ActorQuest - Kristin Huffman Goes Inside 'Company' 35

In November, Kristin Huffman made her Broadway debut as Sarah (flute, piccolo and sax) in John Doyle's production of Company.  The actress, with a new series of tales that go inside the making of Company from an actor's perspective, starting at the Cincinnati Playhouse and on to New York, continues her stories about a 15-year career that has led her to the door of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Appropriate that the last Company story is the week before the PBS version of our show, taped for their Great Performances Series.  Many of our cast will be at the Laurie Beechman theatre on Wednesday February 20 to give interviews and be a part of the screening. Exciting and scary.  I am nervous about seeing myself on film but excited to see my castmates again.  Say hello to me if you are going to be at this event!

Thank you so much for reading and enjoying this experience with me. I do plan on writing about other shows and events that come along. So keep looking for my posts on Fridays. 

This is the thirty-fifth story on the making of Company.  If you haven't read the others, go back and do so and then rejoin us here!

LAST STAND

I am stalling on this story.  Maybe I am just trying to process it all.  Nope, I'm stalling.   Perhaps I don't want to write it because it will mean it is officially over in my mind.   If I just never write this story it will linger a bit longer.

The last week was jam packed.  On Wednesday Mr. Sondheim saw our show for the last time.  He had to fly to Australia to see another version of Company and so he watched us from Row K one last time.  Then, after the show, he rented out the restaurant, 44 1/2 and we had a farewell party.  The food was great with only the cast and Mr. Sondheim. We enjoyed hearing more of his stories about the very first version of Company.

We found out for sure that PBS was going to be taping us for their Great Performances series.  Posted on our callboard day to day were signs that said "It's now 75% sure that the PBS taping will go through" and the next day it was 82% sure.  So by Thursday the director of the taping, Lonny Price, told us that he was going ahead with it and that we would have 10 cameras in the house taping both shows on Saturday.  This was all really short notice, not really for us, as we were just going to be doing our regular show, but for the camera crew and our own technical staff.  They had to relight areas to make them darker since the bright lights of our show washed us out.  The center pillar was repainted a bit darker too. More grey or bone instead of stark white.  We weren't going to have any real blackouts either.  Our tech staff did a great job of changing things and working together with the camera crew.  

The director also said that he couldn't officially ask us to come in early to rehearse with the cameras for angles and such, but if we happened to be able to come in from 9-12 on Saturday before our two taped shows, that would be really helpful.  The camera men and Lonny had at least 2000 different shots to get right and since our names are so generic in the show and we are all wearing black it was going to be hard to call this show so that the cameramen know where to shoot. So they made up code names for us.  They picked the most obvious thing on each person to call them too.  I was "Blonde", Kelly was "Red", Angel was "Legs", Keith was "Sweater", Leenya was "Skirt", Elizabeth was "Stewardess" and Barbara was …well…  "Johanne". 

There was a line of diesel trucks down 47^th Street when we arrived at 9 a.m.  I really admire my fellow cast mates for their dedication to this project and in seeing it saved forever as they trudged in half awake. The director stayed out in one of the semi trucks and "called" the show from there with all the 10 TV screens from each camera facing him.  Each one of those cameras will have shots of the show and then they will piece it together to make the most interesting pictures.   There were two big cameras onstage with us primarily in the wing area, but visible to the audience.  Given my nature as a klutz and my fear of accidentally tripping one of the moving camera men, I was glad that they weren't the handheld, roving kind.  There were two more big cameras on the side aisles and four in back and one big crane thing sweeping around from the balcony.   The final tiny camera was on the wall on the back of our stage.

The first show Saturday went well, but you could tell everyone in the cast was being careful and the show was longer than usual.  It was a tad distracting to see that crane thing swooping around and the side cameras going back and forth.  But the audience was great and that helped us get through it.  The second show was smoother and everyone who had been watching from the trucks -- the makeup and wig ladies etc -- said it looked beautiful.  

Having all that excitement on Saturday was a helpful distraction from the distressing thought that the next day was our final show.  The hardest part was in trying to get my brain to stop saying, "This is the last time I will ever…." – from climbing the stairs to my dressing room, to putting on my false eyelashes, to doing my karate scene with Keith.  I could see it as well in my cast mates' eyes.  Usually I look at Raul during "Sorry Grateful" a bit of a "moment" as I walk around the perimeter, but I could feel the tears coming and I knew that if I looked at him I would lose it.  He told me later "for a year you have looked at me at that part and just the fact that you couldn't do it there almost did me in". 

The show was really great and the audience was phenomenal.  Clapping and laughing as if it was the last time they would ever see it.  The whole crowd gave us a huge standing ovation at the end.  I held in the tears till the last moment of "Being Alive" and then I just couldn't help it. 

The final party was at the Palm Restaurant and most of us were excited to go because it's supposed to be great food.  It wasn't.  Just some kind of pasta with tomato sauce, so we had our free drinks and then most of the Cast members went to another spot to eat together, laugh a little and say goodbye. The best part of the final party was that the guys, Buzz and Ed, from Cincinnati Playhouse were there. It was Ed's sofa that I dripped the pasta sauce on and it was also Ed who asked John to direct Company at the Playhouse in the first place.  Their presence made for a satisfying full circle.

I didn't cry anymore.  I still haven't.  I think that may worry people. Every lovely phone message and email I have received asks me how I am.   I called my parents on Tuesday while I was walking to the train station to go into NY for a class and left them a message about my walking there.  Since I hadn't told them I was taking a class I wondered if they thought perhaps I was just doing and obsessive/compulsive "walk to the train station and back" thing.  Poor Kristin, she can't give up the idea of commuting into NY for her show so she just walks to the train station and back now. 

Wonder if I am going through the famous stages of grief and am at the denial stage or maybe the numb stage.  I don't think so.  I think what I realized the last day of the show was that, even though I will miss this wonderful company of folks and we may never be together like this again, we have gotten to save it for posterity on film.  We have spent a wonderful amount of time together learning and growing.  We will have some reunions where most of us will be together at certain occasions.  You don't go through something like this together and not want to reunite and talk about the "good ole times".

But what kept me from despair is the John Doylism that it doesn't ever really have to go away.  I can take what I have learned here about being thorough and thoughtful and spiritual in my approach to acting.  I can make everything I do a little special like this.  From teaching a voice lesson to shooting a commercial. From selling a vitamin to writing a story.   All of it can have the deeper and more grounded approach.

Another reason to be grateful to the phenomenal John Doyle.