Chapter Ten - The Biggest Concerto of My Life...
Was not written for the piano, nor any other instrument. It was written for the stage. “A Concerto for Claire” debuted at Zipper Hall, Colburn School, September 18th, 2002.
“Claire” is a love story about two pianists growing up together, whose relationship is derailed by a dancer and a tragic accident. There was more than twelve minutes to tell this story.
When I first pitched the play to Sarah, she responded, “Instead of a dancer, it should be a football player.”
Dancer won out, however, because I have no real working knowledge of football – college or the NFL. I did add a couple option plays just for her.
In one scene, we tossed a Hail Mary out the stage door on a botched reverse, causing our sound woman to storm all the way down from the second story audio booth, stomp on stage, point up to the three microphones hanging overhead, and remind us they each cost $2000.
I laughed because the ball was coming nowhere close. Until tech rehearsal when a spiral pass somehow got away from the quarterback and BOOM, bounced off that Sennheiser so hard that my heart stopped.
Thankfully, we used Nerf.
I began to understand the importance of having a love triangle as the spine of the story when I saw two versions of “Titanic”... the James Cameron movie and the Maury Yeston musical.
What makes the movie compelling? Not “The Heart of the Ocean” nor the boat, but rather Jack and Rose’s complicated romantic entanglement as she decides to break her engagement to the rich and jealous Cal. Without the fight for true love, you’re left with the musical version: a bunch of people singing about being Irish, lower class, and drowning.
One of my most favorite movies of all time. One of my least favorite musicals.
I was not supposed to be in this play. But the prevailing wisdom was that a show about pianists, should ostensibly feature a concert pianist.
Mind you, I was not actively practicing at this time and nothing was in my repertoire. It was pathetic how many hours, days and weeks I had to rehearse to play four little segments, including two runs from “Totentanz”.
Producing “Concerto” was one of the best creative experiences of my life. I have always been a huge lover of musicals and theatre, and now I got to discover what the magic of creating a stage play for a live audience was all about.
The character of Claire was loosely based on colleague, Wendy, from the Colburn School. This is only to the extent that she practiced all the time, was a far more accomplished performer than I was, and now has a professional piano recording career. Wendy is also super humble about her talent and was one of my closest friends at Colburn. I cherish her because she never rolled her eyes at me during music theory note dictation while I was humming intervals to figure out notes. She has perfect pitch.
I did think it would be interesting if she lost her hand in a subway accident freeing her from her tiger mom. (As a side note, Wendy does not have a tiger mom and still has both hands.)
How would we show the accident? Largely percussive piano, the sound of trains screeching to a halt in a station, and imagination. And how would we portray Claire’s domineering mother? Corrie Graham, the actress portraying Claire would also play her mother.
You don’t understand anyone’s love of doing theatre until you experience the camaraderie of the cast and crew.
Matt, again designing sound, got up and drew me diagrams on how the screech of a subway would ricochet as it enters a station. Apparently, it just doesn’t get louder as it approaches.
To Stewart Skelton, who was doing King Lear or King Henry the Sixth or Eighth or Nineteenth (How many Shakespeare kings are there?) who graciously made himself available to us for dress rehearsal and performances in the middle of his Shakespearean run. (Wait, it was Hamlet!) This was only a problem because he was so freaking hilarious. I had to fight so hard to keep from laughing when we had scenes together that I almost bit my tongue.
To Theresa Adams, who backed me off the lip of the stage in dress rehearsal because I have no sense of direction walking backward (or forward. I did land on my feet, jumped right back up and apparently only missed two or three paragraphs of dialogue.)
To our outlandishly fabulous dancers, Desmond James who choreographed, and Mary Pinizzotto, whom I found out later were so worried about my decision to not run the play in its entirety until the last minute, they thought it would tank.
As a live event producer, I always believe that if you hire competent people, and everyone does their best to get their portion done, everything will come together in the end. Dez and Mary’s dancing made the show!
To Corrie, who got her hand lopped off, played two characters, and killed on a four-minute monologue leading into the climax of Act II. I never saw it live because she refused to perform it in front of anyone except Sarah, who directed, until dress. Even then, I was offstage waiting for my entrance. Corrie was amazing on blurry video! She was actually just plain amazing.
I had previously written speeches for execs at the space and electronics company, but never a stage monologue, so I am going to share it with you. Claire, now in college and dating a dancer, Alex, has left fellow pianist Michael behind. She just finds out her mother is coming to visit her in Boston. Lines in double quotes are Claire’s mother speaking.
CLAIRE: Michael once gave me this Murphy’s Law daily calendar with a different ‘if-something-was-meant-to-go-wrong-it-will’ quote that you tear off each day. Of course, my birthday could have been something like ‘it’s when you need to knock on wood that you realize the world is made of aluminum and plastic.’ But no. It was ‘the day you first want to make love, your mother will decide to visit.’
Happy Birthday, Claire!
So there she was, bundled in a fluorescent yellow ski jacket, ankle deep in snow, resting against our neighborhood tree, her elbows not two inches from where Alex had scratched our initials in a heart. I thought she might see that and freak, but then realized she was way too dense for that.
No hug. No ‘hi’. She just motioned me inside.
‘Hi to you too, Mom. How was your trip? What are you doing here?’
“Your performance showcase. All parents were invited.”
‘That’s in two weeks, woman!’
“Let’s talk about why you missed your class today.”
‘No, let’s not. Hello, welcome to Boston. I’m your daughter, Claire... currently carrying a four-point-O G.P.A. Would you like to see some of the city? There’s a great observation deck at the Pru.'
No, she didn’t want to see the city. She wanted to talk about why I had cancelled my lesson.
‘But I hadn’t cancelled, I’d rescheduled.’ And what was she doing talking to my teacher? ‘This isn’t high school, Mother. You don’t get parent-teacher conferences. Have you eaten? There’s a great place for lobster. I could tell you what’s going on with me. Aren’t you curious? I met a boy. I met a boy... and we’re moving to Luxembourg to raise our baby!’
Completely ignored. But my mother did run down the list of performances opportunities... “the Boston Symphony, Carnegie Hall... competitions in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Jersey...”
‘Mom, ssh...’
“This is your dream, Claire.”
‘Mom, stop.’
“This is your dream!”
'NO, IT’S YOUR DREAM!’
It was the first time I had yelled back. The edit function had just failed me. But it was true. I needed some breathing room... to find out if music really was mine.
But suddenly, she was indignant.
“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, Claire, I’ll learn to live with it.” Her mood swing was laughable. “No, seriously, if I’m making you claustrophobic... find what you need to find out about yourself.”
She picked up her suitcase and turned her back on me.
‘Mom, where are you going? I want you to stay.’
“You’re a big girl now, Claire.”
And my mother left. My mother left. I waited an hour. Her cell phone was off. She wasn’t coming back. This was reverse psychology at its unapologetic best. But even better... is when it frees you. When you’re unafraid to veer from the prescribed course...
Big fight at the train station ensues. Subway accident. Claire loses her hand. Unexpected, but satisfying ending.
I had a memorable monologue as well.
Claire and her teacher (Michael’s mother) are talking about her new found crush on my character, Michael. When he walks in on them, his mom tells him there’s pizza in the fridge.
Huge monologue follows:
MICHAEL: Pizza!
Biggest laugh of the night. Sometimes less is more.
My roommate at the time was named Fro. It stands for F-ing Roberta, all right? She earned that nickname. She left frozen taquitos in a lit oven overnight, and we woke up the next morning to the smoke alarm. TWICE!!! I was relieved when she married a fire captain and moved to Albuquerque, though incidences of three alarm domestic fires in New Mexico have gone up 763% since her arrival.
Fro was insistent that the final notes of the Beethoven “Pathetique Sonata” used in the opening of “Concerto”, sound like Alan Menken’s “Beauty and the Beast”. So sick was she of listening to me practice that segment hundreds of thousand times over that she can no longer enjoy the animated movie. She also skipped the musical though her boyfriend bought her front row seats, and she boycotted the live action movie version altogether.
Fro had to put up with a lot. We rehearsed at the house almost every day. She’d come home to the sofa upturned and the living room furniture rearranged nightly. My great way of financing the show was by shutting off cable and telling her I was not going to pay the power bill the day it was due. I hawked things left and right: a camera, a keyboard, a small TV, a VCR. I was thinking about hawking her.
“A Concerto for Claire” really ended up being a big success for me. It was my first major project after leaving video editing. Lots of accolades. But the biggest compliment came from Fro... Roberta... who comes up to me after, tears streaming from her eyes and says, “I had no idea.”
When you have the opportunity to do something creatively daring and different... what are you waiting for?
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