One singular sensation

Young Chang

Damien Lorton has shadows. He hasn’t shaved in days.

The first audience arrives in less than 24 hours and three of the

actors are sick. They’re singing and dancing through stuffed noses and

achy bones, and the director is the tiniest bit scared.

“But they’re all on prescriptions,” he said. “Even if they’re not 100%

vocally, I know that they’ll give 110% emotionally, and they’ll

compensate.”

Lorton is swept up in minutiae during this last rehearsal before “A

Chorus Line” opened for previews May 30 at the Costa Mesa Civic

Playhouse.

Too many instruments are blaring through the house speakers. The

spotlights need to be tighter. He needs to work with Jen Flaherty on her

solo. He yells to his loud cast, “I love you, I love that you love each

other, but be quiet!”

And then Flaherty, who is in the corner near the piano, says her

throat hurts when she tries to belt out a C in “What I Did For Love.”

Lorton softens. He always knows when he should.

There’s a difference between her throat tightening and her throat

hurting, he says. Flaherty, an alto, is frustrated. Lorton suggests she

lie down and sing, to move the tension from her throat to her diaphragm.

He yells for everyone to lie down and do the same.

“Everyone’s going to sing,” Lorton said to Flaherty. “No one’s going

to hear you but me.”

The director will never take an actor’s insecurities lightly. He is

also one for quick pecks on the cheek, regardless of how busy life gets,

and calling cast members “honey” and “sweetie.”

When more than 60 actors auditioned in April, he sought performers

with the same compassion. His staging of the Tony Award-winning musical,

which opened last weekend at the 83-seat playhouse and will run through

June 30, relies first on the personalities of its actors and second on

the acting.

“Chorus Line” tells the story of everyday people auditioning for a

Broadway show. The real-life actors in this musical, who have less

experience than actors you’d find in an Equity theater, know what it’s

like to want something, to have the ego to go after it and then to fear

not getting it.

With their starry-eyed candor, they blur the line between performance

and reality.

“My friends say, ‘You’re a dance major, how hard can it be?”’ said

Vikki Yuen, who plays auditioner Connie Wong. “This sort of shows what we

do. We’re showing you a side of the theater that people normally don’t

see.”

DRAWING THE LINE

The setting of “Chorus Line” is a Broadway audition. Zach, the

director, cuts six people almost immediately, and the remaining 17 take

their spots on the line, the chorus line. They take turns introducing

themselves. Zach still needs to make the final cut.

Cassie has returned to New York after trying to make it as an actress

in Los Angeles. She has performed on the line before and also used to

date Zach. She is at the audition because she needs a job.

Diana is sassy and comes from the Bronx. She once knew a performing

arts instructor who told her she was nothing.

Her best friend is Paul, played by 18-year-old Robert Argueta. Paul

went from doing drag shows to auditioning for Broadway. His history is

painful, and his demeanor is vulnerable. Lorton cast Argueta in the role

because he “has a real sense of innocence behind him.”

Everyone in the musical needs a job. They pray they’ll get cast and

bare, to a seemingly callous Zach, as much soul as skill.

Lorton’s tryout wasn’t quite so harsh, but the people auditioning were

still scared. Like the characters they would later come to play, they

wondered what Lorton was looking for and hoped they provided that. When

they messed up, they laughed through the fear. When Flaherty messed up,

she made fun of herself to “stay sane.”

Amber Nelson stared at what is called the “fourth wall” while singing

“You Can Count on Me,” from the musical “City of Angels.”

Her colleagues stared at the same imaginary wall when it was their

turn to sing. The wall seemed to be located past Lorton, past his

production crew and way past fellow auditioners who were watching

intently.

Each sang 16 to 32 measures of a solo. Lorton let some sing all the

way through and stopped others mid-tune.

“It’s not because you’re bad, it’s because I’ve heard enough,” he told

them.

Lorton was looking for more than soaring voices and light-footed

grace.

“With this type of show, it’s about the emotion and the passion for

the art,” he said. “It’s much more about the personalities and dealing

with deep-rooted emotions.”

Nelson, who considers herself more of a singer than a dancer, ended up

landing the part with the biggest dance solo.

Flaherty, a 19-year-old who hadn’t been heavily trained in singing or

dancing, got cast in the only role with two vocal solos.

Lorton said Nelson had the strength needed in the character of Cassie.

Flaherty had the compassion and emotion required for the role of Diana.

The director had faith Flaherty would give him the voice he’d eventually

need.

“Sometimes that’s a gamble,” Lorton said, of casting parts in hopes

that the actors will grow into them. “But it’s never come back to bite

me.”

By the third audition night, Lorton had cut about 40 people. Some

didn’t have the talent, some “copped a ‘tude” instead of trying to learn.

He chose a core cast of 10 trained dancers who sang well and seven

trained singers who danced well.

The first rehearsal involved just a read-through of the script, words

without emotions.

The second rehearsal took place at Birraporetti’s restaurant at South

Coast Plaza.

“The cast got to know each other,” Lorton said. “When you’re onstage

and working with people, you need to be able to trust each other. We’re

talking about six weeks of rehearsal and five to six weeks of run, no

pay. So you make sure they’re having fun.”

For more than a month, Lorton danced and sang his group until the guy

who didn’t know the definition of “releve” could lift himself on the

balls of his feet and the girl who had never held a harmony carried her

own in a trio.

“The exciting thing is, you know it’s here,” the director said,

landing his left arm in midair and moving it to an imaginary destination

on the right. “And you know you have to get it to here.”

SHINY HATS

Jagged strips of masking tape read “Edwin,” “Megan” and “Princess.”

Below them, gold top hats hang on nails and twinkle theatrically against

a splintered black wall.

They complete an elaborate costume that is colored gold, head to toe.

The sequins on the satin of the hats glitter against an opaque

backdrop, in the unassuming corridors of the small, community playhouse.

The worst that can happen is you go too big, Lorton says.

And if you go too big with your gestures, your singing or your energy,

you can always bring it down. But if you don’t let it out, you cheat

yourself from ever knowing whether it’s possible.

Nelson heeds this advice to get through her dance solo, her first time

having to captivate an audience while alone onstage.

“Sometimes if you think too much, you hurt yourself,” the 23-year-old

said.

Thinking back to when rehearsals began, Nelson credited her cast mates

for “breaking out of their shells” and for taking risks with their

singing.

“Their voices come out of nowhere,” she said.

Flaherty is afraid hers will crack.

“But I know it’s more frustrating for people when I don’t sing than

when I do sing and sound bad,” said the Orange Coast College student. “I

just have to suck it up and get over it.”

AT REHEARSAL

Edwin Lopez, a 21-year-old playing the womanizing Don, is nervous

about getting his pirouettes right.

Most of the cast is twentysomething. The oldest is 33. The youngest

three are 18.

They learn the music first, sometimes 90 pages at a time and always

with a tape recorder.

Then they learn the dances from choreographers Nicki Peek and Scott

Weber, who also acts in the show.

Finally, they relearn all the music because singing and dancing at the

same time takes some getting used to.

“We’re making sure everyone’s leg is the same height and just

continually pushing and fixing and cleaning,” Lorton said. “You’re trying

to keep their energy up while at the same time you’re fixing every little

tiny piece.”

The group sounds soulful together. They have a full and round sound

that Lorton doesn’t want to waste.

So he creates four more harmonies to three-part songs. He adds 30-some

measures to the number “Sing!” He rewrites the ending to “What I Did for

Love.”

“The dancing is beautiful, the singing sounds beautiful, and the

challenge is to put it all together,” he said. “They really look forward

to being able to do it in front of an audience.”

THE HUMBLE PLAYHOUSE

People have asked Lorton why he stays at the small playhouse. Doesn’t

the theater hold him back from pursuing his own career, they ask.

But in the last four years, the director has witnessed the little

stage launch kids to bigger stages. Lorton’s childhood director was just

as committed.

“If there wasn’t someone for me when I was a kid, then maybe I

wouldn’t be able to do that for someone else,” said Lorton, formerly the

in-house musical director at Newport Harbor High School.

It is the second week of rehearsal as Lorton sits in the audience

while Weber dances the actors in groups.

“Scottie came in as a chorus boy for an earlier production,” the

director said, nodding toward Weber. “Now he’s a choreographer.”

Lorton’s friends thought he was crazy to bring in a first-time

teacher.

“I think it’s important that people like Scottie have a place as a

training ground as much as the actors do,” he said.

None of the performers get paid, and the theater isn’t funded by the

city. But the lack of funds get compensated for by performers who are

willing to paint the sets and stitch the costumes, when it’s not their

turn to sing and dance.

Mounting a show costs $12,000 to $20,000-plus.

“Chorus Line” can be staged with $12,000 to $13,000, as the set is

bare except for a line of mirrors, black walls and the famous white line

along the black floor. Profits from ticket sales and the playhouse’s few

annual fund-raisers make the four to six shows a year affordable.

The stage is 6 feet from the first row of seats. The seats are creaky

and old. The walls could use some new paint, and the whole playhouse fits

on one corner of Rea Elementary School’s property. The parking lot gets

filled up sometimes by kids and parents coming to school functions.

Lorton contrasts the space with the Newport Theatre Arts Center -- the

beautiful one in Newport Beach, the one that sits on the cliffs.

His playhouse doesn’t have the best decor, he says.

It doesn’t even have the best chairs, he adds, while wobbling the

armrest on his. As he does this, the arm comes off.

Lorton laughs because the moment is comical, like one from a bad

sitcom. But he’s not embarrassed.

“For such a small theater and for such a community theater, I’m very

proud of the work that is done here,” he said.

THE GUYS IN THE CORNER

The trio is Joey Kincer, Sean Batsel and Germaine Sherman. Lorton

calls them his “unsung heroes,” the ones he’ll never do a show without.

Kincer plays the piano and has accompanied Lorton’s shows for four

years. Sherman stepped in three years ago when a different drummer bailed

on Lorton last minute. Batsel is like a brother to the director. They’ve

been doing shows together since the 21-year-old bassist was just a boy.

“They’ll take a show that’s written for 35 instruments, and with just

those three instruments they’ll fill up that sound. They’re amazing,”

Lorton said. “I couldn’t imagine doing a musical without them. They’re

the backbone of my show.”

‘WHAT I DID FOR LOVE’

When one of the characters gets hurt, Zach interrupts the call to ask

his auditioners what they would do if they couldn’t sing, dance and act

anymore.

During Hell Saturday, which was the last Saturday before opening week

and lasted from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., Lorton and his actors answered the

same question. They talked about their passions and what losing their

dream would mean.

“The answers were things that I wouldn’t expect,” Lorton said.

For Yuen, not performing would be comparable to the greatest loss

she’s ever known.

She grew up in Hong Kong, where her dad owned a business and barely

had time to see his children except on weekends. At 10, she immigrated to

the United States with her mother and brother. Dad stayed in Hong Kong

and visited the U.S. about once a year.

The 21-year-old grew bitter. She realized she had never spent a

birthday with her dad, that he had almost never seen any of her shows and

that his unloving ways had made her afraid to be loving first.

“The fact that we don’t hug and all that stuff was really hard for

me,” Yuen said. “I’m a very affectionate person.”

She is also shy.

“When I’m onstage, that’s how I express myself. That’s me being able

to open up and tell my parents and friends who I am,” she said. “I don’t

know how many of my friends really know me. I think if they don’t see me

in a play, they won’t get to know me.”

Her father visited the family last summer. Yuen was still angry at him

and struggling with her own problems -- anorexia and bulimia. She didn’t

really want to talk to her dad, plus she barely had the energy.

He had come to the U.S., Yuen eventually learned, for skin cancer

treatment after undergoing chemotherapy in Hong Kong. He arrived on a

Friday, was admitted to the hospital that same weekend and then died on

Tuesday. He stunned doctors who had predicted, only days before, that he

had six months to live.

“I didn’t tell him I love him until he was on his deathbed,” Yuen

said. “He only told me he loved me once.”

For two months, the daughter, who had transferred from UC Santa

Barbara to OCC by then, did nothing but regret the time she had wasted.

She didn’t dance, she didn’t go out, she stayed in bed.

Then one day she decided she couldn’t regret anymore. She auditioned

for shows and began performing again.

“I decided I wanted to keep dancing because that’s my dream and my

passion,” Yuen said. “And that’s the way I communicate.”

Almost a year now since her father died, she says her role as Connie

is much more than a role.

“My dad died, and I learned something,” Yuen said. “I learned that you

cannot live being scared and regretting. What I love to do is deal with

people and tell them I love them in the way I know how. I didn’t get to

do that with my dad until very late, and I regret that. This is the way I

deal with people. I go onstage and perform for them.”

FOR THE SAKE OF THE SHOW

Lorton is resorting to this because everything else has failed. He

doesn’t like the confrontation exercise and uses it only when he has to.

But it’s the last rehearsal before preview night and the show can’t

afford to have Argueta hold back on the emotions any longer. Lorton said

the actor was “faking” his way through the lengthy and emotional

monologue in which he tells Zach what it was like to come out as a gay

man in the ‘60s.

The actor said it was hard to not act.

But during the painful exercise, with the spotlight shining almost

rudely on Argueta on an otherwise pitch black stage, the actor finally

shed real tears. Half an hour of being taunted and yelled at forced him

to connect with how Paul felt.

Lorton rarely let up. He played a harsh mediator, verbally stabbing

and screaming his way to the core of Paul’s scars.

Argueta mumbled and shook through his monologue.

Cast members, who were seated in a circle around him, pulled away when

they stopped believing him and drew in tighter when he became convincing.

They also jeered and sneered. While wiping away tears, they tried hard to

be horrible.

Argueta, with his hands folded across his chest, finally broke into

sobs and spoke like he meant it.

Lorton said, “OK, love him.”

The cast, all 22 of them, smothered Argueta with a layered hug. His

tears fell harder.

“I completely trust my cast members,” the actor later said. “Afterward

when they all hugged me, I lost it, because I felt they really did love

me.”

Flaherty, whose character is Paul’s best friend, spent most her time

in the circle weeping.

“It hit home really, really hard,” she said. “All of us learned

something new about the show and the emotion we’re supposed to have.”

THE ROOM ACROSS THE STREET

“Your lips are too dark. Too ruby dark,” Lorton says to Flaherty

minutes before preview night begins. “They didn’t have that back then.”

Flaherty blots. The two talk about using a different red, maybe a more

muted one.

Lorton continues down the long bench in front of the long vanity

mirror that affords a cozy camaraderie when everyone sits side by side to

do makeup. He comments quickly on the faces he passes.

Some actors sit on the floor, with three-tiered makeup boxes exploding

with brushes and blushes, lining each other’s brows and dusting each

other’s cheeks.

On two long couches tattered and foggy with age, Peek sits among

understudies and yells out notes from a rehearsal that ended just minutes

ago.

Everybody had “really good arms” in the beginning of the opening

combination. Argueta’s spacing was off at one point. Everyone needs to

work those hats.

The dressing room is a cross between locker room, warehouse, walk-in

closet and a vanity stand. A hunk of radiator hangs obnoxiously from the

ceiling. There are no dividers or private rooms, except for a

cornered-off part that contains a bathroom.

When it gets hot and stuffy, someone opens the two heavy metal doors

that lead to an asphalt street separating the dressing room from the

playhouse. The street is crowded regularly with passing cars and

students. The person opening the door has to make sure everyone’s decent

first.

It is in this quite unglamorous room that the cast gets glamorous for

their first night with an audience.

Flaherty says she’s excited, that the cast is definitely ready to be

watched.

Argueta says he’s nervous because his theater friends come on preview

nights, when the tickets are cheaper. He hopes he hits the B-note in

“And.”

“I’m not supposed to sing that song, but they gave it to me,” Argueta

says.

Onstage, Lorton warms up the band and sings half a dozen parts to

accompany the instrumentals.

His usual sweats, white sneakers and denim shirt have come off. He’s

wearing, tonight, spiffy black loafers, gray slacks and a button-down

shirt.

He has even shaved.

THE SHOWS GO ON

Preview night goes OK. The show lags in pacing and the spotlight jumps

with less-than-perfect timing. Everyone beams through the show, but

afterward they know they could have done better.

A party might help. People start planning.

The next night of previews is almost flawless.

In Lorton’s productions, a preview means he can stop everything and

have the cast redo a part, rehearse instead of perform.

There was no stopping of anything on May 30 and May 31.

OPENING NIGHT

The dressing room is sprouting with flowers on opening night. Wine

bottles and snacks jut out of gift baskets. A framed poster for the show,

signed by everyone in the cast and presented to Lorton minutes ago as a

gift, leans proudly against a wall.

Half-dressed and with faces half-painted, many of the actors munch on

energy bars and Cheez-Its. The room looks no different -- no more nervous

or crowded or less crazy -- than it has in recent nights.

Weber has found a pair of furry angel wings in the costume stash and

strapped them on. He powders his face wearing jeans, a white shirt and

wings.

Ruben Rodriguez Jr., who plays Greg, has lathered his face and bald

head with shaving cream and is getting theatrical for his cast.

The mood is relaxed.

It might be the party they had the night before at a cast member’s

home, at Lorton’s suggestion.

“They’ve had time to bond as actors working together, but they haven’t

formed relationships as friends yet,” he said.

Someone asks for baby wipes.

A trio of girls gathers outside on the street to practice their piece,

“Ballet.” Lisa Enochs, understudy for the part of Maggie, will be taking

Sarah Hopp’s place on this night.

Standing next to a parked Toyota Echo and a Volvo, with a nearby

basketball thumping a background beat, they harmonize to make sure the

parts are, in fact, harmonized.

The rest of the cast eventually joins them on this street.

They link hands and form the “energy circle.” There is pep talking and

laughing. Everyone falls silent once Lorton starts squeezing. The person

next to him squeezes the hand of the person next to her and the squeezes

bounce around the circle.

“I love you all,” Lorton said. “Enjoy yourselves. You only get to do

this 18 more times.”

-- Young Chang writes features. She may be reached at (949) 574-4268

or by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .

FYI

WHAT: “A Chorus Line”

WHEN: Through June 30. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and

Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, 661 Hamilton St., Costa Mesa

COST: $15

CALL: (949) 650-5269