A Father's Day Email

The Miracle Worker

Three years ago, I received an email from one of my oldest, dearest friends, David Fetzer. It moved me so much, it inspired a spout of memories that I wrote about here.

This is what it said:

"Three things I miss about your Papa:

1. Hearing him shout "Fetzer!" either from across a room, or hallway, or on the other end of the phone, in the background.

2. His talent for singing ever-so-subtly off-key.

3. His crazy infectious perma-smile, especially in the context of watching his daughter when she performed on stage. Which I did get to witness.

Thinking of you both today.  =) "

Emails like this always arrive out of the blue from Fetzer-- just one of those guys. He'd show up magically in your inbox, and every so often on your doorstep in Detroit, Glasgow, London, or at the stage door in Los Angeles, beaming with pride.

I've written about Fetzer a few times on this blog-- remember the adorable Salt Laker who sat next to me in Junior year directing class at Interlochen? The curly-haired one with open, knowing eyes, jaunty hats, and hands that fit so perfectly in my own, when we held them they made a suction noise? I gave him a mold of my hand when we parted ways at the end of school, and after reading the post linked above he sent me this photograph to show that the hand still sat upon his desk.

He gave some rousing performances at Interlochen-- some were in scene-work the world never got to see (a stunning Prince Hal soliloquy, and Oswald in Ghosts come to mind). Then there was the time he staged a particularly naughty experiment with his Senior Directed One-Act of Lord Byron's Love Letter, in which he rehearsed his actors in a fully staged version of the show for his professor, only to wheel out a movie projector and play a silent FILM version of the play that his cast narrated out loud below the screen, to everyone's complete astonishment (and, to the professor, complete horror).

Then of course, some of his brilliance was worked in the main-stage shows-- a tortured and annihilating James Keller in The Miracle Worker, where, in one performance when everything at the end of Act 1 went terribly wrong when the door Annie Sullivan was supposed to be locked in "miraculously" opened, he saved the day with his signature wit asking,
     "What'd she do--JUMP?"
to rapturous applause.
Not to mention the silent Waiter in She Loves Me--(in fact, I'm having a lot of fond memories of both my Dad and Fetzer this week as I rehearse for She Loves Me at Caramoor.)

He played guitar left handed.
He drew beautiful cartoons.
He smiled with a sweet little smirk.
He wrote gorgeous, hand-written letters and sent them in the actual mail.
He had a wonderful band with his best friend (called Mushman).
He created a theatre company in Salt Lake City to provide culture to the town that was his home.
He believed in, and supported his friends.

He also gave me one of the very best Father's Day memories in recent history.
I am grateful to him.
I have thought of him every year on the occasion since he sent that message. 

Isn't life marvelous like that?  How a day that once provided joy, in the absence of a father presents so much heartache, but now, I think less of the heartache-- I think of Fetzer's Father's Day Email. 

And I think, as the above memory insinuates, that David Fetzer was always sort of Dad's favorite. They shared a sort of quiet innocent, "watching" quality--both very young souls I think. Despite all their intellect and wisdom, they shared a sense of wonder about being here; Alive and in The World, that is. They went for walks and didn't do a lot of talking. They "got" each other. And I recall how Fetzer dropped absolutely everything to make his way to Detroit for Dad's funeral. Something about his presence there was the tipping point of difference for a lot of us.


David turned 30 on December 17th last year...
     a few days later, he was gone.
Too soon.
Far too soon for anyone, but beyond comprehension for a star so bright.
I am fortunate to have know him and called him a friend.
Anyone that knew him I am certain feels the same. 

I hope that in whatever lies beyond, he could hear Dad shout "Fetzer!"from 'across a room, or hallway' as he entered, and I like to think of them taking nice walks out there, without saying a lot, just as they always did.

See you in the stars, David. 

And thank you.

For the Love of Words

One thing no one ever tells you about death, is how awkward it is after the first week. Not for you—for other people. You have counted off an entire week of days one by one, and have most likely been swept into a flurry of activity surrounding memorials and relatives and been distracted by that flurry—making plans and picking people up from airports and cleaning your home so that people can see how clean your bathroom is in your darkest hour.

Then there is the tsunami of flowers, donations, pots of casserole, plus the cards and phone calls (all ranging from the shallowest to the deeply felt). There was what seemed to be a State Park forest of trees planted in Dad’s name in places we’d never heard of, and, if you can believe it, even a small, terribly special collection of sympathy emails.

Ten days after the funeral, the food and cards and letters and trees being planted in Wherever-a-stan-erica-ville all stopped coming. Fruit baskets began to rot. Homemade borsht went off in the refrigerator. The mail returned to its normal flow of bills and unsolicited advertisements. The mailbox would open and all one could hear was the crushing silence of other people moving on.


But then came the letter from Lady Chu.


*


Judy Chu to be precise, for that was her real name. Well into my senior year at Interlochen I was presented with a problem—I needed another liberal arts credit in order to graduate with highest academic honors, and as a fully fledged perfectionist I wasn’t about to let three intense acting scenes, a budding secret romance, Shakespeare’s wordiest heroine or a father with cancer stand in my way. I reported to the Admissions office to comb through my options.

The options were sparse.
    “What about Psychological Lit?” I asked the counselor, Kelly.
    “Full” she replied.
    “Political Process?”
    “You already took it” she said, narrowing her eyes at me, “last year…”
    “What is available?” I huffed, arms flinging upward.
    “British Literature” Kelly said, smiling broadly at my predicament.

The world was ending.

British literature, I winced, are you kidding me? I saw weeks of quippy Austen and dreary Brontë passages ahead of me. I couldn’t cope. I buried my head in my hands like a petulant child and realized this was not only my fate but my fault.
    “Who teaches it?” I inquired, hoping the answer would improve things—perhaps my favorite teachers taught it and I simply didn’t know it!
    “Judy Chu.”
    “...Who on earth is Judy Chu?”

Judy Chu, as it happened, was a young, energetic, year-long adjunct teacher from Southern California, brought in for a liberal arts teacher on sabbatical.

    “Apparently the students really loved her first semester,” Kelly explained, “and apparently her classes are very exciting. Enrollment is light because so many of you want to take the ‘greatest hits’ before you graduate— but you are a bit late to the party. Obviously.”
    “Obviously” I droned. 

I signed up and left the admissions office in a mood, reporting to third-period British Lit the following morning, to a class of eight other people.

Judy Chu began with a bright smile, and by asking each of us why we had enrolled in British Literature. Dear God, I thought, not wanting to admit the truth, and I think I squeezed past the issue by explaining that fate had brought me here.

But fate had brought me to Judy Chu. Her class became the most important literary experience of my life.

This thoughtful young teacher was tough but fair, with complex weekly handouts, and uncompromising standards for grammar, essay construction and literary criticism. Plus, I can honestly say she taught me everything I’ve nearly forgotten about punctuation, verb tenses and second person narrative.[1]

But nothing will ever expunge the greatest lesson and gift she gave me—Judy Chu taught me how to read, and perhaps more crucially, why. Lady Chu (which I named her myself, for she is a lady first, and a teacher second if you ask me and you are) was bibliophilic magic. She handed you a book and gave you special incantations required step inside the pages— like the children in Mary Poppins jumping inside Bert’s sidewalk chalk painting. That final semester of High School at Interlochen was just the beginning.

When she assigned Howards End, she blew my literary mind. The copy still sits proudly on my bookshelf adorned with well-thumbed pages, color-coded highlighting, and adorable teenaged margin notes (such as “Love is a ‘He’?” and “when you show your homeland to a foreigner how do you show it all?” and “Oh… more LIFE!” and, of course, “Is love the only way to connect?”). I can recall how much I loved it more with every turning page! The deeply-feeling Narrator, the poetry in the slightest of prose, the humanity, and of course, my beloved kindred spirit; Howards End’s heroine Margaret Schlegel. With every word Margaret uttered my heart leapt in recognition, for Margaret Schlegel lived in me.[2]  I didn’t dare to hope Judy Chu could see it too.

For Judy Chu, I think Interlochen must have been a marvel— a place of such artistic energy and possibility. She seemed inspired, impressed by and deeply cared about her students which was evident when I saw her in the audience of As You Like It. She met my Mom and Dad and shook their hands, exchanged smiles.


At the end of the year, Judy Chu bid Interlochen farewell, but not before leaving our tiny class with one final handout. The simple sheet of white paper quoted Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” and  T.H White’s Merlin (beckoning us to “learn”) on one side, a personalized note to every one of us on the other. I still have this piece of paper, for last on the list was my name with a very simple message:

Al:  You are Margaret Schlegel to me.

*

I stood outside in clothing I had worn for days. Beside the mailbox, in a light rain spitting down from a sheet-white sky I extricated a letter.  A small envelope about the size of my hand with  the mark of a black and red Chinese dragon traveling from back to front. I recognized the small, perfectly neat handwriting immediately.

Dear Al,

I know that you, with your strong, strong heart, shall see through pain to hope and prosper.

With love,

Judy Chu

I held the letter to my heart. It said so little, and meant so much.
I wrote back to say so. It would be the first of a lifetime of letters.
Letters to and from Judy Chu to every single address I would ever have in my adult life.


[1] I must say: I owe my love of Russian literature as well as my understanding of Objective correlative to Jean Gaede, and my love of words themselves to Howard Hintze.
[2] She still does.

ten years later at our annual "Only Connect" dinner at the address I now know by heart.

Portrait of a Friend: Lilly

land of the stately pines [de-dah-de-dah]

I remember, probably more vividly than any other call, the moment Lilly heard the news. Kent and I were seated on my bed, still in pajamas and both totally stoic. I remember wanting to “be” there when he told her, but not wanting to do it myself.

So he told her.
I don’t recall what he said, what I do recall was the depth and ferocity of her wail, and how much I envied it.

She loved him. Everyone did.


*

Meet Lillian Townsend Copeland.

No, she is not related to Aaron Copland (though she enjoys referring to him as “Uncle Aaron”). Townsend is her mother’s maiden name.
Lilly is from Virginia.
Her parents are both doctors (her Dad, in fact, saved my eye from extinction in 1999 when a corneal cut turned into a very infected corneal ulcer and I nearly lost the whole darn thing…but that’s another story…). Her little brother William is a swimming sensation.

Lilly and I met at Interlochen Arts Camp in 1996, we weren’t always close but we were around one another a lot (in fact I think we took a Modern Dance class together somewhere in the mid-nineties). We became close Junior year of High School once we’d both made the leap from spending our summers in the North woods of Interlochen to attending the year-long Interlochen Arts Academy full time, Lilly majoring in oboe performance and I, in Theatre. By the end of Junior year we had resolved to fill a four person suite in Thor Johnson House, the senior girls dormitory, with two of my fellow theatre majors (Chrissy and Katie).

Thor Johnson House (also known as “TJ”) was shaped like an “L” and divided into six areas— four dorm hallways named according to their location— Lower Short, Lower Long, Upper Short and Upper Long. There was enough friendly rivalry and Hall Pride for a Big Ten Conference (and by 'friendly rivalry,' I mean, 'a total lack of tension,' and by 'Hall Pride,' I mean ‘none’). Still, we presided over the mustering of a you’re-in-boarding-school-now-ladies kind of enthusiasm that some eating dancers and/or people who weren’t in a practice room for seven hours a day, appeared to enjoy.

There was a main lobby with a front desk, a toaster (with a magically endless supply of toast with all the fixings), student cubby-hole mailboxes, and fluffy sofas some people sat and spoke on well into the night. There was also a downstairs greenroom where we would have our house meetings, complete with an “adult approved” and “highly voted upon” television for movie nights and the watching of “Friends,” and off this downstairs area were two long corridors of practice rooms and the offices of the woodwind and accompaniment departments.

Lilly and I were both the über official “HAs” (as in, Hall Assistants) for Upper Long. At this, we inarguably left a little something to be desired. I'm not saying we were abysmal or anything like that. I am merely saying that one could take a convicted arsonist, and give them a pack of complimentary matches, escort him to the log cabin of his childhood nemesis where you are to be spending the night,  instruct him to “have a good time,” and your predictably charred evening would be preferable to having Lilly and I be responsible for you in High School.
That's all.

We were likely candidates I suppose, returning “lifers” who “bled blue”— terms used for students that had been at Interlochen as long as anyone could remember, and thus bled the uniform colors— light blue on top (with a visible collar), navy on the bottom (the intricacies of which became more and more creative as the school year progressed). As HAs Lilly and I were supposed to make certain everyone was comfortable, felt at home, felt like they had a place to talk if they needed to. That was the part we were good at. The social, caring big sister stuff. The helping to plan the hall party stuff, the making sure the Chinese piano major who doesn’t speak English gets everything she needs in order to find her way to class (in classrooms located in the forest) on Monday stuff, the “I-just-moved-from-South-Africa-and-my-childhood-boyfriend-and-I-are-apart-for-the-first-time-ever” stuff.
That stuff.

But we were also there to attend HA meetings about house life, we had to make certain everyone in our hall attended the big school “community meetings” held every Thursday before lunch. We had to clean things and organize community service. We had to make sure everyone was “there” in a fire drill. We had to attend the fire drill.  We had to have not pulled the fire alarm ourselves. We had to be good examples. We had to be quiet. We had to obey the freaking rules—all of them. And that part, we were crap at. Lilly and I, after all, shared with Chrissy and Katie, both of whom were really, really fun, and the four of us were cool, and boisterous and had an illegal television (with a VHS player!) hidden in a giant Tupperware that we watched movies on after we were all supposed to be in bed.

One time [1], in a rousing flurry of Senior-itus, Chrissy and our next-door-neighbor Essie decided to
    1. paint their naked torsos with tempera paint
    2. Walk around the entire dorm (during school hours—so even teachers and boys might see them) and
    3. Video tape it.

And who video taped it? Lilly and I.
And who tagged along? All of Upper Long.
And how does this video tape end? With our (incredibly cool, but also incredible adult) Dorm Leader (and fabulous human) Angela Duncan, staring deadpan into the camera and simply saying

    “Um: NO.” Then she looks at Chrissy and Essie and our entire entourage and repeats, “NO—no no no.”

And it cuts out. Oops.

Five minutes later we are all in our room, the sun is setting on Green Lake outside our window. Chrissy and Essie have on both t-shirts and looks of mild shame. Katie is crumpled into our womb chair in the corner and Lilly and I are standing, military-style in front of Angela as she explains that she knows we have 6 weeks of Senior Year left but we all really need to get a freaking grip on ourselves.

    “I love all of you so much but seriously: COME. ON.”

We all nod. It is ridiculous.

    “Additionally: Alexandra Michelle and Lillian Townsend you are HALL ASSISTANTS!! You are supposed to be leaders, set examples, you are supposed to be the first line of defense when all the parents paying thousands of dollars and visiting from Asia for the four concerts this week alone want to know where on earth they have sent their children.”

She was right. Double oops. Actually, quintuple oops— for good measure.

    “I can’t believe I am about to say this, I literally cannot believe I am about to say the following sentence but; PLEASE, dear women of Upper Long, please do not cover your naked bodies in paint, roam the public hallways during working (OR non-working hours for that matter), and above all, please, please do not video tape it.”

We nodded again, with even more shame.

    “Dunc?” Chrissy said, lifting her head. “Please, there is just something I want to get off my chest.”
    “Please: say it is not your shirt.”
    “Yes!—I mean no! I just—” she grappled, “we’re sorry.”

We were. [2]

    “Accepted. We all got it?” she said, her hands in the prayer-position, “I’m gonna go now.”

Remember the last five minutes of every sports film in the history of cinema where you are inexplicably filled with the exultant joy of a game well played and a life well lived in a those-sure-were-the-best-of-times sort of a way? —We felt the opposite of that.


But man, did we have a great year. Some people might be intimidated to share their dorm life with three boisterous theatre majors, but not Lilly. Lilly was honorary, she was drama and flair, she was theatrical and powerful and loved it. Sure, sometimes she didn’t want to talk about Tennessee Williams anymore. And the sounds of Chrissy and I warming up in our communal shower must have been unpleasant at times, and I’m certain there were times where if she heard us talk about Theatre Department politics one. more. time. she was probably gonna kill us. Oh alright, and sometimes she had to explain the basics to us. Like the time Katie stared at “The Beeping Box” in total, wonder:
    “Listen guys” she said, shoving her face ever closer, “…it's like Morse Code…"
Lilly just stared, eyebrow cocked, voice ever-patient.
    "Actually, it's called a metronome…"
But if she ever truly contemplated roomaticide, she never showed it. "Do your theatre stuff" she would say, and Lilly just kept on making her reeds and doing her homework and more often that not, joining right in—picking out our outfits before auditions, expressing her monologue preferences, and, most memorable of all (with her signature scrupulous exactness), helping me learn every single line and lyric as I prepared to play Amalia Balash in She Loves Me. Lilly got so involved in the process she would often ask to “work” long after I was memorized, she would talk through the notes I got from the director.
    “I think you need to be a little ‘sobbier.’”
    “Lilly, if I got any ‘sobbier’ I'd be Meg Ryan."
    “Well then sob away—you’d have a cute haircut. And quite a career.”
Oh how she belted “Where’s My Shoe?” with all her heart! How she melted just like “Vanilla Ice Cream,” and how she detested the title song (which she referred to scathingly as the “Well, well, well” song— Adorable).

How we loved her. And how could we not? Her bewitchingly piping voice, her short hair she sometimes wore in spriggy little pigtails that looked something like a cross between broccoli and the thing on top of Bam-Bam’s head, her Southern accent that only came out when she was exhausted, how much she hated making reeds but dutifully made them anyway. She was a foreign creature to us theatre people and we were happy to be amused by her music-major culture.

In the first week of school all of the auditions for the coming year take place— theatre majors audition for the first two shows of the season (in our case, Lysistrata and She Loves Me [3]), voice majors get placed in their studios, dance majors are placed in their level classes and cast in the coming Winter ballet (Coppélia our senior year. Snore), and most stressful of all on our predominantly orchestrally-minded campus, all of the instrumental majors audition for the entire week for their “chair” in the orchestra.

I suppose this is the point where I tell you a little secret: Lilly is so insanely talented a musician, and so gifted at the oboe some might call it unjust. To listen to Lilly play is like listening to a person sing— actually sing through their instrument, with all of the individuality and soulfulness of a raw, vital, pulsing human voice which manages to capture the beauty of existence just as film captures an image. Or honey captures light. One can hear her own expressive soul come through the instrument and, though I know I am biased, I have never heard her bettered. Listening to Lilly play is like watching Ann Reinking dance next to other dancers: flat out unfair to others.

So it was no surprise to the rest of us the day the chairs were posted. Lilly lay in, buried in her duvet distraught that she had “blown it,” thus ruining her senior year, her chances at getting into college and possibly her entire life. The rest of us woke up early and looked at the posting for her—certain.

And as we screamed and celebrated in the main lobby, jumping up and down in characteristically un-music-major-like fashion, we flew upstairs, burst in and jumped on Lilly screaming like the lunatics we were
   
    “First chair, Lilly! First freakin' chair!”

Lilly sat up and beamed. She laughed her Southern sun-shiney laugh and eventually, after Chrissy decided party music (in the form of Simon and Garfunkle’s "Cecelia") was “called for,” joined in our carousing dance of celebration.



Lilly might have slept through her concerto competition final were it not for Katie and I keeping track of the time, throwing her in the shower and running her to the recital hall with minutes to spare.

And (prepare your thesaurus) just imagine what our respective language lexicons would be like were it not for the nocturnally concocted memory tricks we cogitated for every word of Mr. Hintze’s notoriously (some might say opprobriously) formidable vocabulary assessments?

And maybe we all went to MORP [4] on a great big yellow school bus.
Chrissy and I chose vintage picks.
Lilly in a Catherine Silber original.
Katie made her own dress—out of duct tape.

Yes, we had a lot of adventures.
And it was, without question, a collection of favorite memories I shall hoard forever, like jewelry, or marbles, or the very last Double Stuff Oreo.


But all this being said, Lilly was something else.
Despite not being a theatre major, Lilly “played a different role:” She was my very closest friend.
She was the only one I really spoke to about my Dad’s increasingly concerning illness when the going got tough.
And it did.
Get tough.

Dad started out the year with his fifth (or so) round of regular ol’ chemo (in nine years). If there is such a thing. A bald head was the only giveaway, Dad was an ox: six foot three inches of pure, Herculean, I-have-cancer-but-remain-symptom-free-for-a-decade type strength. No one saw the end coming. No one.
That somehow made it all the more ruthless.


Previously-mentioned virtuosic musical gift aside [5], Lilly is rife with what I like to call “goods.” And I will now list them (because as we know, I love both Lilly and lists). It doesn’t take a genius to notice that Lillian Copeland has the biggest, most gorgeous hazel eyes you’ve ever seen. But let me tell you something else: this girl is compassionate, capable, and feisty. She looks right at you and waves sneakily with her oboe during the orchestral bow when you are standing and screaming for her solo (…from the front row of the stalls…with signs…) She is delightfully kooky; for example, she doesn’t refer to her oboe as “the oboe” but rather as, “Oboe,” the proper noun, as if “Oboe” is “his/her” name [6] — both delightful and kooky, you see! She is the just right amount of perfectionist and sees the great virtue in “being cute.” Yes, OKAY, fine: she has killer legs with perfect ankles that look amazing in heels.

But reader?
Lilly is the kind of solid you only think is possible in prairie people. With a sense of empathy so intuitive it makes you ache.


She would drive to-and-from Ohio more times than anyone could count. [7]
She would entertain the less-desirable members of my extended family. [8]
She would visit me in every exotic city I would ever come to live in. [9]
She would hold me while I couldn’t cry.

This is one phenomenal friend.

*

Of the central circle, Lilly was the last to arrive.

She arranged a leave of absence, caught a Greyhound Bus up from Oberlin the following morning set to arrive around lunch time, though she didn’t arrive at the house until dinner time because despite our Black-Ops-worthy planning, somehow, we forgot to pick her up. For hours.
    “I’m so sorry,” Grey said when he finally arrived in his Rav 4 after driving nearly 150 miles that day alone, “I don’t know how we missed you Lil. We had everything planned down to the mili-second.”
    “It’s okay,” Lilly laughed, tired, but not even the tiniest bit irked, “I understand. I was just a little freaked out.”
    “Because you were young woman alone in the Detroit Greyhound Station? No worries there.”
    “Right” she said. Even her laugh was still sunny and Southern. [10])


Lilly rang the bell at 1367.
    “Hi” she said “I brought Oboe.” Obviously Lilly was going to play at the funeral. Obviously.
    “Come in” I said. And she did.


We arranged the sleeping situation: Grey and Kent opted to sleep downstairs in the lower guest room (which had previously doubled as my mom’s design studio)— it had its own bathroom (which seemed to be a masculine virtue), a dark window facing the Rouge River, and a trundle bed below the day bed we bought when we moved to Michigan because I had seen one once on “The Price is Right” and thought the overly enthusiastic models made it appear outstanding. Lilly and I shared my room— also on twin trundles amidst what suddenly felt to be the fragmented souvenirs of a now forever-lost childhood, and Mom, felt understandably un-enthused about sleeping in The Bed of Death and thus took the spare bed in my Dad’s former office (an office he hadn’t used in months as the disease took full control of him), which Mom would remain in for weeks, until we all sojourned out to Art Van to get her a new bed.


Lil and I settled into my room, she put her bags down, pushed the hair off of her weary face and sat next to me on the bed.
    “Al?” she said.
    “Yeah Lil?”
There was a pause so gorged with meaning the air almost went opaque. Her voice was quiet. Sure.
    “I’ve got this. We’ve got this.”
    “I know…” I replied.
    “You’ve got this.”
    “Thank you, Lilly.”

She hugged me. That said it all. 
We immediately went downstairs and got to work.

There was  an entire extended family of unhelpful people to play offense with. There were 7000 people to pick up from Wayne County Airport, The Greyhound station (which we later discovered to in fact, be three Greyhound stations, all sixteen miles apart). There were people to call, housing to arrange, people to feed.
And of yes: a funeral to plan.
And three eighteen-year-olds would do it all.
All of it.

Because some people can plan funerals when they are eighteen.



[1] at band—school? Literally…
[2] Stir-crazy iiiiiidioooooots.
[3] Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s glorious musical take on The Shop Around the Corner
[4] the Interlochen version of Prom—MORP is “Prom” backwards
[5] …like it can be placed to the side. But you if you will, I would like it, for now, to be placed to the side
[6] I am not certain if Oboe has a gender.
[7] Now that’s love. Plus a lot of unnecessary time on The Turnpike…
[8] Often.
[9] Including Alpena. That’s real love. More on that later.
[10] Okay, we actually were

Portrait of a Friend: Lance Horne

Lance Horne and I have known one another since I was in high school-- and our friendship and artistic affinity in recent years has been informed, shaped, and made all the more poignant by, coming from the same artistic roots.
Story:

In my Junior year at Interlochen I was fortunate enough to be cast in two leading roles (Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker and Lucy in Snoopy The Musical [opposite Michael Arden's Charlie Brown]). So when the final production of Merrily We Roll Along "rolled along" I was certain I would be building the sets in the production shop, but I was thrilled to be cast in the chorus (as well as the viiiiital character of 'Dory' whose famous line "and what a great pool!" flat out rocked my world then, and to this day provides an ever-delightful non sequitur...)

There was something about this production. It had a magical glow around it. We had a flurry of guest artists during the rehearsal process-- Anthony Rapp, Adam Pelty, and Lance Horne-- all of whom felt so connected to the work we all shared that they all returned to see the full production.

So picture it: there I was: sixteen years old and up to my eyeballs in the talented movers and shakers of the future (this cast included the likes of Ben Walker and Michael Arden). I was in the chorus, decked out in full 80s sunglasses, fur coat, and holding an empty champagne glass.

Now the truth was, many of my fellow chorusters were not exactly having a wonderful time. They were bored, overly talented teenagers feeling under-appreciated in their final weeks of school, wishing that they were in the front and not the back. There were grumblings, complaints and other mutterings of young people learning and growing...

One particular day we were staging "That Frank" and the grumblings were especially vociferous. The scene is tremendously intricate and complicated-- an opening scene set at a Hollywood pool party featuring the full cast. Lots of movement. Complex Sondheim music. People were losing focus and feeling frustrated, and the "why-oh-why-am-I-in-the-chorus-and-not-playing-a-lead" grumblings began with full force.

And something happened. I ripped off my sunglasses as my back straightened with a crashing realization-- I had spent the entire school year in the front. Leading companies, starring in beautiful shows. And here I was holding a champagne glass in the back... and I loved it. I loved every second of it. I adored being a part of this magical production. Learning, developing, contributing. "I love this," I thought, "I am different. I want different things from this experience. I love this and I don't need to be in the front to love it as much as I love it right this second." And I was rocked to my core--because I knew in this moment that I was going to do this for the rest of my life.
It was life altering.
A moment I talk about all the time, in fact. 

And you know who was there, watching rehearsal from the back of the theatre? Lance Horne.

Rehearsal ended, and exhausted, we all moved to our bags and began to pack up and head to dinner.

     "Hey!" Lance called out to me from the back, moving down the stairs of the beautiful Harvey Theatre-- "You. Al, right?"
     "Yes," I replied. I was so shy with guest artists that year I hadn't even asked Lance a question in his Q&A, let alone performed for him. I couldn't believe he even knew my name.
     "You..." he smiled, pointing at me and nodding. "You. You are the real thing. You are going to do this, do you know that?"
I starred at him in disbelief, perfectly serious and still.
     "Yes..." I whispered. "Yes."
     "Good," he brushed the curls out of his eyes as his smile broadened. "See you tomorrow."

Lance Horne and I have been friends ever since.

We have met up and performed together all over the world. We have made lines in the sand together, laughed, wept, gone on one crazy ass road trip, made declarations to the universe whilst holding Neal's Yard coconuts to the sky! We have held one another accountable for our creative and personal integrity. That is an artistic colleague. That is a true friend. That is the real thing.

There is nothing like seeing your best friends succeed, but nothing can match the experience of beholding that success when you also know that their music, message, their art is on a truly stirring, if not outright magnificent level. To sing Lance's music is far more than singing some of the best songs currently being written, it is to be a part of both the traditional emergence of a trained and finely crafted artisan building upon the illuminations from the past, as well as being present in the center of the visionary ground-breaking making way for new forms.

I could not have been more moved or thrilled to sing on his first album First Things Last (and to take the photograph for the album cover), as well as perform with him alongside the very best of Broadway (Alan Cumming, Cheyenne Jackson, Lea Delaria, Rebecca Luker, Lauren Kennedy and Daphne Rubin Vega) and the West End (Paul Spicer, Julie Atherton, Hannah Waddingham, Meow Meow, Oliver Tompsett, Emma Williams and Graham Norton) at both Lincoln Center as well as at The Garrick Theatre in London.

So, to say that "Anyone Whose Ever Been in Love" is beautiful, penetrative, and deeply personal to hear and to perform is true.  But to sing it, and to have been asked to by my long time beloved friend Lance himself? That is an honor I could begin to utter.

Portrait of a Friend: Jill

Jill as Laura

Jill Paice and I are inextricably linked. Yes, we are both actresses and singers. Yes, we were both raised as only children in the Midwest. But we were initially linked by a mutual acquaintance of ours: Laura Fairlie.

Unlike other big musicals I could name, there are only two people to have ever played Andrew Lloyd Webber's Laura Fairlie (okay, three if you count Anne Hathaway in the workshop and six if you count understudies who went on).

It is a funny thing, long before I ever met Jill, I felt as though I already knew her. After all, when preparing to audition for the role, I was still a young 21-year-old drama student, busy playing 8 men and a puppet in an Ionesco farce in Glasgow. I spent an inordinate amount of time "with her"-- listening to her beautiful performance both before and after getting the role, attempting to be as familiar with Limmeridge House as possible in between classes.

The first time I met her I had not been in London 5 hours. I got off the train from Glasgow, plopped my bags down and attempted to find The Palace Theatre for my very first professional costume fitting. I tried to pretend it was nobigdeal, but in all honesty, I was overwhelmed to be inside a professional theatre, let alone one in the West End, let alone being fitted for twelve not-from-my-closet-or-from-Scottish-Opera-stock-but-made-for-me dresses... for a female character...

From the wig room around the corner came a voice, "Alexandra?"

"Yes?" Oh my goodness, I thought, this was Jill.

"Hi," she smiled so warmly, her hair was wet and tousled, a towel around her shoulders. She had been in the middle of a haircut before the show. I couldn't believe how different we were-- there she was: a willowy blond, Nordic looking almost. She was small-framed with delicate features; but her stance was assured-- full of feminine strength and confidence. A far cry from what felt like the almost childish dark featured Gibson girl staring shyly across from her. Or perhaps that is merely how it felt.

Jill extended her hand, I do not know if she could tell that I was nervous. In hindsight, I wonder if she may have been a bit nervous herself. "I'm Jill. I'm playing Laura right now..." ohmygodI'msoembarrassedhowmuchIknowthatIliterallylistentoyoueverysingleday I think. She continues, "I've heard so much about you and wanted to say hello."

"Thank you so much," I say, returning her hand. "I've spent so much time listening to you, it is such a pleasure to meet you."

Al as Laura

"Everything going well so far?"

"Well I just got here this afternoon actually! I literally just left drama school in Glasgow on Wednesday, so I'm a little shell-shocked if I'm honest." I breathed deeply, and she smiled.

"That is amazing," she said. She was so genuine. "I was just getting my haircut," she said, sort of apologizing, and we laughed, "and I should let you get back to your fitting!"

"Okay, thank you for taking the time."

"My pleasure, I will see you soon. Take care."


*

But it didn't end there. For those of you who do not know, there is an extensive drawing scene in The Woman in White that involves large sketch books. During the day, I would rehearse with the actual sketch book that Jill used in the evening. One day I saw a little note in the book that simply read,

"Hello Alexandra, do you use this sketch book too?"

I was enchanted! It was a message from another world! It felt like George and Amalia, like Griffin and Sabine, like a message from beyond. The sketch book was a portal to communication. I wrote back,

"Yes I do American lady. How is everything going?"

she wrote back

"Well! Is rehearsal going okay? Anything you need just ask!"

and it continued on like that for a couple of weeks.

Cards and gifts were exchanged on her closing, and my opening nights. She stood and cheered when she returned to watch the show before re-rehearsing for Broadway, always gracious, always a true lady. And on her opening night in New York, I sent her a bouquet of silk flowers (learning from our lovely dresser Helen that she was allergic to real ones).

It was funny, somewhere along the line, Jill and I had sort of become friends and only ever met face to face-- once.

*

Months ago, new to the city and overwhelmed by waves of new people, I ran into Jill at The Plaza Hotel, (at the opening night party of Promises Promises). She was there with a legendary composer and we greeted one another with such warmth, like the reunion of two old friends.

"Al?" she called across the foyer to me, and we hugged. " Legendary Composer?" she turned to the Legendary Composer friend, "this is Alexandra Silber. Al replaced me in The Woman in White in London and she is the real thing. I saw her play Laura after I left, and you are gonna see her performing in New York very soon. Who knows? Maybe someday together."

She turned to me and smiled. In a room filled with celebrities and having no idea how genuine anyone may or may not be, it was clear in her voice to hear how much she meant it. I was floored. We hugged and parted in the sea of celebrities and met a few weeks later for a proper 'friend date.'

And this was it: something about sharing secrets, truths and cappuccinos on the Upper West Side solidified what we had both always known, we were not just actresses passing in the night, we truly were kindred spirits. For a lack of better way of articulating it, it seemed we 'recognized' one another.

We talked, we laughed, we shared the intimacies that belong to those who have known one another for years. She told me the story of her life. I filled in the details of mine. My trials and tribulations, my travels, my projects. "What brings me to New York?" something about the way she asked the question was larger than it appeared. I answered accordingly, something made me trust her, despite our lack of clocked "hours" as friends, "I just figured it was time. I felt it. And I needed a change of scenery. And I thought, you know what? Fortune favors the brave."

Her expression rang with astonishment. "...You're amazing." she said softly and when she said it I could not believe how much she meant it. It was impossible to me to be this impressive to a woman I admired so greatly on so many levels. "You are such an inspiration!"

Again, I was mystified. "My God," I replied, my voice shocked, "thank you, Jill."

Most people never learn to be vulnerable, never to be open. Even in the most intimate relationships they remain guarded, closed, afraid. The truth is, the heart is a powerful awe-inspiring force to be reckoned with in the world and Jill Paice's heart is the true inspiration. Seeing her energy fully revealed as she sat before me openhearted, I was moved. She projects a genuine-ness, a kindness, an open, conscious vulnerability that can only come from strength. I wanted to bask in her light, to align myself with that energy.

It was time to thank her. Something I'd wanted to say for years.

"You know Jill, in many ways, The Woman in White changed my entire life, it was responsible for the path I am currently on..." I admit meekly, shy to admit the truth, "and in every way you and Laura, and you as Laura, were the Ambassadors to that new world. I've never been able to thank you properly, to your face. I don't know that I've ever really seen it with as fine a clarity until recently. So thank you for that. I always tried to honor what you had started."

She stared at me. Perhaps a little bit floored.

And that was that.

Sometimes in life we just "find our people"--  friendships form in the most curious of times and places. They feel right. Then seeds are planted, they gestate, solidify and grow.

In a world of disappointments, falsities and insincere exchanges, where people take, deceive and often walk all over, it is important to pause and take a moment to mark when we see a light. Jill Paice is remarkable and has been more than an Ambassador or a person to share cappuccino with-- for whatever people may see onstage, I wanted the world to know that for someone privileged enough to know her I am inspired by her being as well as, but not merely by, her performances.
She is a light.

So.

Lauras unite.

Portrait of a Friend: Victoria

Meet Victoria Jayne Hinde.

She is my friend.
And she has proven to be a true one.
Over and over again.

Victoria is beautiful
and gifted
and brave
and strong
and fun
and Overall?
She is pretty flippin’ great.

Time spent with her is like having a slumber party, only you can curse without getting into trouble, and the mean girl from second grade isn’t around to make you cry anymore, and instead of Dr. Pepper and Swedish Fish, you can share such things as Italian meats and hummus and (her very favourite) cherry tomatoes. Or bottles of rosé and pappardelle with bagna cauda, wilted radicchio, and eggs fried in olive oil (as well as Dr. Pepper and Swedish Fish if you so choose).

Victoria is a a grabber of life.
She not only sees something ahead of her and clutches it un-apologetically with both hands, but she creates pleasures and opportunities for herself as well.

She has an admirably devoted team of friends around her, friends she has collected and measured and devoted her heart to the way one might weigh, measure and select with artful consideration the purchase of a piece of expensive, life-long jewelry.

Friends she collects she nurtures, she tends to, she feeds and cradles and celebrates and delights in. I do not know how I ever made it in to this circle but somehow I managed it and feel like I’ve won a kind of lottery.

* * *

Once upon a time, Al and Vicoria were early for rehearsal.
Very early.
5 hours early.

And it was deeply tragic for we were both exhausted
She was busy as a swing, dancing dirtily in Dirty Dancing
I was already feeling the burden of exploring Julie Jordan…
…at 10am.
…in Fulham.

Lindsay [Posner—the director] looked at us and said “Oh God I’m so sorry girls… I…” he winced slightly, knowing full well the effect of the next agonizingly truthful phrase “… I don’t need you until 2…”
He paused.
We stood before him… dumbfounded.

“I don’t know how that happened…”
we continued to stare at him, aghast.
“…forgive me…”
Not knowing what to say, he crept away cautiously back to the rehearsal already in progress.

And Victoria looked at me and said quite simply,
 “I want to cry…”

And in this moment I knew something special was about to happen.

Victoria Hinde and Al Silber (two girls with an already ever-so-blossoming connection based on a mutual love of Jason Mraz), looked at one another, walked quietly out of the rehearsal room and sat in the lobby of the grubby Dance Attic in a state of mild comatose.

“Oh my God…” she groaned, Victoria really was welling up a bit with tears in her huge, Bambi brown eyes and for a brief moment, looked like a very sad child.

“Okay.” I said, authoritative American voice in action, “Okay. We can go to the cinema and sleep. We can try to go home?”

Her face quivered with despair as she pictured her bed well over an hour away on public transport. “Or!” I tried to save us here, “we could sort of make a day of it? We could go into Central London and take a look around the shops? Get some nice lunch? Have a nice time together having a little adventure..?”

“Yeah?” she replied. This sounded a bit more appealing than sitting and rotting in Dance Attic. “We could go to Selfridge’s,” she suggested.
“You know what?” I said, “I have genuinely never been. Not in four years of living in London have I ever been inside Selfridge’s.”
“Whaaaaat?” she replied in what I now recognize as her typical Victoria shock response. “Well, we have to go then.”

Off we went.

* * *

We walked to the station and boarded the train into town. And it was on this journey that it all began.

“Sometimes…” she admitted, “sometimes, just bein’ honest, right? Sometimes I just stare at you because I can’t actually believe how pretty you are! And then you sing and it’s just like— whaaaaat?”
“Oh my God, please," I am actually laughing, "would you look at yourself?” 
“No, I’m bein’ serious here!” she insisted, her lifelong London drawl making a proper appearance now, “I’m worried you’re gonna think I’m some kinda psycho when I’m not at all I’m just a bit mesmerized and confused about how someone could have all that!”

I pause for a moment because I am actually trying to see whether or not she is joking.
She is not.
And I am suddenly filled with this very odd warmth of feeling: this totally remarkable stranger, without any prompting or pause for major insecurity, has made me feel so lovely about myself with her honesty.

“Thank you…” I reply with an awkward smile. I am possibly the worst person in the world at accepting compliments regarding my personal appearance. Especially from a person that looks as perfect as Victoria.

“But I have no boobs” she admits, all serious face “So I’m not that perfect am I?” and she smirks.

We enter Selfridge’s and take a look around. She shows me all her favourite places and things— leather jackets because she is a badass and a little bit rock and roll. O.P.I nail laquer. Jelly Belly’s. Stationary. Chocolate. Bare Minerals. Normally I find shopping, especially in anything described as a Department Store not just pointless but overwhelming. With Victoria it is excruciatingly fun. (I would come to learn that with Victoria, pretty much everything is more fun— from watching movies to drinking cocktails to concerts to talking about Russia). “Shopping isn’t frivilous it is fun and pleasurable” she insisted, “and nothing this fun and pleasurable can be stupid!”

She was right. I’d never seen it that way.

I tentatively approach the M.A.C counter feeling like a shopping novice, and clumsily fondle a lip gloss that appears to be rather enticing.

“Are you gonna get somethin’?!” she asks me, excited. Her enthusiasm is intoxicating.
“I don’t know…” I answer honestly, “I do really like it….”
“Um, then get it, silly! You can’t come to your first trip to Selfridge’s and not get a single thing!”

So I did. (And to this very day I still have it and it reminds me of that first outing).

After our stroll around the iconic store we stopped at Pret A Manger for an early lunch and parked ourselves on a street bench along a bustling Oxford Circus. It was there we began to, in heavenly honest stages, reveal and share the innermost stories of our lives— from love, to family, to loss and struggle, laughter, friends and every magical moment in between.

By the time we looked up, it was time to head back. And neither of us wanted to.

What a way to pass the time.

* * *

When you look at the photographs we took earlier this summer, it don’t have to tell you Victoria Jayne Hinde is beautiful. But let me tell you about something else: she is beautiful. There's something special about this girl, something mesmerizing. And I don't just mean in a Hollywood kind of way.

When Victoria enters a room you don’t just notice, you smile. Yes, she has absorbing eyes, a perfect pout and mane, a grace that's rare to see, killer legs uptothere and a sense of fabulous so un-teachable it smarts.

But this girl is one incredible friend.

Thoughtful, considerate, enthusiastic.
She burns you CDs
She takes photos
She writes heartfelt notes
She makes you little care packages filled with all of the above and more.

She remembers important dates
And asks you interesting questions and then really wants to hear the answers
(--She also talks to you patiently and endlessly about the novel you are writing then tells everyone else she knows how proud she is of you. She also sends you texts messages about how excited she is to come your “book party” that will inevitably happen at some point in the future “Someday someone is going to ask me ‘where are you going?’ and I will get to say ‘to my friend’s book party!’”—then gets ecstatic when you inform her there might be three books to which her reply is utter joy at the possibility of three parties, thus three public opportunities to be proud of you).

She takes you to new and exciting places she think you would love
She lets you borrow clothes that she insists would look good on you (and sometimes steals items from her friends and prays you’ll forget!)
She tells you it is not only okay to not feel better about heartache, but offers to listen to you about your pain until you don’t need to talk about it anymore.
She makes you feel included in a room full of strangers

This is a girl who is way more that merely a beauty
or a dancer.
This girl is a deeply gifted, multi-faceted artist.
A girl with opinions.
A girl who is one of those people with silly insecurities when really she has it all (that doesn’t remind me of anyone…)
She is an adventurer.
A girl who has principles about love.
A girl who knows what she wants
And then unapologetically goes and gets it.

In fact, at the end of last year, this is a girl who, after years of wondering, bought a ticket to Australia to see if her feelings for a man she adored were the real thing. She didn’t want anyone else and could not spend her life wondering. (Or, Wonderin’, as another principled heroine might say…). She got on the plane and found out. That is brave. That is making yourself vulnerable, that is open-hearted and feisty.

That is the definition of courage.

She is a girl who, at the buffet of life, would go back for thirds.

I think we can all get behind that.

* * *

Around Christmas this year we got to communicate a lot online which was a real joy. An opportunity to actually communicate in a differnet and at times, far more personal way. Odd that, but accurate.

“Hey Al..?” she types from Down Under after a long and truly delicious catch up session, the kind that leaves one all topped up and tingly with they joys of connection.
“Yeah Vic?” I type back— 20 times zones away in Los Angeles.

There is a pause. It feels full.

“I am so glad we were early.”
“Me too…” I reply.

That is putting it mildly.

Portrait of a Friend: An Introduction

I love my friends. I love who they are, how they live in the world, what they create.

But if I were to begin making a list, I would be here all night.

So in an interest of glorifying these deserving others, and as an exercise in gratitude, I will attempt to properly articulate/paint/sketch those whom I adore— for me, for them, for you. It will be a chance to share with you the people that truly adorn my, as well as many others’ lives, with snatches of glory.

These are people whom I respect, enjoy, delight in. They are those who have been there for moments of triumph and joy, and more importantly when things were the worst kind of ugly. They are people who picked me up when I was trying to stand. Or distracted me from the abyss of my despair. They witnessed moment of horrific human wretchedness and despite pain’s repulsive glare they looked me and it straight in the face and continued to love me regardless.

These people are not infinite, but their gifts to me are. These characters are unique, sensational, and individually glittering, like handmade extravagantly detailed and colorful ornaments on the Christmas tree that is my life.

You have seen their names mentioned here before, you know who some of them are, and to some extent I have already done this with Frances and Ruthie. But I have decided that mere mentions are not enough. I am beginning a new serial here on London Still, another little addition to such familiars as “Ask Al,” “I’ve been” and “I like to make lists.” I will share with you these people as I see them, as love sees them, in moments when these people deserve or need to be glorified. Or reminded.

So without further ado, here is the first official “Portrait of a Friend.”

Portrait of a Friend: Frances

I love my friend (and former older sister) Frances Thorburn. She is not only an accomplished actress, but a gifted and unique musician and performance artist. And people, the lady knows how to live.

As you will see, she is playful, creative, intensely focused about her art, and she can effortlessly shift from childlike exuberance to the darkest depths of the human spirit in the blink of an eye. She's had some difficult times: a few things that could have devastated even the most ferociously stoic among us. But her incredibly strong and tenacious soul chose instead to see those circumstances as a gift, a chance to re-start, to live bigger and fuller and brighter, the way she does today: in good health, in love, relishing in gorgeous food!

Franny is passionate about her art, but she’s even more passionate about the dirty business we call life. I always thought I was pretty good at appreciating things, at scraping every drop of sauce, so to speak, from my plate. But this lady, I swear! If I’m scraping the plate, she’s licking the thing. She’s going after life with both hands. She lights up the room.

Here are some totally delightful pictures we took together for her music publicity. 

Check. Her. Oot.

I adore her in every way.