At noon on a day so frigid that the lake looks like Arctic tundra, more than 500 actors are jammed into the Chicago Academy for the Arts to audition for the musical “Hairspray.”
They have come from around the Midwest and across the country to sing 16 bars for casting director Craig Burns. He is seeking “future replacements” for the current Broadway production and the national touring company, now in Chicago. (A third production opens in Toronto in May.) “There is always great turnover,” he says, particularly for ensemble parts.
The starring role of Edna Turnblad is especially difficult to fill. Played by a man (Harvey Fierstein on Broadway, Bruce Vilanch on tour), Edna has to be “grand” in size and played with “simplicity and conviction,” Burns says. “It’s not a drag queen” (though 300-pound drag queen Divine played the movie’s Edna).
He acknowledges that snagging a major part in an open-call audition is a very long shot, but it can happen. “The girl standing by for the role of Tracy [Turnblad, Edna’s daughter] on the national tour — Keala Settle — came from an open call in Los Angeles last January. This is her first professional credit. We’re always hoping we’ll find that diamond in the rough.”
Curious to meet Edna hopefuls, I scan the crowd for extra-large males willing to wear high heels. I find three (including one already in heels), and follow them through their auditions.
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Round-trip cab from Iowa: $322
Joseph Bennett, 28, of Camanche, Iowa, is 5-feet-7, 250 pounds and is wearing a low-cut gray dress, amply stuffed (with pillowcases) for maximum bosom thrust. Completing his look is a piled-high red wig, plus white heels and hose, pearl necklace and earrings, mascara and finely penciled brows. The dress “is helping me get into character,” he says.
Bennett arrived at noon from Camanche, he reports, “by cab” and will stay until 7 p.m. when the car returns. When I say he must be joking, he fishes in his orange handbag and retrieves the printed order for the car from R.C. Smith Transportation Co. in Morrison, Ill., just across the state line from Camanche. Cost for the 280-mile round trip: $322, without tip. Camanche explains that he doesn’t own a car and the closest rental agency is an hour and a half from his home.
He went on to say that he had to come to Chicago because he is obsessed with Edna and the movie “Hairspray,” which he has seen “about 500 times.” He can recite Edna’s lines, he says, “like ‘All right, young lady, I’ve heard enough of that screeching music.'” He hasn’t seen the musical, but prepared for this audition by watching a tape of the 2003 Tony Awards, “fast-forwarding and rewinding” to see Harvey Fierstein’s Edna over and over.
Bennett works at a Clinton, Iowa, nightclub called Sabra’s (“as gofer and janitor”) and credits his grandmother with stimulating his interest in acting. “She was never in theater, but she caused a lot of drama in the family.”
His first acting experience, he says, was in 4th grade in “Paul Bunyan” — “I was the third lumberjack” — then there was “a pause,” he says, until he played roles at Camanche High School, including Teddy Brewster in “Arsenic and Old Lace” (“my first best actor award”) and Father Drobney in “Don’t Drink the Water.” At Clinton Community College, he played Jim, the gentleman caller, in “The Glass Menagerie,” and the Caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland.”
Standing in the crowd, he holds his head high and primly clutches his handbag at his waist. Each time I see him throughout the afternoon, he has the same erect stance.
Around 5:30 p.m., it’s finally time for him to sing. In the audition room, casting associate David Petro asks for 16 bars, a cappella. Bennett puts down his purse, tugs on his dress and sings (tentatively) a few bars of “Beauty School Dropout.” Then he gives the pianist his sheet music and croons the opening lines of “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” The last “me” is wobbly.
“That’s great,” says Petro crisply. “I think I have all I need. So thank you very much. You did a great job.” Petro’s brief thank-you, with no request to hear more, means Bennett is through. (Actors who seem promising after their first try are asked to sing for Burns. His favorites are invited to callbacks the next day.)
I ask Bennett how he thinks it went. “I don’t know.” He sighs loudly. “I guess I’ll go undress. I think I sounded terrible.”
Emerging in green jacket and pants, with dress stashed in a bag and blond brush cut where the wig was, he’s almost unrecognizable. His driver from R.C. Smith Transportation, Bob Doyle, shows up at 6:45, order in hand, ready to take Bennett back to Iowa.
The next morning, I talk to Merle Reisenbigler, president of R.C. Smith Transportation in Morrison (pop.: 4,447). He says the Chicago-bound driver “remarked that Mr. Bennett was in somewhat full dress when he left home and prepared the rest on the way in, so he’d be dressed for his part. He did apologize to the driver to make it clear there wasn’t anything — how shall I say this? — suggestive.”
The afternoon after his audition, I reach Bennett by phone while he is on the job at Sabra’s. “I think I might have gotten a little teary-eyed the minute it hit that there wasn’t a chance,” he says. “But it was a fantastic experience. I got to be around people as interested in theater as I am. And I love the fact that it didn’t feel like there was competition, that everybody was rooting for everybody else.
“They say theater is hard because you’re doing the same [role] every day. But if a touring company for `Arsenic and Old Lace’ came along,” he says, recalling his high school glory days, “I could do the role of Teddy Brewster, non-stop.”
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‘I know I’m young. I can play older’
Bryan Conger of Portage, Ind., age 25, tells me he’s 5-feet-10, but when I ask him his weight, he says, “A lady never tells her weight, so since I’m auditioning for Edna: None of your damn business. This is one audition I walked into saying, ‘God, I hope I’m big enough.’ Most of them, I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m the fattest one.’ “
“Being larger,” he adds, “we’re usually put in the back, or we’re not good enough. Well, [Edna’s role] puts you in the front and says you are good enough to be a lead on Broadway.”
Today, he is with friends Amy Douglas, 25, of Valparaiso, Ind. — “instrumentalist, actress, dancer, singer and looking for a job” — and Steven Spanopoulos, 28 — “server and dance instructor” — also of Valparaiso. “We’ve been doing theater together for years,” Douglas says.
They arrived at 11:45 a.m. Close to 1 p.m., jammed together “like sardines,” Conger says, “we’re waiting to get on a list.” When a fellow actor tries to squeeze by him, Conger presses his body against the wall. “I can only suck it in so far.”
He wants to play Edna because “it’s a hilarious part. I like the fact that it takes more of a sincere approach than the campy approach. You forget you’re seeing a man.”
Conger explains he is an older freshman at Indiana University Northwest (studying public relations and theater) because he took time off after high school to do shows. His favorite role: Amos Hart in “Chicago” (“he’s such a schlub”) at the Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso.
As for cross-dressing, Conger says he’s ready to go. “I would wear high heels. I’ve done it before, as the Stepmother in [Rodgers and Hammerstein’s] `Cinderella’ and in a Broadway medley at Tony’s Dance Academy in Portage. I played Edna, and the girls danced around me in a number from `Hairspray.'” His size in high heels: “12 wide — I get them at Payless.”
Around 5:45 p.m., his number (219) is up. He and his friends are escorted to an upstairs hallway in a group of 20, where they are “on deck.” After waiting for hours, Conger is now close to the end of a painfully slow process that has suddenly loosened up. Singers, who each spend two, maybe three minutes in the audition room, are quickly going in, coming out.
In a small classroom, facing casting associate Tiffany Canfield, Conger announces his name and song, “Dancin’ in the Streets.” He begins boldly: “Summer’s here and the time is right. . . . ” His huge voice fills the room and his hefty body moves to the beat.
“Great!” Canfield says. “I’m going to send you to Craig [Burns]. “You’re very young for the parts you’d be right for.”
Having advanced to stage two, Conger gets in line again. “Whatever happens, happens,” he says. Ten minutes later, he enters the mirrored rehearsal room where Burns presides, and belts 16 bars of “Dancin…'” “Thank you so much,” says Burns, scanning his resume. “You came from Indiana.” Conger interrupts, “I know I’m young. I can play older.”
“You’re too young, ” Burns says. “But you’re fantastic. You have a really great voice.”
Conger leaves in a blur and presses into Douglas and Spanopoulos, waiting in the hall, after finishing their auditions. “I got a really nice compliment,” he says. “And they’ll keep me on file. You never know what’s going to happen.”
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Beads of sweat on his brow
‘Yes, I fit the grande dame proportions,” says Frank Hattula, who lives in Whiting, Ind. He is 6-feet-4 and 400 pounds.
Hattula, 33, has a theater degree from the University of Detroit Mercy and says he’d like to play Edna because “it would be a chance to stretch outside my boundaries as an actor. Doing drag requires a whole new set of mannerisms, different from your basic character role. I loved the musical,” he says, adding that “roles for plus-size men are few and far between.”
Hattula, who grew up in Wrigleyville and attended St. Benedict High School on the North Side, has performed in a raft of school and community musicals and also sings classical music (Verdi’s “Requiem,” Poulenc’s “Gloria”) with the St. Joseph Festival Choir in Homewood. He works for Jet Support Services Inc., a Chicago aviation financial services company, and goes to law school at night at DePaul University. “Obviously, I’d give that up in a second if I got the role of Edna.”
The audition song he has selected is “Timeless to Me,” the tune Edna sings with her husband, Wilbur. Early in the afternoon, Hattula is worried because he has “a bit of a cold. My voice is a little lower than normal.”
When I mention that Harvey Fierstein sounds like a frog on the original cast recording, he says, “Maybe the nasal [effect] will work.”
By 3 p.m., the line he’s in has snaked to the other side of the room, winding to Michelle, in aqua, who is calling out names. (Throughout the afternoon, there is a buzz of conversation until Michelle speaks, then the room falls silent.) Frank has his nose in his sheet music. “I’m going over the words because I want to sing from memory. I’m a little bit nervous. I want to make sure those 16 bars are all counted out.”
About 5:15 p.m., he gets the call to head upstairs and wait outside the audition room. Minutes before he is “up,” he swishes bottled water around in his mouth and takes a series of deep breaths. He sheds his coat. There are beads of sweat on his brow.
The door opens, and it’s Hattula’s turn to face Burns. He begins singing Edna’s lyrics from “Timeless to Me” in his booming baritone voice — “You’re like a rare vintage Ripple” — but gets ahead of the piano and loses the words.
“Let’s try it one more time,” Burns says. “This time, pretend Ryan [a young fellow sitting next to the piano] is your devoted husband, Wilbur. Totally direct it to him. It’s a very simple song. You don’t have to do much.”
Hattula starts out again, coming on strong to Ryan: “I can’t stop eating, you’re hairline’s receding, soon there’ll be nothing at all. . . .” He finishes the next verse, and Burns says, “Lovely job. Thank you so much. Nice to see you,” as Hattula grabs his music and exits.
“It was a little nerve-racking,” Hattula says, “but it was fun. And I’m very glad I did it. So is that it?”
That’s it. A quick goodbye, and he’s gone.
