I am pleased to report that my daughter and I were both cast in the local production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. She plays the pirate’s cabin “boy” and I am part of the pirate chorus. Our first read-thru was held at the Presbyterian Church of Novato and it looks like we will have a fine cast, although we have yet to meet several members who are currently performing elsewhere.
Our first musical rehearsal was held at the producer’s home in Mont Marin and it was a doozy. We started by learning the absurdly-long Act I Finale, which at times features twelve-part harmony. With our small cast of 19, that means there are times when an entire vocal part is being sung by only one person, making it especially difficult to stay in tune. I struggled at times to hit the tenor notes (my voice was also dehydrated from having ridden my bike home that day in 100-degree heat). I could also tell that Jessica was stressing out, too, since her part is an octave above the men’s. Talk about being thrown into the deep-end of the choral reef. Fortunately, we are both tenors for most of the musical score, so we can practice our parts together.
For the second vocal rehearsal, I went out and bought us a pair of Olympus digital voice recorders. They’re ridiculously simple to use and make recording our parts a snap. The songs we learned that night were also of the more rollicking-pirate type, so Jessica felt a lot better. She already has them down perfectly, and I am just a step behind.
In fact, she is a great asset as I learn my songs. I even find that I enjoy being corrected by her now, since it demonstrates her growing confidence. Throughout the years, I have been pretty quick at memorizing my lines in plays, but it always amazes me how much more facile young minds are. Even when she was little, she was pretty sharp.
Back when she was in kindergarten, I was cast as the lead in a production of Early One Evening at the Rainbow Bar and Grill, a black comedy by Bruce Graham. Since I was also playing the off-stage part of a single father, Jessica was with me at many rehearsals. I would set up her little pup tent in the carpeted hallway, where she would happily play with her stuffed animals and look at books. She had a sleeping bag, too, but spent a much of her time watching daddy rehearse. I wasn’t really aware of how much she had absorbed until one night in performance, when my ex came to see the show.
My line load was considerable, and I rarely paraphrased, making every effort to be word-perfect. Unfortunately that one night, I completely transposed two lines. There was no way that any of the audience could have told the difference. That is, except for one little five year-old critic in the back row. As I stumbled and then sought to right myself, I could clearly hear Jessica’s loud stage whisper, “Mommy! Mommy! Daddy said the wrong line! He should have said…,” which was followed by the corrected line, a quick shushing from Beth and giggles from nearby audience members. Well, that answered the question of whether my daughter had been paying attention.
One other incident was notable during the play. The plot concerns a small Pennsylvania town dealing with the news that an unknown force is slowly moving across the country, snuffing out everyone in its path. Entire cities, entire states are obliterated. Some of the townspeople panic, some try to live out their last-minute fantasies, some “hunker down” (as Donald Rumsfeld would have us do), and others simply turn inward. My character was one of the latter and at one point decides to commit suicide. He gets the pistol from behind the bar and puts Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way” on the juke box. Then he is supposed to stand center-stage, stick the barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger. He does this three times and each time it won’t fire (it turns out that there is Divine Intervention at play, but he doesn’t know that yet). As we approached this scene for the first time, I got the gun, put the record on the juke and then caught sight of Jessica sitting in the audience. A chill ran up my spine.
Fortunately, I had enough sense to stop rehearsal and pull her aside for a little daddy-daughter discussion. I wanted to make sure she knew what was going on, how the gun was a only prop, that this was all pretend, and that it was something she should never play around with. She listened attentively, asked a couple of questions, and that was that. I was floored by her maturity. Not for the last time, I might add.
In fact, that is one of the things that I find remarkable about her. Perhaps it is the result of my going through a divorce when she was only three, or her having to deal with an occasionally mercurial father, but she is wise beyond her years. As I get older, I hope that she will continue to keep me on the straight and narrow, remind me not to take life’s tribulations too seriously, correct me when I say the wrong line and, above all, help me stay in tune.
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