STEPHEN FALA: I’m Stephen Fala, and you’re listening to Pipe and Drape , the only podcast that spotlights the creative minds behind the theatre for young audiences industry.
[The Dinky Pipe and Drape theme plays.]
In this Dinky episode I’m talking about that time I had to leave my theatre job with 48 hours notice due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then how I jumped back into the world of performing for the first time in two years with 48 hours notice. Thank you for listening today.
If you’re following this podcast on Instagram @PipeAndDrapeStories you’ve seen bits and pieces of the jobs and adventures I’ve had over the last decade. I’ve sort of alluded to the fact that I worked for Disney Cruise Line (you’ll hear more about this in the next episode) and I was performing on the Magic in the Western Caribbean when the theatre industry was ripped out from under everyone due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was supposed to end my contract in Barcelona, and then I had planned to explore Europe for three weeks before returning to the states, moving to New York, and taking my Equity card.
Instead I was on board with no guests for a month practicing juggling tricks, watching movies on deck, and sailing into the unknown. After four weeks I was sent home to Philadelphia with 48 hours notice and five hundred dollars cash from Mickey to cover travel. During the six months that followed I collected unemployment and stimulus checks while reading thirty two books on my parents’ back porch and finishing scrapbooks. Once I started working remotely for a law firm I followed through with my goal of moving to New York. I wanted to be settled in New York when it was quiet before the industry came back, and with a remote job in place, savings from Mickey Mouse, and student loan payments on hold, the timing was right for me. In total I spent a year away from anything theatre-related, and by the end of that year I had developed this podcast as a way to keep in touch with members of the theatre industry and to help me reflect on what it is I do exactly. While recording Season 1 I was an extra on a film set, trained at a marionette theatre, workshopped an object movement piece, and stage managed in a play festival. These temporary positions were all adjacent to the work I was used to doing, and as the industry opened back up I wondered what my place in it would be.
I hadn’t fallen into a particular “type” when it comes to role or style of show. In musicals I’ve sung and flung as a foolish sidekick and a preppy stud, kicked around as a baby chorus member of a dancing New York City gang, and in plays I’ve drunkenly played piano at an Irish wake and solved a curious dog murder while studying for A levels. I’ve wavered back and forth between man and child, chorus and principle, nervous and sexy. In the world of TYA I performed for children as a puppeteer and/or played a child myself.
Each of these contracts had their ups and downs: great pay for work I didn’t believe in, exciting shows that hardly paid a living wage, and then there were positions that didn’t help me grow as an adult or performer… I wanted more out of the stories I told, compensation I received, and respect I was given. But stepping back into a recovering industry that had just a few jobs available…I felt like I was asking a lot. A huge part of me felt that I was too much and not enough of the same exact qualities for everyone behind the casting table. Too young yet too old, too "TYA" yet too serious, too big and and too small, too puppety and not unique enough. I felt like a man-child doomed to have taken my last bow ever on a Mickey Mouse Boat in the Bermuda Triangle.
Then I saw a listing for a last-minute replacement in a production of The SpongeBob Musical, a show I knew very little about. On the surface, SpongeBob looks like a musical comedy based on a cartoon for millennials—a cash grab. Dive in, and you’ll see its score is filled with original music by dozens of popular artists, in one way or another covers the topics of xenophobia, racism, women in STEM, global warming, capitalism, corrupt government, cult leaders, friendship, the struggles of being an artist, and has flying, skating, staircase ballets, tap, jazz, hip-hop, live sound effects, audience participation, acrobatics, and it’s truly for both kids and adults. If you haven’t seen the recording of the musical on Paramount Plus, check it out. The up-cycled scenery, diversity in the cast, and the clever staging are a prime example of what I hope the future of the theatre industry turns out to be.
The end of my COVID-19 intermission went like this:
- A self-tape request was posted Saturday
- I saw it Sunday
- Learned material Monday
- Recorded Tuesday
- Got the offer Wednesday
- Signed the contract Thursday
- Flew out Friday
- Has by first rehearsal Saturday
- And two weeks later I opened the show as an ensemble member
With 48 hours notice I was back in the world of theatre the way I knew it. I packed up my suitcase the way I had done before. I got myself to the airport and started to listen the show. I played the first few songs from the original cast recording on repeat for hours with the score in front of me to drill the music into my head. I was waking up my memorization skills as I was listening to SpongeBob wake up on repeat. During the first ten minutes of the show we learn that SpongeBob wakes up each day hoping to make it the best one ever. He dreams of being manager of Bikini Bottom’s “finest” eating establishment the Krusty Krab but he's told he can never be more than a fry cook, a job he has and loves. That he is just a simple sponge capable of only one kind of work. I don’t know how many times I listened to the first few songs but this trip flew by.
Flying used to terrify me. When I was touring with Nickelodeon I would squeeze my friend’s hand as the plane took off because I thought “this is it it’s going to happen--boom,” but now suddenly my plane was landing in Phoenix and I was logging into the theatre’s Uber account to call a car to take me to my housing and I didn’t even think about tragedy the whole time. I checked into the hotel with my bags and unlocked the door to my shared occupancy room and that’s when it felt strange. I know what this is: this was my life, for years, living out of a suitcase in a city I’ve never seen before. This is what I did, this was my thing. But I felt different? Maybe it’s the two years off, the pandemic, knowing that I had my apartment waiting for me back in New York, the fact that I was 30 and one of the eldest of my cast mates for the first time ever. The fact that between my last musical and this one, ten of my friends and family got married and had children?
As I was processing this I decided to do what I usually do when I arrive somewhere new for work: wander around by myself. That’s when my other routines started to come back to me. I thought “ok I should probably locate the theatre now before I have to get there for rehearsal tomorrow morning.” I found it. Then I decided to get dinner. I thought about getting take out and going back to my hotel room and then I remembered “right, you have only an hour for lunch tomorrow, maybe buy lunch to bring so you’re not scrambling.” When I was at Trader Joe’s I remembered i had a working refrigerator in my room so I could get some groceries. While getting groceries I remembered that hotels provide food at breakfast so there are some things I don’t need to buy. I unpacked and started organizing my bags and toiletries the way I used to on tour. It was all coming back to me: which items will always live in my backpack, which will stay in my suitcase, and where I will put everything. Doing this podcast and interviewing colleagues while the industry was at intermission has kept these routines in me somewhere, and I’m so happy I got to wake them up.
I recognized when I jumped back into old habits that I had developed over the years to help me do my job. For example: I am always quiet during the rehearsal process, especially when it’s a truncated two-week period that I hesitate to call a process. To save money, many theatres will give their performers two weeks to learn the show, and there is a grace period during the days of technical rehearsals to make adjustments and fixes to the physical storytelling accordingly. I didn’t have the script for SpongeBob until I was boarding the plane to Arizona, and by the first rehearsal I had only listened to the recording of the show once through. I needed to focus all of my energy on learning the material from scratch during the rehearsal period, so I was not particularly social on breaks or after rehearsals were over. SpongeBob is a lot. It’s a new musical which means everyone is a high tenor and every number is an ensemble number. It’s everything everywhere at once, and as an ensemble member I was constantly moving, on stage and off. We were a few days in and had already staged three major numbers, but in a high-stakes show like this, almost every number is a big ensemble ordeal. Just minutes into the show, crisis strikes when an underwater volcano is on the brink of erupting and destroying the town, and while SpongeBob’s friend Sandy has come up with a way to stop the volcano with an invention, no one in the town believes her because she is a squirrel/scientist. So a lot of big, mob mentality was needed for the telling of this story.
But as we were quickly staging these pieces, I noticed myself being really shy and taking everything seriously and getting really really in my head. This was a habit I did not expect to fall back into, and I thought I had beat it out of myself years ago. I noticed myself making small, non-choices and thinking too much about the spacing and the scenarios rather than experiencing the scene and failing big. When this show is silly it’s silly and when it’s serious it’s serious. Serious, to me, is easy, serious is safe, and serious is simple. I forgot how to be silly. What shook me out of that habit was the arrival of my second act character—a roller blading guitar playing who’s not-not a member of Aerosmith. I’d been watching clips of Harry Styles’ tour and realized he’s having so much fun—he wants to be there, and the audience wants him to be there and that’s when I remembered, 'I want to be here, and the audience wants to be here, what are you afraid of go be Harry Styles,' and so in some weird combination of KISS, Avril Levigne, and Starlight Express I made myself a rock star and allowed that confidence to fuel the other six characters I played throughout the show. I knew how to do this, I know what this is.
It had been a good minute since I had to pick up choreography. While I could play and create characters, I was still faking my way through numbers, and there are a lot of numbers. At one point the ensemble is hip-hop hypnotized into Plankton’s capitalism-driven scheme and just a few scenes later everyone is in a onesie-wearing cult that believes they can think the problem away whilst dancing with tambourines (hashtag thoughts and prayers) rather than investing in the science that will help stop tragedy. And then there is still all of act two which includes two staircase ballets, a long sea shanty, and a twenty-two minute full-company scene with four songs in a row. I was so overwhelmed. Cut to SpongeBob running around yelling “I can’t do this” at the base of the volcano he has to stop from erupting. He has yet to believe he is not just a simple sponge—panicking. I knew that with some time alone in the studio I could get the show into my body. So like I had done in many shows past, I got myself to the rehearsal space and worked alone for hours until I felt comfortable with my spacing.
Just when I got my own spacing down I was asked to understudy SpongeBob. My personal rehearsal process started all over again. Instead of finally going out with my cast and exploring Phoenix I was learning material I had never paid attention to. I’m a baritone, I can pop out a few occasional high notes, but SpongeBob lives in the stratosphere the entire show. I went into those rehearsals not sure if I could sing the role, but then I got through the first act just fine. Okay. He sings even higher in the second act because, of course, stakes are higher. He’s upside down climbing a volcano/scaffolding while proving to himself that he has the management skills to lead the scientific expedition to save the town. I don’t know what I did vocally, but I did it. Things clicked into place because they had to, there wasn’t another option. Someone believed I could do this and in that moment I believed I could, too.
I never went on as SpongeBob, but after my rehearsal period was finally over I went out for wine, spent nights at the pool, had movie nights, and made up for the bonding I robbed from myself when I was learning material. This show got more fun every performance. Kids and adults came dressed up in their sponge gear and shouted "ay ay captain" and laughed at jokes from episodes. I dug deeper into the choreography and the moments I created during rehearsals. Dancing along with the wardrobe team, waiting in the wings, and feeling I got when the show curtain rose as our drummer Tom played the opening drum luck made me forget that I’ve been away from this theatre industry. Two years had passed since my last performance, but this job and this lifestyle are so engrained in me that I was able to bounce back into it and grow even more because I know how to do this and I know what this is.
With 48 hours notice I left my theatre career on a boat, and with 48 hours notice I picked it back up in a desert—a different place from where I left it, but I’m in a different place, too. My time on this contract reminded me what I love about the industry, the work I want to create, and that the right opportunities are out there for me. And as the sun sets on another beautiful Bikini Bottom day, SpongeBob in all his sponginess realizes that who he is and what he has to offer are enough.
[Pipe and Drape theme plays.]
You can join the conversation about theatre for young audiences and find more Pipe and Drape content including photos, quotes, and TYA news on Instagram @PipeAndDrapeStories. And please be sure to rate and review Pipe and Drape wherever you listen to podcasts! Each star given or review submitted helps future listeners find the show. Be sure to tune in every other Tuesday to hear theatre for young audiences creatives share their pipe and drape stories. Pipe and Drape is created and hosted by Stephen Fala and distributed by Anchor. The Pipe and Drape logo was created by Stephen Gordon and music was composed by Stephen Fala. Thank you for listening today.
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