My Brief Experience With Musical Theatre

I loved my parents, but were they, perhaps, cruel casting me in the role
as Mayor of Munchkinland for the Wilton Community Theatre’s winter production
of The Wizard of Oz? Didn’t they know I’d had enough of the gender switch, having
survived years of confusion from checkout clerks, salesgirls, and substitute
teachers? And finally, 7th grade, I mean 7th grade and budding, I was budding even
though I was not really budding. Flat I was, flat as pancakes, as boards, flat as Kansas, flat


but stretching, and in my private, vicious heart I was stretching toward Dorothy and her flat
Kansas, stretching toward ruby-studded shoes, toward all the songs, in her starring role,
she’d get to sing. Stage time, costume changes, I was stretching toward that even,
toward costume changes and the small-town fame of community theatre musical productions.
But of course, it couldn’t be me, my parents were the directors, and it would look funny,
and the substitute Dorothy was, instead, my classmate and not best friend Tricia LaFlamme,
who I strongly believed did half


as well as I did on “Over the Rainbow.” I’d seen them, seen my parents after my last stanza, half
a second before I left the stage, I saw Mom curling her fingers around the flat
of Daddy’s forearm, a gesture of such pride and intimacy
it made my jaw almost drop, the best substitute
for real words, and it felt so real, I felt so real coming off that stage, thirteen and real
and ready to launch into Dorothy’s drama as only I could play it. What a production
I imagined, my Keds unlacing in my fervor, throat dry
from the upper register the song required. Even


wearing a dress, I would have gritted my teeth through that if it meant, eventually
stirring rounds of applause from the Town Hall’s grateful attendees, a bouquet maybe. I’d have
worn a dress for that. But no. It was Tricia who emerged, triumphant and
electric, as the final product,
her permed ringlets already bowing, and Wednesday’s tryouts left me flaccied
with disappointment, thrust into one of the lower-tiered supporting roles.
There was a song to sing, sure, but in the chorus, as a chorus member, which was no substitute.


I did what I could, fine-tuning my Munchkin voice, practicing the Mayor’s bellicosity
before the full-length mirror in my sister’s room. Inside, though, I was seething, but even
more than that, I was mournful for the girl just out of my reach, \
the adolescent specimen of girlhood I wasn’t, still flat,
braless, without a hint of pigtail or period, without braids or boyfriend, and now, I had
to be a boy for the stage. No, worse, I had to carry myself through the long rehearsals
as a short, roly-poly fat man, welcoming this gingham-clad, apple-cheeked visitor
to my hometown, laying out the production


of a red carpet, prostrating myself before Tricia and Dorothy,
learning the dances, keeping the production
on schedule. When the dress rehearsals came, I eyed Trica from
overlarge Groucho spectacles, the substitute
mustache that was losing its glue, the check pants from Goodwill I had to roll
up three or four times and I’d think, “Surrender Dorothy!” Willing Trish to have some tragic event
to keep her off the stage on opening night, something permanent and not my fault.

Of course, it was I who had to surrender Dorothy in the end, surrender Dorothy and her gold-paved road to a pristine, packaged Oz. I didn’t know it, but my mother was listing like an uncertain kayak, Daddy silent as stone. These were the invisible moltings: my body and their marriage, peeling at the corners. My brief glory from the tryout stage was a wash of sepia tint. I had not seen them cozy on the sidelines after all, colliding in spontaneous tenderness. They were like Dorothy’s flying blue birds, a lullaby, a dream I had dared, the cruelest mirage.