ActorQuest - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Bway 19

In November, Kristin Huffman made her Broadway debut as Sarah (flute, piccolo and sax) in John Doyle's production of Company.  The actress continues her collection of stories about a 15-year career that has led her to the door of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

You may remember the BO PEEP xx story in which I posed as an X-rated Bo Peep for a photo of the production BABES IN TOYLAND.  A couple years later I was cast as the FAIRY QUEEN/LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD in that same production.  My choice was to have Little Red be "street-wise" and an expert in karate. Who would have thought that a few years later my Broadway debut in COMPANY would have me doing karate yet again as "Sarah."  But this next story is about that production and the fun I had.

THERE'S A SCARECROW ON MY FOOT

My gig for this holiday season is BABES IN TOYLAND.  I like to add, GONE WILD, to the end just to bother the director. But what is REALLY bothering me is that during the first scene, in which I play Little Red Riding Hood, the guy playing the Scarecrow constantly stands either in front of me or ON me.

All the characters on stage, from Cinderella to Little Boy Blue, are clumped together so that the stage "picture" is nice and not all straight lines of story book characters.   Cause ya know, there's nothing worse than having Mother Goose look fake by standing in a straight line next to Alice in Wonderland. All the other clusters of twos and threes seem to be getting along just fine -although Miss Muffet complains that Humpty Dumpty never really looks at her on stage.  But no one seems to be getting injured.   In MY cluster of two, one of us is dangerously close to being unstuffed.

Seriously, he stands ON my feet.  I move stage right, and he moves over too. He either steps my foot or stands literally in front of me.   This went on for three days and I finally said, in a stage whisper, "Why are you standing in front of me?"  The answer was "I am trying to find the window." By which he means the open space between the two couples in front of us.  If we hit this, we can be seen by the audience.  This doesn't happen to be my big scene...that's later as the Fairy Queen...so I am not all that worried about whether people can see Little Red's angst over Jack in the Beanstalk not being able to marry Little Bo Peep.   But the Scarecrow seems bound and determined to be seen by every single person in the audience at all times and to destroy my feet in the process.

He's wearing a huge costume with shiny streamers mixed in to his straw, so I am pretty sure they can all sense his presence.  To test his "finding the window" theory in the second show today, I just kept moving right every time he threatened to step on me.  HE kept moving right too. I was finally ONE step from being completely in the wings when I decided it was less 'window' finding and more "Stagehogism."

Instead of getting angry about it, I decided to make a game out it and to save my poor toes in the process. The next time he started to sway toward me, I ducked around him on the other side. He countered and moved left while putting a foot in front of mine that almost made me trip.  I put my basket down quickly between us and he stepped into it.  Finally the next time he stepped on my foot I just said "OW!" really loud and he literally looked surprised.  

What frustrated me was not my toes screaming in my tennis shoes, but it was the fact that I couldn't figure out if his moves were intentional or subconscious.

I could subscribe to that theory my mother had for me in junior high when a few boys would shoot beans at my legs every time I went up to the blackboard.  "They are just flirting with you."  But it's hard for me to see this situation that way as I am not attracted to STRAW, and he is an ADULT!

Sometimes when he thinks he's being funny, he will take the flat of his hand and smack me in the stomach. I wasn't prepared for it the other day and he knocked the wind out of me briefly. If I complain to the director, I am afraid that I will look like a diva who can't work with her fellow actors. An actor who is straight. Who says he went into acting to "corner the market on women."  We can only assume by this that he means in any other profession that didn't sport the straight-to-gay ratio that ours does he would fail miserably in the "hooking up with women" department. He is still failing miserably as I have noticed that most of the single women avoid him off stage.

Luckily, I have my next move planned for the shows we are doing tomorrow.  My Little Red knows karate because I decided that if she made it through that whole "Wolf" experience, her mother would have said, "If you insist on going into those woods you are taking some sort of self defense class."  I work karate screams in to my performance as often as possible.

So tomorrow, when that Scarecrow gets close to my feet he is gonna wish the Wicked Witch had had her way with him when she had the chance in Oz. He will also wish that he was a eunuch!   HI YA!!!!!!!!!!