A Moon for the Misbegotten
23 years ago this month, I left home for the first time and moved halfway across the American continent with only the barest outline of a plan. Spectacular things happened. Very little went according to plan. Then again, if my plans had worked out, I’d have missed most of the amazing stuff. If anyone had told me that when I lit out to take that theater internship on Cape Cod that it would lead to me becoming the road manager for one of the most famous bands in all of reggae music, I’d have thought they were crazy. Yet, that’s exactly what happened. As I prepare to sell the house I inherited from my grandparents and leave home for the last time, those memories are very present with me. Perhaps the biggest thing I learned from that entire experience was flexibility: no matter how great your plans may be, they better be flexible enough that you can pause them when something unexpected and incredible drops in your lap. You’ll regret not taking some opportunities no matter how wild they may seem at first.
It had been a little over a year since I’d moved to Cape Cod. My only thought after surviving Cape Cod in winter was that what people said was true: Cape Cod gets real bleak in the winter. It’s hard, cold, isolated, and more than a little crazy-making. I’d gigged like crazy all over the Cape to make it through the winter–art model, construction worker, restaurant hostess, grocery store product demonstrator, archivist, etc.--I had no intention of spending another one there. I knew that I needed to come out of the summer with more than a gig if I wanted to avoid the only thing worse than Truro in January: Oklahoma, all year. My plan at the time was to get to Boston. While I felt *certain* that I’d land the gig that I needed to get there, I was beginning to worry about where to look for it. I’d not yet had much luck migrating to Boston to do theater tech stuff, and with summer theater season in Cape Cod gearing up, I’d be swamped with work and not make it over to Boston till at least September. I decided that 4 months would probably be plenty of time to figure out what came next, and that my odds of being off the Cape and in Boston by New Year’s were strong. Something would happen, but I didn’t know what or how.
At the time, I was starring as Josie Hogan in Cape Rep’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten. From the first moment I’d read that play in college, Josie Hogan was my dream role. It felt like fate when I’d happened to run into Cape Rep’s resident director, Ann, at a party the previous October. She told me that she was hoping to put on Moon for Cape Rep’s upcoming summer season, but the only thing holding her back was that she didn’t have a Josie. Well of course I hopped on that hint and rode it like a crosstown bus. We organized a reading, I helped fundraise for the project, and I convinced Ann to give me a shot. I was VERY invested in doing this role and doing it well. It seemed like my plans were working out.
Until we actually went into production. All things being equal, I was prepared for the role and had been coming along nicely in building the character. Tyrone was played by David, an honest-to-god real professional actor who traveled between Boston and New York for work. Phil Hogan was played by the decidedly not professional actor, Tom. Tom had been a company member of Cape Rep for at least twenty years. He was a retired contractor and fan favorite who could be relied upon to turn in brilliant comic performances. Dennis, a science writer who liked theater, played T. Stedman Harder. In the beginning, we were a pretty tight unit.
The problems really started when we put the scripts down. Nobody had bothered to let me in on the “open secret” that Tom could never remember his lines. It turned out that the reason Tom was a fan favorite and brilliant comic actor is that he basically rewrote the play as he went along and improvised most of his dialogue. He trusted that his co-stars were quick-thinking enough to keep up with his improvisation, keep the beats and the story on track, and make sure the cue lines got spoken so that folks made their entrances and exits on time. Cape Rep had learned years ago NEVER to cue ANY lights, sound, or stage business on any of Tom’s character’s lines.
David was solid and really excellent as Tyrone, and with his professional experience, he was able to handle this situation better than I. I could make a nasty joke about method acting and alcohol here, but alcoholism isn’t a joke, and people drink because they need help and aren’t sure what else might work. Working with Tom would drive anyone to drink, which is exactly what David, Dennis, and I snuck off to go do after each performance. David drank before the show and backstage he was kind of a mess, but he could maintain well enough to turn in a good performance once he got on stage. Dennis was perfection as Harder and by far the easiest of us to work with. I’d had the misfortune of hearing Dennis read Phil during the reading we’d done in the winter. I say that because he’d have been a great Phil Hogan and far better to work with. Tom got added after the show was slated.
I had high hopes and higher expectations for myself. My performance started out decent, but the quality declined over the course of the show’s production. The first week, my performance was above average but not really there yet. I was confident that I would get there. But the continued stress of Tom forgetting more and more of his lines and improvising more and more of the story every single performance–leaving me alone to make sure Harder and Tyrone made their entrances–began to add up. David was sympathetic but wrapped up in his own stuff. Dennis was great, but he just didn’t have enough stage time to help me out there. I was on my own. And our director was constantly riding me about my shortcomings. She never told Tom to start remembering his lines.
Josie Hogan is a beast of a role- she is onstage 95% of the time. Josie is also written to be 28 years old, but almost every production of Moon casts an actress in her late 30s or 40s to play Josie. Colleen Dewhurst and Cherry Jones both played Josie Hogan on Broadway. They both spoke of how incredibly challenging this role is during press interviews for their respective productions. This means that even in optimal circumstances, this is a challenging role for a seasoned actress. I was inexperienced and 23 at the time, and my circumstances were less than ideal. By the last week, any credible review of my performance would probably have included the words, “what fresh hell is this?”
I spent many years afterward feeling ashamed and humiliated at having worked so hard to get this role and then failing to give the performance I was so certain I could have. Now when I look back on that experience, knowing that I am autistic, have anxiety, and deal with sensory processing issues, I’m PROUD AS HELL OF MYSELF. With all that strife in the production going on, I managed to not burn out, break down, or give up altogether. I made it through to the last performance of that show, and goddamn it, that counts for a whole lot. And on the day of that performance, everything changed.
