Up my Rain Barrel

 RUNNING IN PLACE 

Chapter 1 Running in place

I googled “We are beings of light.” the other day as the thought came to me. Indeed, we are beings of light!” responded google. Recently this thought has come to me and at the writing of this sentence, I am one week out of spine surgery. They fused my L4 and L5’s from slipping but in some weird way, they opened my mind.

This is what I remember. A light shot out of me when they cut into me and I suddenly knew that the body I am in, was having a human experience. I knew I was on the table, and I was now viewing from above. I am a being of light and when this is over, I move on with the light when I finish my human experience.

Heady stuff like that in the beginning of the book? Believe me, light a candle and hold my hand. It’s time to take a journey.

I’ve lived a thousand lives and years ago, I was a performer. That’s where I want to start and give you my perspective. Now this is not a story like Shirley Maclaines life. My performing life started at age five, when I followed my little sister to tap class at Jack Ferrars studio. It was behind a glass door in a strip mall. This is Guilderland New York, technically Schenectady New York. My parents allowed me to take tap because that’s what boys did. They took tap and played sports.

Guilderland was big on Boys sports. I liked dance.

I wish this book could be about country fairs and stolen kisses and avoid getting deep. Or just maybe my story can help other kids and parents, or not. It’s a funny story full of crazy moments in time. 

I did become a professional dancer by age 15. It was a necessity after I was removed from my childhood home, but that’s what my first book is about. This second book is going to jump around. I want to talk about being a kid and growing up. Growing up in upstate New York and then in the second section add more stories from life and work that I have experienced.

But let’s first talk about being a performer. We need to get it out of the way. I’m still doing it. I’m weaving together anything that I can. Who is going to stop me?

People are worried that you can’t make money as a performer but being a performer was the only way I found that I could make a living from very early on.

Over the years I’ve learned that I have never enjoyed being in the spotlight or on stage in front of everyone. I prefer being behind the scenes, away from people’s eyes—and their judgment. It’s the best place to be.

My fear of being judged has followed me my entire life. There’s always someone with something negative to say or someone who feels the need to tell me how they could have done what I did—only better.

“You’re show is good, but have you thought about this or that?” Ironically, most of these unsolicited critics never do anything themselves.

As a gay kid in upstate New York in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I was in a hell all its own. I was Gay. I had gay face and I like gay things and I especially liked boys. Everybody told me what to do.

I am Gay. I was born gay. Gay. I can’t apologize for who I am and as I have never apologized in the past. I have walked out and proud my whole life. 

I’ve learned a lot over the years. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is: sometimes you must work at a job you don’t want to do in order to do the job you’ve dreamed of. It pays the bills, is another way to look at it. I discovered that I can, produce a show one night, and the next I’m back waiting tables in New York City. Success to me means being able to create whatever art you want to and being good in doing that. 

Now being a performer usually means a lot of travel. If it’s a tour, you’re on the move weekly, sometimes daily, going from one venue to the next. I love traveling. I love seeing the world, visiting different cities and countries—all on someone else’s dime—while getting paid to do it.

But here’s what many people don’t understand about a career in theatre: if you book a touring job, you're not just working with your cast—you’re living with them, 24/7. That can be fun... if everyone behaves. Spoiler alert: they don’t.

Dealing with people’s personalities is exhausting. Everyone is on their best behavior when a contract starts. Give it two weeks, and the masks come off. The longer you're together, the more real (and sometimes unbearable) people will become. There are difficult people in every industry, but show business seems to magnify the chaos. I think if you make good art, people will forget the person making it.

Then there are the romances that start on the road—what we call “showmances.” A showmance is a romance—with sex—on the road. They start and (usually) end with the job. Every production I’ve ever worked on had at least one. I’ve worked on/and with cruise ships, national tours, international tours, regional theatres, and dance companies. I’ve even created my own companies and projects—and still, the showmances happened like clockwork.

One lesson above all: never go on tour with someone you're dating. Don’t do it if you value the relationship.

I made that mistake once. I took a job with my then-boyfriend, thinking we’d be like the Lunt-Fontanne’s (a theatre couple who lived on the road). It was on a tour of A Chorus Line. My boyfriend was the one who had set the show, served as the dance captain, assistant directed, and would step into any role when needed and always did.

We did the show together, rode the bus together, shared a room together, and—yes—even had conversations through the bathroom door. There was no peace.

He vented about everything: his frustrations, the cast, the show. Our lives and business were on display for everyone, 24 hours a day.

After each performance, his favorite thing to do was give me notes about my performance that night—while we were lying in bed.

Not sexual notes. Notes on my onstage performance.
And after that? Who’s in the mood for sex, or talking or anything?

Our arguments were intense. I just wanted him to stop talking; he always wanted to talk more.

Half the cast loved him; the other half couldn’t stand him. I was the go-between for anyone who needed something from him. He was talented, laser-focused on detail, and completely out of his mind.

I toured before the internet was around. If you wanted to make a call from the road, you waited for the mandatory bus break and hoped to find a payphone. If you were on a cruise ship, you waited until you docked. In regional theatre, you might get a phone in your room—or you waited in a hallway behind 50 chorus members trying to use the same landline.

There is no separate space when you tour together.

From childhood, I knew I wanted to choreograph. I dreamed of being the next Michael Kidd or Bob Fosse—my idols. That’s why I endured performing.

The movie version of Li’l Abner blew my mind. How could someone create such powerful, moving art? I watched it every chance I got, studying the choreography, trying to decipher his patterns.

In middle school, we took a field trip to New York City to see a Broadway show. I needed my parents’ signature to go.

The first Broadway show I ever saw was Bob Fosse’s Pippin. What I remember most? Lesbians and dark life lessons.

Before the show began, a performer climbed a ladder at the front of the stage. I waved to him from the audience—and he waved back. The magic had begun.

To me, Fosse represented the dark. Michael Kidd, the light. I learned that as an artist, it's important to explore both sides.

Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "Up my Rain Barrel." It cannot be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.