i couldn't sleep last night, and this is the story that was eating me alive. felt like it was gnawing it's way through my brain as i tossed and turned,fruitlessly commanding my stupid imagination to shut up and sleep already.
this is where it starts getting really hard for me....just THINKING about this story and what it will turn into makes me want to cry. to sob. to break. BUT....easy does it, girl - this is JUST the beginning, after all.
my senior year at Interlochen (boarding school for the arts), was mostly better than the first one had been.i had more friends, felt a bit more confident...all the usual stuff.and just as i was feeling like i had really found my footing there, my biological mother started to write me letters.i hadn't seen her for years and years. i didn't know who she was - or how she was - or where she was - until these letters started to arrive. some with photos. photos of her holding me in South Africa where i was born. she was beautiful. tall and thin, with big eyes and long wavy caramel colored hair. all the photos looked like they could have been movie stills.
i hadn't seen too many pictures of her before - my father had shown me photos of him holding me on the ship during our trip back to the states, he had shown me photos of lions and elephants, and of my African nanny with me wrapped up in a blanket on her back - but i had hardly seen any photos of my mother.
she didn't send me any currant ones, either. just from when i was born and before that. she told me in the letters that SHE had been an actress. a successful one - that only because of her crazy mother and my father she had stopped. practically been forced to stop. i didn't know what to believe, but the letters made me sob my brains out. my girlfriends were there to hold me so many nights. Maura, Hilary,and Hala. thank goodness for them. i was wracked with so many thoughts and feelings about her. i didn't know if i could trust her - she had been absent for all of my formative years. when i got my period the first time, i was alone in the house with my DAD. he had to call the neighboring mom over to deal with it after i wailed to him through the bathroom door that i was bleeding to death. no one had explained it to me.
and then to find out that she had been in Lockheart, Texas for YEARS - just 30 minutes away from where i was growing up in Austin. i had been told she was in Mexico!
but she did know how to write a compelling letter. each one was more seductive than the last. and as Christmas break neared, i warmed up more and more to the idea of meeting her again.
at school, at Interlochen, i was having my share of frustration, too. i did NOT get along with the OTHER acting teacher. Denny. he was the one more in charge of musical theatre. and he had finally cast me in a musical which was a silly riff on the Agatha Christie stories called 'Something's Afoot'.
i was cast as Miss Tweed - you got it - the Agatha Christie/Miss Marple character. which was great. i wanted that part and went all out to get it. i was very silly, and very physical - stuffing my belly with padding and a big old brassiere so that it looked as though my old chest was sagging down to my bellybutton. i walked funny and squinted a lot.but i did NOT like the show, i did NOT like the choreography, and i did NOT like Denny, our director. i don't think i hid my disdain for him very well, either.
the funnest thing about that show was doing it with Stuart Richardson. actually, everyone in the cast was great and fun - but Stuart was a really good friend of mine by then - and he could NOT have been more perfectly cast. he played the handsome upper class English lad who spent most of the play draped across the fireplace mantle gazing off into the distance. HILARIOUS! he and i were always cracking each other up during rehearsals and being blatantly disrespectful to Denny.
and when it was time to "put on the show" - i just kind of started to do my own thing. especially when it came time to "dance". i thought the choreography was so stupid and boring, that i decided it would be funny for Miss Tweed to pull a 'Lucy' (as in I Love Lucy)and sort of screw up all the dance numbers she was in. the audience LOVED it. but DENNY was furious.
needless to say, when the 'Pippin' auditions rolled around right before Christmas break - i had NO CHANCE of working with Mr. Denny B. again.
on a side note, my brother and grandmother came up to see me in 'Something's Afoot', and my brother, Robert, later confided in me that THAT was the moment he fell in love with Stuart Richardson.
Robert said, years later, "I just thought he was so perfect and dreamy, with his English accent, and just DRAPED over that mantle with his curly hair! OH, Mary! I was just DONE for!"
you'd never know my tall, Texan brother was gay - unless you were privy to him letting out that "Oh, Mary" voice of his. it is so darn cute!
anyhoo - back to 'Pippin' auditions. i thought i did great - especially teamed up with Phil Lewis - i thought we made a swell team. but....Denny was having NONE of it. so i was denied the honor of being immortalized in the Interlochen year book in a tie-died unitard. and as i look back at that year book, i'm ok with that. quite frankly, i thought Drew McVety was the only one who really pulled it off. he had a perfect body - but i'd say Katy Suber did, too. that whole unitard thing was just HARD to pull off - especially with the way they were tie-died. i'm JUST sayin'.....
so, with no play to look forward to at school, i went back to Texas in a defiant mood. i decided to meet my blood mother - in secret - and i auditioned for my first Equity play in Dallas.
the play that i got and earned my Equity card with was 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'.
and meeting my blood mother opened up whole new CANS of worms. bigger cans than i could possibly have imagined.
PS - i never actually SAW 'Pippin'. maybe everyone in the cast looked great in those things in real life - my only reference was and is the yearbook, because i was in Texas doing that other show. but for the record, EVERYONE said 'Pippin' was GREAT - despite Denny B. and i believe them. we were a hard core bunch of critics at IAA.
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