A Piece of Zoe

An English essay I wrote a few weeks ago.

The topic I chose was an essay that included the words: I stop dead in my tracks and fall into a dark hole in my memory. That voice. I know that voice. I hoped I was wrong, but I knew I wasn’t. Even after fifteen years, I could recognize that voice in a room anywhere in the world. It was her and I knew it for sure.

“Skinny, triple shot, grande!”, the barista at Schmackary’s delivers my daily battle cry with a beaming smile and adds “when you gonna gimme a break, Miss J?”. “When you stop breaking my heart by flirting with all the other directors, Jesse!”, I laugh as I push my way through the unruly queue of caffeine addicts into the freezing morning air of 45^th Street.

Jesse, like almost everyone else operating on this miracle mile between 53^rd and 42^nd street, is trying to make it on Broadway… or “Off Broadway” as they call the second tier plays, or even “Off Off Broadway” for that matter.

There are over 36 theatres on the Great White Way that got its name from being one of the first electrically lit streets in America. And boy do the lights shine bright! But come morning, the huge pulsating billboards turn into grey steel skeletons etched against the daylight. Fatigue permeates everything and everyone in this district until it begins to stir again for the afternoon matinees. Theatre tickets of the night before lie in the gutter while the papers sit neatly in the news stands waiting to deliver the critics’ new reviews, some glowing, others scathing. I feel relieved that I don’t need to worry about their contents until the fall, when our play premieres. Until then, it’s auditions, rehearsals and more rehearsals.

I head down 45^th street to the Imperial, hunched in the cold and balancing my scripts and hot coffee like this is the only way I’ve ever known. I’ll always remember the answer I got when I asked a homeless guy “How do I get to Broadway?” when I first visited New York as a teen, to which he replied “Practice baby girl, practice”. His words stuck with me down my long road to becoming a casting director.

The doorman at the Imperial opens the door and hands me the morning papers. “They’re all waiting”, he says, but I can already hear the nervous chatter floating down the hall that turns into a sudden hush at the sound of my stilettos marching down towards them. I try not to look any of them in the eye. Keep it professional, impersonal, don’t give them a look they might read as a sign of having been noticed above the others. You have to keep them focused and hungry for the part.

I sink into my red velvet seat, just like the cliché’. I know it’s primadonnarish of me but I always ask my PA to place a white linen headrest on the seat. A phobia dating back to my high school days in South Africa when warnings would be issued every ‘season’ for mothers to inspect their darlings’ tresses for creepy little lice colonies, and the dreaded hours of shampoo treatments and combing that followed. The stale smell of the theatre in the morning however, I love. I take a sip of coffee and a deep breath of the air filled with lingering perfume, body odour, sweet drinks and stale popcorn and nod to Ava “send them in”.

The first group of three comes onto the stage. I wonder whether they feel as I did, that I’d rather be performing in front of a thousand strangers, than a few fellow actors wishing with all their hearts that I’ll knock myself out of the race with a stumble or a stutter. It’s so much more comfortable from where I’m sitting. They all read well, but there’s something missing. The part of Abigail Williams in this new interpretation of The Crucible is set in modern times, with someone around my age, early thirties. I’ve come across a few perfect Abigails over the years, but it’s Murphy’s law that you can never find them when you need them.

We audition until noon with no real success. I want break for lunch but Ava sends in one more group. I get up all the same and walk up the aisle towards the door to stretch my legs. “Next up, Gemma West”. The microphone gives a sharp rustle and there is a dramatic pause, after which the words almost explode into the silence: ”Shut up! All of you. We danced. That is all. And mark this, if anyone breathes a word or the edge of a word about the other things, I will come to you in the black of some terrible night, and I will bring with me a pointy reckoning that will shudder you! And you know I can do it.”

I stop dead in my tracks and fall into a dark hole in my memory. That voice. I know that voice. I hoped I was wrong, but I knew I wasn’t. Even after fifteen years, I could recognize that voice in a room anywhere in the world. It was her and I knew it for sure. I don’t need to turn around to know that it is Gemma Hone, removed by the half degree of a stage name from the nemesis of my high school days.

For the second time today I am reminded of high school. Of the days and weeks and months and years when Gemma had the upper hand. Not so much through greater ability but through brute force and of course the power I gave her over me. We were in the same grade and to my dismay we always ended up being in all the same classes. Classes in which I would hide my voice and lower my head as I feared the looks and whispers that followed when I answered a question or spoke my mind. She hated me. I had no idea why… in my mind I had never done anything to cause it. Indirectly, she explained to as many as would listen that I was “a self-righteous bitch” or, my personal favourite, a “fake cow”. I always wondered about that: was it better or worse than being called a “real cow”? Our feud divided our friends into allies and although I tried on countless occasions to find common ground, each time Gemma would pretend to agree to a cease-fire, only to shoot me in the back. She tortured my emotions and hormonal teenage self right to the very core until finally, I realized that she loved our fight as much as I hated it and that therefore I left the ring to her.

And here she is, in my ring. Falling down that hole in my memory, I felt like Alice in Wonderland getting smaller and smaller. But as I hear Ava’s voice calling “Hey Zoe, are you ok?” I look around and feel myself growing back to size with the certain knowledge that this is a whole new deck of cards in which I not only have the upper hand…but I’m also going to play fair. “That was excellent”, I say as I walk down the aisle up to the stage and into the light where she can see me, enjoying the different emotions that appear on her face: delight, surprise, confusion, fear.

“Hi Gem… it’s good to see you” I say coolly. “I think we can work with your particular energy. You’re perfect for the part of Abigail. Drop by my office later and my secretary will take you through the admin. And now everybody, lunch break at last- I’m starved!” I say. And with that I turn on my heels and leave, smiling for the first time when walking away from Gemma Hone.

X Zo