! After 8 years of grime, and noise, and tiny apartments, and harsh NYC winters, I was ready for a change, especially a change like that. I left my NYC apartment to a friend (who lost it soon thereafter because he played his stereo too loud) and packed up all my stuff, including my NYC boyfriend, and headed out to sunny LA. On the way out, I had to drag my heavy suitcases over a vagrant passed out in the doorway. See ya, New York!

Once in LA, things were not as easy as I had hoped. I got a job in a restaurant easily enough, but theatre jobs were hard to come by. I thought that being a New York-trained actress with a certificate from such a prestigious school as Stella Adler would hold some clout for me in LA, but it actually seemed to alienate me from the other singers, who were LA schooled and had LA connections, not to mention they weren't deathly pale and didn't wear black all the time. And, once again, I found that not being a good type was holding me back, as LA is even more appearance-obsessed than NYC. I found myself missing singing, and missing the abundance of auditions that were in NYC and, so, I went to any and every audition I could find just to get out there and sing. I auditioned for Summer Stock, regional theatre, dinner theatre, puppet shows, anything. I didn't care what or who it was for, I just went. And one of those auditions happened to be for a cruise ship.

Now I had seen auditions for cruise ships before, and I had always thought it looked interesting, but I never thought I was the right type (there's that word again) to work on a ship. In my mind, cruise ships were looking for tall, thin, sexy dancer-types, like Solid Gold dancers, I imagined, and not for normal, all-American girls like me. (Well, actually, I wasn't so all-American either. Disney used to hold auditions once a year for all-American singers and dancers and I was always cut in the first or second round. One Disney casting agent told me, 'Well, you have a very pretty voice, R______, but you're just not the Disney type. Ouch!) One time, in NYC, I actually went to a cruise ship audition but the wait to be seen was several hours long and I had to decide to either stay at the audition or go to work. I needed the money and didn't think I could ever get the job, so I went to work. I could have saved myself years of pain if I had started working on cruise ships then.

So, there I am at the audition in LA and I have no idea what to expect. The call asks for the typical uptempo and ballad (an uptempo is a fast, catchy song that shows personality, and a ballad is a slow song that shows more vocal ability) and I sang my old NY standard audition songs. I remember there being a camera in the room, meaning they were videotaping the audition, and I did reasonably well, considering there was a lens in my face. I think I remember there being something wrong with the camera and I had to do my songs twice, which was probably a good break for me. After singing, we were taught a short dance, and I remember it being easy. Then, I went home and didn't think much about it. It was just another audition to me, I never actually thought I would get the job. When I got home I remember my boyfriend asking me,

'Hey, how did your audition go? What was it for, again?'.

'Oh, it was good', I said, 'Some cruise ship job'.

'Cruise ship? Doesn't that involve months of traveling or something? We just moved here.'.

'Yeah,' I said, 'but I'm not actually going to GET it, I just went on the audition.'.

'Oh', he said.

End of story. We never said anything else about it.

Two weeks later, the phone rang... and the rest, as they say, is history.

New York State of Mind

Like every other actor wannabe I got a job waiting tables (but that's another popular blog site) and spent my time hunting down and dragging myself to endless auditions and cattle calls. As ill-suited as I was to Stella Adler, I was even more ill-suited to auditions, and I found myself hating every aspect of my chosen profession. I could sing, sure, but I could never do well at that give-us-your-best-song-in-20 seconds thing. Literally, you wake up at 6 am, warm-up the best you can without disturbing your roommate or entire apartment building, wait an interminable amount of time to be seen, and then walk in and be your best in 16 bars or under. Ugh! I could never do it well. Go ahead, try and sum up the best things about yourself in 20 seconds, and then do it within a song. It's hard!

What made it worse was that I could never fit into that perfect director's casting grid, now referred to as a casting matrix. What does that mean? It means I was never the quintessential ingenue, or character, or diva, or villain, or teenager, or mother, or whatever it was they were looking for. I was not a type. (a matrix is literally a mold) In other words, you cannot look at me and characterize me. This is what I swear, to this day, has been my downfall in my theatrical career. .

In all aspects of performing, type is a very powerful concept. It is what enables casting directors to easily fit actors into roles, and what helps audiences identify characters. For example, if you are watching a movie about a teenage prom queen who gets all the boys, you will most likely not believe a chubby 30-year old woman with mousy brown hair playing the roll. Similarly, if you watch a commercial with a football player in it, he will most likely not be a 6'6” skinny nerd with glasses, get my point? Type is an all-important and all-determining aspect of the acting field. And I certainly understand that. But, if you are not the type (pun intended) who fits easily into a type, then you are going to have a difficult time.

I am not, and never have been, a good type for the following reasons:

1. I'm short

2. I'm short, but I can't play a teen or a Disney character because I have huge boobs

3. I have huge boobs, but I am not blond

4. I am not blond, but I look terrible as a blond

5. I have a sweet soprano voice like a Disney Princess, but am not the Disney type, see 2-4

6. I look like a character actress but have a voice like a Disney Princess

And round and round it goes....

Why did I ever choose this field? Oh, yeah, because I can sing, dammit!

So, how can one fix not being a good type? Well, you can alter your looks. You can gain or lose weight, dye your hair, fix your nose, flatten (or inflate) your chest, or sell your soul to the Devil to try to be the person they want to hire, certainly, many performers do. But, I grew up with morals, standards, and ethics, (well, not really, but it sounds good here), and I did not want to change who I was to fit the mold. I was stubborn. I was naïve. I had a mother who said she would kill me if I got a nose job, so I didn't. I stayed exactly who I was. I was true to myself. As the song goes, I did it my way. Did it help my career? Probably not. But, whatever, the past is past. Besides, who knows if it ever would have helped.

So, why do I bring all of this up? Because it all plays a part into how I became, and stayed, a cruise ship singer... that's why.

How it all Started

I never intended to be a cruise ship singer. In fact, I never even knew cruise ships existed. I wanted to be an actress, more specifically, a musical theatre actress and, so, like most theatrical wannabes, I started in school, doing bad plays for bored parents and employing horrible acting techniques that I learned from inept small-town teachers. 

I overacted my way through butchered renditions of Guys & Dolls and Anything Goes and took singing lessons from teachers who told me I would never be a professional because I had too much vibrato in my voice.  (These are people teaching grade school students in a town of less than 10,000 people. How can they know if I will be a professional singer or not? I was 10! The comment still pisses me off to this day... obviously)

Still, one thing I could always say is that I had a great voice. No seriously, I can admit that I was a horrible actress, but I always had a good voice. I came out of the womb singing. It was my gift, the one thing I could always truly count on, my universe, my identity. So, being a singer for me was an obvious career choice. In fact, I don't remember anyone ever asking what I wanted to be when I grew up because anyone who ever knew me knew that I was going to be a singer. That was it!

At 18 I was accepted into New York University as a theatre major. I say 'accepted' because the NYU theatre department is highly-regarded and extremely competitive. Not only did you have to pass the rigorous academic standards, but you also actually had to audition. Somehow I missed the auditions in Los Angeles, the nearest major city to where I lived, so my parents flew me into New York for the audition. Determined to help me, they also employed the help of a fellow actor friend who I remember coached me on my audition monologue. I can't remember the piece exactly, but I remember he gave me a prop, a cigarette, for which I searched for the matches as I was giving my monologue. That's called an 'action', and its intention is to keep the actor busy so he doesn't look like he is just reciting lines, which I probably was. It didn't occur to me then how politically incorrect it was to have me smoking or fiddling with cigarettes at that young age, but the thought of it makes me chuckle now. I liked it better when political correctness didn't exist.

Anyway, so I was accepted, and I moved myself from a very small town to NYC where I had my first real acting lessons. At that time NYU did not have an undergraduate degree for musical theatre, and to be a music major you had to have serious musical training behind you, which I did not. So, I went to NYU and studied theatre, straight theatre, and it was pretty much an ill fit right from the start.

I was placed in the Stella Adler Conservatory for the bulk of my theatrical training, and this placement was, apparently based on my answers to questions asked in my initial NYC audition/interview. I don't remember the questions at all, but I think I remember saying that I thought the purpose of acting was to be as real as possible, and I think I mentioned that I liked the traditional playwrights best. Wham! I was put into the most strict, rigid, old-style acting school on the planet. Why couldn't I have said I like to do improve? Or pretend I'm a tree?

Stella Adler herself was quite old when I attended the school, so I never actually took classes from her. She taught the advanced students only, which was a relief to me, a beginner, because even the thought of her scared the shit out of me. She would sit in her throne in class (no, literally, she had a throne) and deliver criticism to her students like Queen Anne dispensing orders to the scullery staff ala the 1800s. Even observing one of her classes made me pee my pants.

My personal teacher was a woman named Alice Winston who was almost as intimidating as Ms. Adler and had the same air of royal authority, but without the throne. Ms Winston loved making sarcastic, hurtful remarks about us and our amateur efforts, in fact, I'm pretty sure she made me cry on a daily basis.*

In class, Ms Winston would perch on a chair, legs primly and perfectly crossed at the ankles, and she would smoke a cigarette, holding it delicately between her two first fingers and using it as a tool of emphasis, like an orchestra conductor's baton. She always wore a simple outfit of a skirt, blouse, and heels, looking like a perennial secretary from the 1950's, even though it was 1985. She delivered her lessons in a well-rooted but raspy voice and her inflections would lilt up and down like someone who has been trained for the the-ah-ta. Her face was etched with wrinkles and lines, giving her a permanent scowl-like appearance, except when she would try emphasize a witty point she was making and her face would light up like a Christmas tree. When she did this she always reminded me of the Grinch whenever he would get a good idea, a sickly smile slithering over her face. She was hard on me but she loved the young boys. She was nice to them.

Still, when I look back on Ms Winston, I am not immune to her dryly-humorous teaching style and the magic of her maddening ways. In truth, she taught me a lot of very useful things that I've incorporated into my everyday life, such as how to speak properly and clearly, and how to walk and sit gracefully (we were not allowed onstage until we could walk to the stage and back to our chairs in an acceptable manner. I cannot tell you how many times that came in handy. No, I'm serious). In her class I learned the difference between discussing and debating (a handy tool in relationships), how to describe something from memory (a tool I am using right now as I write), and the all-important how-to-sit-in-a-skirt without-showing-your-hoo-ha to the audience. (Brittany, are you listening?)

But, I was young and overly-sensitive, and Ms Winston made me cry all the time. Besides that, I hated studying straight theatre when I knew that all I wanted to do was musicals, and I thought that having a college degree could never help me as an actress. So, I quit NYU after the first semester and went to theatre school on my own, earning myself a nice, shiny, and virtually useless certificate of completion. But, hey, I know how to sit in a chair.

*I am not changing Ms Winston's name for this blog because through some research I did a few years ago, I found out she died sometime around 1999. Still, I almost believe that she could reach out from the grave and deliver some sarcastic hurtful comment, or smack me upside the head before rolling over and returning to her eternal peace. I'm hoping she doesn't.

The Intro

 I don't work on cruise ships anymore. I used to, for 17 years. 17 years! Think about it. It's long enough to see your child finish high school and prepare for college. Its longer than most careers, and almost certainly than most marriages. Though I never really thought of it as a career. It was a job, certainly, and something I loved to do, no doubt, but I never really thought of it as a career. It was a stepping stone, an interim step, something to do on my way to fame and fortune, but it was also a way to pay the bills and see the world, and do what I loved to do, which is sing.

Yes, I was a singer.

If you tell people you are a cruise ship singer their mind automatically goes to a schlocky singer in a bad sequined gown in a cocktail lounge, or a greasy pompadoured git asking, 'Hey, how's your steak' in the middle of a cheesy Frank Sinatra rendition of My Way. And I can't blame them really, because there is still a lot of that out there. But, I was neither a lounge singe nor did I have a pompadour. I sang in the theatre, on the stage, in THE BIG ROOM, as we called it and, in ship circles, it's pretty important stuff.

That's not to say that I did not do my fair share of cheesy renditions or wear gaudy and hideous costumes, I certainly did. And, in 17 years I sang every stupid song ever known to man, or at least 16 bars of it. I have worn spandex, g-strings, feathers, sequins, lace, and velvet, and have danced with huge showgirl packs on my back and bowls of fruit on my head. I have played to crowds of thousands, and houses of only 4, and I have sung in calm, quiet waters, and in rough, banging hurricanes. In those 17 years I did it all.

But now that is all over, and I have only my memories left to share.