Let Me...? Entertain You...?

Why is it embarrassing to sing in public? On trying to find the nerve to do that at an Oldster event I'm conjuring. And where my curiosity would take me next if I had the time and funds.

Back when I wasn’t embarrassed to sing publicly—not even out on our front stoop where the whole neighborhood to hear me, with my underpants showing.

Seven words I live by, because they’ve proven to be true: Whenever I follow my curiosity, I succeed. This is not some kind of woo-woo magic, but simple logic: If a topic captures my attention in a big way, I know it’s surely capturing the attention of others, too, and because of that, what I create on that topic will likely resonate and do well. This has borne out for me again and again.

It’s easy to follow my curiosity when the subjects are emotionally uncomplicated for me—like the push-pull New York City exerts on its inhabitants, making it as hard to stay as it is to leave. Or the march of time and the effect it has on us, at different stages of life.

Places where I’ve felt permitted to follow my curiosity—where it’s paid off.

It’s hard for me to commit, however, when the subject is attached to embarrassment, shame, or the feeling that I’m not permitted (not qualified, not good enough, not cool enough) to touch it. And so, the thing about which I am the most curious, a project I’ve flirted with for over 22 years at this point, lies mostly dormant.

It’s “Confessions of a Closet Vocalist,” so far only tackled in a short chapter in my memoir, and before that, in a monologue I performed onstage in 2011 at small theaters upstate—but long before that, as a documentary I started making in 2002 when I took a filmmaking workshop, bought a used digital video camera, and started interviewing people who liked to sing about why they felt embarrassed or ashamed doing it in front of other people.

I’ve written here before about my vision for a documentary exploring why it’s embarrassing to sing in public—for me, specifically, but others as well, because I know I’m hardly alone—and who has “permission” to do it anyway, according to our culture. In my last post about it, during a period when I was especially depressed, I wrote about how it’s something that likely will never see the light of day. At the time I thought I was making peace with giving up on that vision for good.

But recently Brian and I got a piano, and we’ve been singing together at it. My old idea has started making noise in my brain again, and now it won’t leave me alone. I’m wondering whether this is something I need to finally find the nerve, time, funds—and, uh, skills—to bring to fruition. It’s the subject that gnaws at me more than any I’ve ever succeeded with. It’s been with me longer than any of the others. And it will not go away.

Maybe it’s just some totally low-budget, lo-fi project I make with my iPhone. Or maybe it’s something more, something bigger, and more real. Something for which I’d have to engage others with more knowledge and skills. If I could only get past the feeling that I’m also not permitted to make a film…

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Another, related vision I keep having, then shooting down over my shame and embarrassment: an “Oldster Live” event at which—in addition to interviewing people and having some of them read or perform—I would sing a few songs in between “acts.” I’d hire my friend Paul Leschen to accompany me, and maybe do a duet with Brian. There are moments when I become perfectly enraptured by this idea. They’re followed immediately by moments during which I berate myself for thinking I’m allowed to do that. Even though…I’m…actually…a pretty good singer. [Runs and hides.] Cue the images in my mind of cool kids making fun of me.

I’ve been tussling with this Oldster event idea for some time, even more so since December, when I went with my mom to see Gypsy on Broadway, and I was reminded of this line from Mama Rose—another important seven words:

“Everybody needs something impossible to hope for.”

I loved the show—love Audra McDonald, who stars as Mama Rose, and who I first saw in Master Class in the mid-90s. I have a fondness for Gypsy, because in the winter of 1980, when I was 14, I was in an adult production of it. (Although, given how I doodled on the cover of the program, apparently I didn’t think much of our production.)

The program from the fall, 1979 adult community theater production of Gypsy I was in at 14, marked up with my one-word review.

I played a small part, “Agnes,” one of “The Hollywood Blondes,” a vaudeville act Mama Rose manages. There are no small parts, only small actors, etc., etc., but also it was kind of a big deal for me to be cast at all, among adults, because I was still a kid, a 9th grader.

I was certain back then that I was meant to be a star, and I took my work in musical theater very seriously. I studied acting, dancing, and singing at the Long Beach Children’s Theatrical Workshop, which was operated by a woman named Maria, a children’s talent agent with a drinking problem who’d interrupt our rehearsals by stumbling in, crashing down on the piano bench, and singing drunken renditions of old standards with her wig teetering off her head like a hat.

I mean, I was no Lisanne Falk, another Long Beach Children’s Theatrical Workshop student and client of Maria’s, who went on to star in Heathers, and who was featured in a 1978 photo with Brooke Shields that Shields says put her on the map.

Left: Lisanne Falk as Heather McNamara in "Heathers"; Right: Lisanne Falk with Brooke Shields in 1978. Photo by Betsy Cameron.

But Maria believed in my talent. She tried to get me booked for commercials, Broadway musicals, and television shows, but my parents didn’t want me to be a child star, so they’d let me go on first auditions but never call-backs. It broke my little tween heart, but now I know it was the right decision, given what tends to happen to child stars later in life.

In workshop recitals, Maria would give me solos to perform. In the photos below, I’m performing “Blind Date” from Funny Lady, doing my best Babs impersonation, Yiddish accent and all.

At 14, performing "Blind Date" from Funny Lady in a Long Beach Children's Theatrical Workshop revue.

I loved those theater experiences. Doggedly committed to breaking out and succeeding as a performer, I gave them my all. Riding high from having starred in two school musicals in a row—I’d played Guinevere in Camelot in 6th grade and Lola in Damn Yankees in 7th—I was certain I was ready for the big time.

Left, as Guinevere, singing "I Loved You Once in Silence,"; Right: as Lola, vamping through "A Little Brains, A Little Talent"

I had so much goddamned chutzpah then.

To wit: in June, 1978, the summer after 7th grade, I was sent to sleep-away camp for the first time, against my protestations. I really did not want to go. But my step-sisters had been attending for years, and my going made summer visitation arrangements easier for my divorced parents. To no avail, I kept begging them to let me stay back. I was scared to be away from home, but more than that, I was pissed because they wouldn’t let me go to a call-back for Maurice Sendak and Carole King’s Really Rosie on Broadway. If I got the part, I’d have to be home for summer rehearsals. And that would have messed up all their plans.

Fine, I decided, as I shipped off to Torrington, Connecticut, I will treat this (Jewish) sports camp as if it were a theater conservatory. The day I arrived, after unpacking my trunk, I put on a cute outfit and the “character shoes” I’d bought with my allowance, and searched out the head of the the theater department.

“Character shoes.”

I found him in the “social hall,” the camp’s theater. “I want to introduce myself, because I’m a professional actress,” I said, putting out my hand for him to shake it. “Would you like to hear me sing?” He indulged me, and so I broke into song: “But the World Goes Round,” a world-weary Kander & Ebb number that Liza Minnelli sang in Martin Scorcese’s 1997 film, New York, New York. (I was 12. 😂) As I sang, I performed a dance number I’d choreographed for myself.

The director was completely taken with me—my nerve, or my talent, or some combination of the two—and cast me in leading roles in three plays that summer: Once Upon a Clothesline, The Pajama Game, and Annie. I was in all my glory, getting to act and sing and dance all summer long—while often being excused from swimming and playing sports, things I was bad at and entirely uninterested in.

As Annie, singing “Maybe.”

Okay, how did I get from there to here? How did I go from being a confident go-getter, hell-bent on becoming a star of the stage and screen, to someone who is embarrassed to even think about singing in front of people in a setting that’s not low-stakes, like karaoke? Or feeling mortified after times when I have found the courage to sing publicly? Actually, there are a lot of answers to this question, long ones I don’t have room to unpack here. Maybe they’d be better addressed in my documentary, if I figure out how to make it. (Is this documentary my “something impossible to hope for”?)

Better question: How do I get back to there from here? How do I get back in touch with that determined little girl with the big voice who was certain she had the right to take up space onstage? How do I reclaim even a shred of her courage?

I’ll need to figure it out by my 60th birthday this coming October, because that’s when I’d like to stage the “Oldster Live” event I might want to I’m going to sing at.