Presence over Perfection: A parent’s lesson in live theatre

What’s missing? Our opening number, Finally. Same pose. Photo 1 shows Mark Siano front and center. Photo 2, after we reworked the whole show to cover his absence after a hockey injury. Photos by Madison Kirkman and Catching Flight Dreams.

“We got trouble. I’m so sorry. I might have broken my leg or my hip at this hockey game.”

It was 10:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, the dark day of the Seattle Vice ’76 show week. I’d fallen asleep on our oversize sectional couch, Big Bang Theory reruns humming in the background,  my sweetie the Chef snoozing beside me. I blinked down at the message on my phone from my co-star and co-producer, Mark Siano. He had gone to play the first game of the season with his community hockey league. He doesn’t have kids, so a Tuesday night skate was no big deal. A fluke play, at 20 miles an hour, he slammed into the rink wall and dislocated and broke his hip.

“Oh my god, oh no! Okay, take care and let me know. We’ll figure it out about the show, not important in the big scheme!”

Except it was important. At least to me.

After that text, I went into autopilot: brushing my teeth, turning off our flickering digital photo frame, tucking in my son Hero again, leaving his door slightly ajar so I would hear if he woke in the night. I debated telling Christian the news now, or waiting til morning.. I try to leave my show drama at the theater, but during an intense two week run at the Triple Door? Forget it. I woke him up.

“Mark may have broken his hip playing hockey. I don’t know how that will affect the show.”

“Oh no, my honey,” Christian sleepily mumbled as I walked him from the couch to our bed.

I crawled in beside him and stared at the dark ceiling. Mark was probably exaggerating, right? Then, reality crash landed. This was bad. Really bad. I would have to save the show.

Since 2011, Mark and I have written and performed 9 original cabaret musicals together. We’ve never missed a show. We’ve barely even been sick. Our process is quick and dirty, the script is written, music composed,  Forty hours of rehearsal over four weeks, then bam: a 12-to-20 performance run. Our current show, Seattle Vice ’76, was a new musical with pole dancers, aerialists, singers, and musicians, not the kind of ensemble you can easily replace with understudies on a tight budget.

We had this conversation before we opened:
“If either of us goes down, we are fucked.”

We laughed. But we had said it.

That night, I lay in bed thinking of the show I loved. It was a glitzy, hilariously imagined history of Seattle’s seedy strip clubs in the ‘70s, inspired by Rick Anderson’s book, Seattle Vice. I played real-life madam Rose Marie Williams, aka Madame Washington. It was so much fun to don her red velvet leisure suit and swagger across the stage, singing about her ring of Happy Face Massage Parlours, and the women she kept under her platform heels.

And now, my co-star and co-producer. who played Gil Conte, the Colacurcio bag-man, was in the ER awaiting surgery, with 7 more shows ahead of us before we closed that Sunday.

The show had to go on. Not just for me and Mark, but for our cast and crew, The Triple Door servers, our front-of-house team, our community. Canceling shows doesn’t just cost money, it erodes morale, and opportunity, especially in an arts industry already bleeding from federal budget cuts across the nation.

So, at 11pm  that night, I was out of bed, up in my attic office reworking the script. I cut Mark’s character entirely, shifting his lines and solos to myself and other talented actors in the cast and band.  I created a new Emcee persona to spit out jokes and exposition, “70s Opal”. Then, my phone rang.

“Don’t worry, Peachey. Julia is with me!” Mark FaceTimed from the hospital, as his girlfriend sat pale and stunned beside him. “I’m going to be okay! We’ll have a wheelchair show!”

He wasn’t okay. This was very bad. But I smiled and nodded. Then, I kept cutting.

By dawn, I felt grief, not just for Mark’s injury and the show we had created, but for the toll it was about to take on my family. Christian wakes at 5:30 a.m. for his shift at Little Jaye, where he recently became lead cook and director of their cooking class program. I met him at the door.

“Please come home right after work. I need to get to the theater as soon as possible”

No questions, just a kiss and a  nod. That’s what we do. We show up for each other, and for our son.

By 6:15 a.m., I was texting the team. “Opening Night: Part 2” would now be in 12 hours. I had one more to go before Hero woke up and I would shift into Mama to get him to and from pre-school.

That night, our audience laughed, clapped, and threw $20s and $50s in the tip jar. They loved the new show.

And yet, as they filtered out of the theater, all smiles and sparkle, I felt it in my unbroken bones: they didn’t know. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. But, somehow, we did it anyway.

“You got this, babe! What would Rose Do!”

I smiled at Christian’s text, sent as the curtain fell on act one, after my hastily memorized new monologues saved the show. He had called his best friend in to baby sit so he could be there to support me. It means the world to me that he is there to witness this moment. After this one show, we’ll stumble through the rest of the run. Even with the star of the play in the hospital, ensemble would rise up and shine. Christian would see that all my hard work was paying off in this moment.

My art is my job, and family comes first. But theatre is also my blood, the skin of my teeth. It is hard on my boys when the show takes focus, even though my creativity is what they love about me.

As I took my bows on our final performance at the end of that difficult week, I thought: Maybe, this is how the story was supposed to end. Maybe this is what we all needed. A reminder that theatre at its best is not about perfection, it is about presence. No two shows are the same. 

We hold each other up, onstage and off. We slip, fall, and let ourselves be caught in the arms of our people. Stronger for it.  

My beautiful boys who make magic daily to support my artistic dreams.

Everyone in this photo did an impossible and magical lift to make our “Opening Night #2” possible. Drummer Troy Lund would book ass back and forth taking extra scenes, Katheryn Reed, Dance Captain and performer reworked choreography, Lola California took on extra monologues and scenework, Ray Tagavilla had all of his scenes completely adjusted as his best friend was deleted from the script. And on the end, next to me, Christopher Sweet took on monologues, adjusted scenes and sang solo for 3 numbers, with just 8 hours notice. Incredible.