Let Me Be Your Star Read Free Page A

and flung it, roots and all, to the flagstone pavement. I did the
same thing with the Italian parsley, the lemon oregano, the garlic chives (lest
you think I’m a total monster, it was my herb box, tended by me and paid
for out of my allowance). Then I place my soil-smeared hands over my face and,
wrenchingly, began to weep hot, muddy tears.
    I didn’t stop for the rest of the night.
    There are far worse motivations for a career in show
business than vengeful fury. If it was good enough for Joan Crawford, it’s good
enough for Rachel Shukert, which is why I have six heads in my shower and strap
my husband into bed with a canvas harness every night. But you’re only as good as
the people around you, and it was now clear to me that in this aspect, I was
severely lacking. If I wanted get anywhere, I was going to have to be my own Baby
June and Mama Rose.
    So began a merciless regime of monastic training. Every day
after school, I holed up in my room, looking for audition notices in the local
newspaper, poring over librettos and Broadway fake books, singing through
scores until I was note and letter perfect: Camelot, Guys and Dolls, Sunday
in the Park With George. I checked out the original cast recording of A
Little Night Music from the public library so many times the librarian
finally gave it to me. On weekends came the real work: an intensive
seven-hour session during which I would move the furniture out of the living
room and sing and dance my way through all four discs of the Smithsonian’s History
of the American Musical Theater , beginning with Lillian Russell and ending,
tragically enough, with “Sunrise, Sunset.” ( Smash reference?) In my
interpretation, each number had a different directorial vision, which often
included major costume changes; obviously, one needed quite a different look to
perform, say the moody interpretive dance to “Ol’ Man River” than to tongue-twist
one’s way through “Tchaikovsky” the famously — and fiendishly — difficult Danny
Kaye number from Lady in the Dark. Men’s parts, women’s parts, it didn’t
matter, I did them all; hell, I could play Nicely-Nicely, Benny, and Rusty
Charlie in “Fugue for Tinhorns” all at the same time, a feat that to this day
has been matched only by the Tuvan throat singers of the Mongolian steppe.
    And it paid off. Mere months after I was rejected from
playing a non-speaking Anatevkienne who got to make a cute little curtsy as she
sang about being consigned by her father into a life of constant, religiously mandated
drudgery, I was cast in my first-ever role as an angel — a goyische angel! — in
a semi-professional production of The Snow Queen at the local children’s
theater. A smattering of other small roles in local theater followed: an Annie here, an Oliver there. When I was twelve, no less esteemed a
publication than the Omaha World-Herald deemed my portrayal of Brigitta
von Trapp “personable” and commended my ability to stay in character when my
sailor skirt fell down during a particularly militaristic bout of marching
during “Do Re Mi.” By the time I was in high school, I was busting out the big
guns: Ado Annie, Dolly Levi, and in a deliciously ironic twist, Golde in Fiddler. If you needed someone slutty, funny, bossy, or fabulous in a way that the
boys that already knew how to put on their own eyeliner would appreciate, I was
your girl.
    Then I got to college and realized there were a lot of other
girls who could belt a comedy song and they could mostly do other things too,
like dance. So then I got very pretentious and did experimental theater, but
you mostly had to be able to dance for that too.
    So that’s when I started writing. And on good days, I could
almost convince myself it was what I had wanted to do all along. Those who
can’t do, teach. Those who can’t manage to put on outside clothes with enough
regularity to teach, recap.
    * * *
    TV recapping is a peculiar discipline that has flourished
in our