[This is an excerpt from Making the Low Notes]
“Say hello to Chita Rivera and John McMartin, everybody,” David Loud, the conductor, tells our pit orchestra, gesturing toward center stage. The winds and brass sections applaud the two stars with their feet; the string players by tapping our bows on music stands. Ms. Rivera and Mr. McMartin gaze down at us and wave politely.
“Thanks to you all for bringing your artistry to the theater,” Ms. Rivera says. “This is such a difficult time for everyone. Thank you so very much.”
The cast, musicians, and crew have convened around the main stage at Goodman Theatre to begin rehearsals for the world premiere of The Visit. It’s Monday, September 17, 2001.
Artistry? I dragged this empty shell of myself downtown without thought or sensation. I stand in the pit among my peers, a bag of bones clutching this wooden contraption so I don’t fall down. I am surviving; if that’s an art, then I’m finger painting.
Sometime during that first week of rehearsals, I received a call from a news producer at the local Fox News TV station. They wanted to tape an interview with me at the theater. Why me? No idea.
After clearing it with Goodman’s PR department, a crew met me there a few hours before the next day’s rehearsal. They recorded a few minutes of me doing some mournful arco improvising from the pit before we sat down for the interview.
“What’s it like working in the theater so soon after the events of 9/11?” asked the neatly coiffed news guy.
“I mostly feel numb. My colleagues and I are making a valiant effort to stay focused on the play and the music. But—”
“It must be difficult to mount a show under these circumstances.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s both a dreadful time and a godsend to be together doing what we do. Rehearsing and performing is not only our job, but also our way of expressing ourselves. And right now it’s a great distraction from … I guess I’d have to call it grief. I’m doing the best I can; we’re all doing the best we can.”
He asked me for a synopsis of The Visit, which I bungled my way through. What I wish I’d said was that the play tells the story of an older woman (Rivera) who returns to the small European village where she grew up to seek revenge against a man (McMartin) who had seduced then abandoned her when she was a teenager. The town is in the midst of a severe economic crisis, which, it turns out, the woman engineered. Now wealthy and powerful, she offers to infuse the local economy with cash, but in return they must agree to murder the man.
It was a chilling and beautiful piece of theatre. Emotions, onstage and off, were running high, due to both the play and real-world circumstances. I was especially moved by the distress of one ensemble member whose husband would be deployed to Iraq a few weeks into the show’s run.
I will never forget the final heart-stopping tableau of The Visit, in which the townspeople are fanned out in an arc across the stage, staring silently with mouths agape at the audience, as they awaken to the hideousness of the crime they’re about to commit. Goose bumps rose on my forearms at that moment every performance.
The Visit ran through the first week of November, after which the bottom dropped out of my calendar. Gigs were canceled right and left as individuals and businesses succumbed to the nation’s collective trauma and fear. This sudden decline in employment after 9/11 rattled my cage. The hollowness in my chest was replaced by a knot of terror in my belly. For the first time since college, I had to seriously consider a more dependable occupation.
But what? I was pretty good at making the low notes but useless for most anything else I could think of. Going back to school to become, say, a schoolteacher or a librarian, seemed impossible. I wasn’t going to work in a goddamn record store again. I had no savings to tap for tuition or other expenses. No, I needed something I could do now.
One February afternoon I was lounging on my couch, surveying the living room.
I can’t manufacture more gigs; everyone I know is scuffling for jobbing and club work. There are no theater gigs on the horizon.
My eyes landed on the music stand I’d tucked into the corner by the window after the couple of bass lessons I’d taught that morning.
Teaching. Maybe I should try to rustle up more students.At $40 an hour, I could piece together a decent income if I had a dozen or so students per week. At the time, I had only three or four, depending on the week.
Yeah, but to get more bass pupils I’m going to have to do something I absolutely abhor: market myself. It’s either that or move into my mother’s attic—or starve. Oy vey. If those are the choices, I’ll have to overcome my self-promotion allergy and find a way to advertise my teaching services.
In the words of Charlie Parker, now’s the time.