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.
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