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ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Laura, Peter and Turkey Sheds
By Seth Rudetsky
04 Aug 2008
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Peter Gallagher
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A week in the life of actor, musician and Chatterbox host Seth Rudetsky.
This was an annoying week for two reasons!
Here goes: James, Juli and I finally found an apartment that had everything we wanted (duplex on the ground floor of a brownstone with a back yard), and it was cheap. And we found out that there was no one else looking at it. We put in an application…and got ixnayed!!!! The realtor told us that she had no idea why the landlord rejected us. James and I both make enough money and have good credit. It's so hilarious because it's an apartment I've seen on Craigslist for weeks, and I refused to look at it because the ads seemed desperate. There was a post about it literally every day, and the price kept dropping and dropping. I essentially went to go look at it because I felt bad for it. It was like asking someone out just to make them feel better and then having them dump you. What chutzpah! I've had it.
Then I joined the throngs of blind consumers and bought an iPhone. If you don't know, you first have to go to the Mac store and get a time to come back to actually buy the iPhone. When you do come back, they have you wait in a beautiful, air-conditioned lounge until your phone is ready. Oh, I'm sorry, they actually make you wait outside with no shade in crazy scorching heat for a full half hour! After that, you get the privilege of waiting on another line inside the store. Then, when you finally get the phone, you realize that because you're an adult male, your fingers are actually too fat to type on its little tiny screen. It's a nightmare! You think you're typing one thing and something crazy comes out on the screen. Right after I got it, I emailed Amanda Lipitz, the producer of the MTV Legally Blonde reality show, and told her I was going to have some contestants from the show on my Chatterbox and wondered if she wanted to come onstage and chat about the show. I got back an email from her, asking me, "What's omtahe?" That's right, "omtahe" is what came out when I typed "onstage." I've had it! I either get rid of the iPhone or put my fingers on a diet.
This week I also had an audition for the new musical version of the film "The Front." Right after I sang and read, the director, John Caird (Les Miz), came up to talk to me. I was ready for some British-style direction. You know like, "I want to see 40 percent more Falstaff with a smidgeon of Lear. And then haul out ye olde Lady Macbeth." Instead, he told me that he was talking about me with someone recently, and he knew my name must be an anagram. Then when he saw it in print, he immediately realized it was an anagram for "Turkey Sheds." I was super-impressed. How can he see a name and immediately form an anagram? I then realized I have a similar talent in that I can see the name of a person and immediately know if they're Jewish. He essentially has the British version of that skill. When I questioned what a turkey shed was, John Caird offered up "perhaps turkey sheds are where composers go to write bad Broadway shows." I piped up with, "I guess that's where Andrew Lloyd Webber lives!" I was then mortified because I couldn't remember if they had ever done a show together (they did: Song and Dance) and I was annoyed with myself because making an ALW joke is as cheap as doing a "why do men leave the toilet seats up" routine. And, because I love all of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals. And, by "all of," I mean 80 percent of them. I won't qualify which ones are in the 20 percent, but let's just say that the "frequently played songs" list on my iPod doesn't include By Jeeves. Anyhoo, I was totally intimidated having a one-to-one with John Caird but not as much as I was trying out for a Coen Brothers movie! That's right! I had two high-powered auditions within two weeks. The problem was that the scene I was auditioning with began with the character crying. It's one thing to build up to crying, but it's so hard to go from chatting with the casting director: "Hi! Nice to meet you! Yes…The Ritz was totally fun!" to body-heaving sobs. I kept trying to think of tricks to get myself to cry. I remembered my friend Jack Plotnick told me about an actor he knew who brought a bag of cut up onions to an audition, put them in his back pocket and during the audition scene surreptitiously put some onion juice in his eyes. Unfortunately, it didn't make him cry, but it did make his eyes sear with pain. We're both obsessed wondering what the casting director thought was going on when he saw this guy start acting the scene, casually bring his hand to his eyes and then start screaming in pain for no reason.
This week I also did some work with the Broadway Artist Alliance, which is a like a mini-intensive camp for theatre kids. They get trained for a week and then present an audition for tons of casting people and agents. These kids were really good! I was so impressed with them/completely annoyed that we had nothing like it when I was a kid. Besides the master classes the kids get, they also get a Chatterbox, and I interviewed Laura Benanti for them. Laura was, of course, beautiful and hilarious, but she noted that our dry humor was not working on some of the ten-year-olds. Keep up, kids, keep up! How dare you not get my Elaine Stritch joke? I was referring to her active alcoholism in the fifties. Anybody? Anybody under 12? Nobody? Someone asked Laura what her strangest experience was onstage, and she said that when she was playing Cinderella in Into the Woods, someone in the audience had Tourette syndrome. I actually have two friends with Tourette's but still had to hear the story because apparently the guy was only triggered when Laura sang. She gave us an amazing demonstration of what it was like by singing "I wish" followed by a gruff "F*** Sh** A**." She then said that during that performance she was talking about it backstage and asking how the other actors were dealing with it and they were like, "Laura. You're crazy. We don't hear anything." She decided she had been imagining it, re-entered with "He's a very nice prince" and was rewarded with a "Son-of-a-b**** Mother******." Continued...
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