The Moth Podcast: The Play’s The Thing

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That's hello A L M M A dot com slash M O T H.

Welcome to the Moth Podcast.

I'm Mark Solinger, your host for this episode.

The first play I remember seeing was The Woman in Black.

If you don't know The Woman in Black, it's a horror play about a ghost who, well, I don't want to spoil it, but suffice it to say that 11-year-old me was scared out of my mind.

Something about the fact that you were mere feet away from the actors, that you were all part of this magic trick of pretend and wonder, there was nothing like it.

From that moment on, I was enchanted.

At the Moth, we know a thing or two about stories on stage.

And this episode, we're moving to the theater, with two stories demonstrating why the play is, in fact, still the thing.

First up is Rose L, who told this at one of our open mic story slams in Houston.

Here's Rose, live at the Moth.

Forgive me, Father, for I will will sin.

I was one of those lucky millennial kids whose mom told me that I could do anything I wanted as long as I set my mind to it.

But she qualified it.

She said, I can do anything I wanted as long as I use the gifts that God has given me and I persevere.

And I took her quite literally and as a wise woman.

So in the fourth grade at age nine, I knew that I could achieve my goal of getting the lead role in the play that the fourth graders put on every year.

I knew that if I worked hard enough and I showed the teachers that I deserved the role, that I would get to play Jesus Christ in Holy Cross's rendition of the Passion Play that year.

I had started my campaign early in the fall, way before Palm Sunday.

No student prayed harder than me.

No one sang louder than me in church to show the teachers that I had the piety requisite to play that cherished role.

I was a solid student, and I had practiced in the mirror so many times the various ways that I would say Jesus's final words: Into thy hands I commend my spirit.

Would I be thirsty, Jesus?

Into thy hands I commend my spirit.

Would I be sorrowful, Jesus?

Into thy hands I commend thy spirit.

It didn't matter what Jesus I was going to be because my mom told me that if I worked hard enough, I could do whatever I wanted.

So you'll imagine my dismay when Mrs.

Hall and Mrs.

Haliska, my fourth grade teachers, told me that I could not try out for the role of Jesus because I had to be a boy to play Jesus.

I decided to write them a letter articulating the reasons why I should be allowed to play the role of Jesus.

I cited my previous acumen, like in the third grade, how I had crushed the role of the farmer in piggy pie.

They were not convinced and I was starting to grow devastated.

So at the tryouts, I read the role that was assigned to me, but at the end, I defiantly said,

into thy hands, I commend my spirit.

Now, I did not expect William Shatner Jesus to come out, but I don't believe that that was the reason that I wasn't cast.

And I had all but given up until I found out that another female classmate of mine had started to circulate a petition among all the fourth-grade girls.

And she got all the girls to sign the petition and send it to our teachers, the principal, and Father Chuck, stating that I should be allowed to try out for the role of Jesus.

God bless you, Martha, also aptly named for another biblical heroine.

Then I was told that I had to have a meeting with Father Chuck,

which scared the shit out of me.

Literally, I did get diarrhea.

There is nothing more terrifying for a pious fourth grader than to get in trouble with the priest.

So in my meeting with Father Chuck, I tried to point out to him that it was not fair because in the fourth grade play, girls got to play the role of the apostles and the high priests and those weren't traditionally males either in the Bible.

And then Father Chuck really pulled a good one.

He explained to me that, no, it's not that we don't think you're capable of playing the role.

It's just that, you know, the older women in the parish really look forward to the Passion Play every Palm Sunday, and they, the pre-Vatican II ladies, will be the most upset if the role of Jesus is played by a woman.

I declined to tell Father Chuck.

I knew that it was really the patriarchy keeping me down and not the delightful old ladies, but

I was kind of at the end of my rope at that point and realized that maybe a Catholic school in Middle America is not the best place to start your feminist struggle.

So my nemesis, we'll call him Chris Sullivan, was cast in the role of Jesus,

which was particularly upsetting because that kid sucked.

And I was cast in a very pronounced role, the role with a lot of lines.

I was cast as Caiaphas, the high priest.

But in this rendition of the Passion Play, Caiaphas is the high priest who orchestrates the arrest and murder of Jesus Christ through bribing Jesus.

So message received, Mrs.

Hall and Mrs.

Haliska.

Subtlety not noted.

So I didn't get what I wanted at that point, but a few years later, the school made an unprecedented decision to allow women to try out for the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the seventh grade annual production of A Christmas Carol.

And I got the part.

So I realized at that time that though wild ambition might not get you the immediate goal you seek when you seek it, that you can slowly create the ripples of change through starting a riot among the

nine-year-old girls in Catholic school.

Also, I ended up dating my nemesis, Chris Sullivan, for a few years.

And after a really tumultuous breakup in a freshman year of college, I was able to walk away from the relationship with my head held high, knowing that I still would have been a better goddamn Jesus Christ.

That was Rose L.

Rose is a practicing lawyer in the Midwest by day, though still a theater kid at heart.

Precocious auditions have been replaced by occasional legal drama.

Her hubris and advocacy for women remains.

I think it's safe to say that a lot of Moss staff members were theater kids.

Actually, a lot of us still are.

And though I have never had the experience of singing Defying Gravity in the high school cafeteria, I have had the experience of seeing some incredible theater.

From an Irish play called Hothouse about a cruise ship at the end of the world, to an invite-only performance of Phish, about a British Turkish teenager who decides to catfish ISIS.

Even if Phish weren't written by an extremely talented friend of mine, Malise Acker, I would still have been blown away.

I even got the stage of reading of one of my own plays.

I've written podcasts, audio dramas, even a novel, but seeing actors read the words I wrote, there was something magical about it.

And with every play I've been to, there's always been that live connection between the people up on stage and the people in the audience.

It's a connection that reminds me of seeing someone up on a moth stage telling a story.

Next up is Honor Finnegan, who told this in a moth story slam in New York City.

Here's Honor live at the moth.

Hi.

I'm at Open Auditions for Annie the Musical.

It's 1978 and I'm 11 years old.

The beautiful Palmer House Hotel in downtown Chicago is crammed to the gills with little girls and I'm one of them.

Little Honor Finnegan from the south side of Chicago.

I'm the only little girl there without a stage mother or any adult for that matter.

Mom has to work.

That works for me.

I prefer going alone.

I'm used to it.

I'm a latchkey kid.

Mom would just get in my way, cramp my style, break my flow.

I need to get into the zone.

Today is my day.

I was meant for this play.

I feel sorry for the other little girls from the suburbs with their good luck toys and their blankies.

They're soft and weak.

I'm tough.

I can take the bus by myself.

One little girl with a long straight ponytail does a backbend in her leotard, and I think she looks stupid.

I mean...

What does that have to do with being an orphan?

I asked myself.

A gymnast does not an actor make.

I am an actor, one uniquely qualified for the role.

My father's dead and my mother doesn't give a shit.

I'm orphan material for real.

Today is my day.

I was meant for this play.

Okay, first things first, any kid over 4-7, any kid over 12 years old, they're out.

I feel bad for the kids who don't even make it past the word go.

Second thing, we're corralled corralled into a big banquet room, singing on one side, dancing out the other.

Singing comes first.

Eight little girls on the stage sing happy birthday to Annie one after the other.

Not necessarily pretty we're instructed, just loud.

It must have been great for the musical directors.

If you make that cut, you go to dancing.

I make the cut.

First dance combination, we learned something short to you're never fully dressed without a smile.

Just learning that combination with those people there, it was like a dream come true.

And I don't think I was the only one.

Every little girl in America wanted to be an Annie and every little girl in the Midwest was at that audition.

I make the cut for the first dance thing.

I go back to the singing.

This time you get to do a little bit of your prepared musical piece.

Mine is, let me entertain you from Gypsy.

I belt it out with all the gusto my desperate latch key kid heart can muster.

I think I make a good impression.

I get back to the dance side.

This time it's a longer combination.

In smaller groups, it goes on like this all day, back and forth, back and forth, singing and dancing, dancing and singing, with a lot of waiting and no food.

Finally, at the end of the day, they convene for callbacks.

A callback means you get to come back and audition some more.

But you're closer to your little girl dream coming true.

So we wait.

There's no backbens, there's no singing.

I pray.

They come out.

I listen for my name among the Kathys and the Stacies and the Tracy's.

And I hear it.

Honor Finnegan.

I come back the next day.

I sing and I dance.

I dance and I sing.

I sing and I dance.

We do it all day, all over again.

And at the end of the day, they say to us, thank you very much.

When we've made a decision, we'll be in touch.

So we all go home.

I go home and I pray.

I petition God daily.

I write letters to God telling him exactly what part I want.

I put it under my pillow with original pictures of the cast.

And I do this every night religiously.

And after about a month, I'm thinking, wow, they haven't called yet.

And after two months, I think, okay, maybe it wasn't meant to be.

Maybe it's not going to happen.

And then one night,

in the middle of the night, My sister comes into my bedroom and she wakes me up and she says, Honor, honor, wake up.

You got an annie.

Mom's on the phone with them.

And I'm in a half-dream state from my dream come true.

And we pick up the receiver the way you used to, so no one could hear you.

And I hear a man's voice, and sure enough, I'm going to join the first national tour of Annie.

I'm going to start out in Detroit, continue on to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia.

I leave my dysfunctional family for a new dysfunctional family.

I stay with them for a year and a half.

It's a hard-knock life, but I'm built for it.

Little Honor Finnegan from the south side of Chicago, orphan material for real.

Thank you.

That was Honor for the Canada.

Honor did a lot of other performing stuff, including helping Del Close birth The Herald and winning the Kerrville New Folk Song Contest.

She currently lives in Ithaca, where she works as an early childhood special education itinerant teacher because kids are the best.

That's it for this episode.

From all of us here at the Moth, we hope that you remember that all the the world's a stage, so it's best to get up there and act your heart out.

Mark Sollinger is the podcast producer of The Moth, the co-creator of the audio drama Archive81, and the science fiction concept album Generation Crossing.

He's a lover of museums, baking bread, and he's also someone who feels very strange reading his own bio.

This episode of the Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Janess, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Solinger.

The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Gluche, Suzanne Rust, Leanne Gulley, and Aldi Caza.

The Moth would like to thank its supporters and listeners.

Stories like these are made possible by community giving.

If you're not already a member, please consider becoming one or making a one-time donation today at themoth.org slash giveback.

All Moth stories are true, as remembered by the storytellers.

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

TheMoth podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at PRX.org.

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