The Day Player
Helenna Santos
I’m naked on stage and forgetting every single line I was supposed to have memorized. I have never been to a single rehearsal. I am not even in this production. I’m glistening with sweat in front of a five-hundred-seat theater and about to projectile vomit.
This is the dream looping around and around in my head every night. It’s a dream I’ve been having ever since April 30th, 2004. Graduation Day. Call it nerves about the ‘real world’ or some sort of separation anxiety, but I had spent six years in the university system, groomed and molded into an intelligent, successful young member of society. And although I graduated with a Fine Arts degree in Acting which qualifies me to, well, act, I still felt ready to take on the world and do anything. I would no longer be locked to the confines of the theater building, doomed to play another maid or singing minority. No. I would be the next big ‘it’ girl. The year’s biggest wonder and breakout star!
This is the exact reason I currently sell my soul night after night, waiting for my big break, while serving the city’s finest guests.
“Hi, Miss? Yes, hi. Um, does the Winter Spinach Salad have cheese on it because I don’t eat cheese. Oh, and I also can’t have the dressing or the chicken, or the chickpeas, olives, or peppers. But instead could I maybe get carrots and egg and nuts and lemon on the side with a bit of paprika? Actually, on second thought, could you make me a light olive oil dressing for the linguine? I can’t eat tomatoes and I don’t like Alfredo sauce. Can I change the spinach for romaine…?” This is the point in our one-sided conversation when I cut her out of my brain. I do this with various customers at least twenty times a night.
Having been a server for five years while putting myself through theater school, I learned the delicate art of disassociation. I have, however, taken it one step further… into an acting exercise of sorts. It’s what I like to call the Artist’s Way to Creative Visualization. Being in tune with my emotions I decided if I didn’t allow myself this form of escape, I would in fact take the table fork I had polished so carefully at 5:05 pm this evening, and quickly—so that no one in my section would notice—stab her straight in her trachea. Her eyes would bug out in their sockets, veins throbbing. She would still be trying to talk but would fall victim to the blood spurting out her mouth and all over the white linen tablecloth. A symphony of screams and cries would erupt around me as I invoked the energy of abused actor/waiters past, present, and future. Time would stop, freezing the world around me, so that I could relish in this beautiful, sublime, perfect moment.
People seem to assume that being a server means you are dumb and have no real life ambitions. I realized quite some time ago that if someone asked me what else I did besides serve, the best answer was, “I’m a foreign assassin running from the C.I.A.” As opposed to “I’m an actor,” to which people always reply, “Oh cool! What have I seen you in?” When you’ve only been “Girl #2” in one TV show no one has ever heard of, which was cancelled two episodes in, humiliation ensues. Nope. I think “assassin” works just fine.
I often find myself dealing with fits of rage while waiting tables. For three straight years I spent between 10 to 12 hours a day in class and in plays working on my craft, only to be abandoned here, serving tables to pay the rent.
Ironically, it is never my section that important industry people sat in. It is always Stacey’s section. Stacey is a wannabe actor/model with a boob job bordering on obscene. She comes fully-equipped with a fake tan, long red extensions, a 6’1 skinny frame, and at the ripe old age of 19, has already had Botox three, yes count ‘em, three times. There is some sort of strange gravitational pull around Stacey that seems to not only attract men of every age, race, and apparently sexual orientation, but important industry professionals as well.
“Oh my god, Jane! Guess who was sitting in my section? The executive producer of a production company! He asked me what I wanted to do with my life, and I said act and model, and he said he would help me out! See I have his card! Look!”
Awesome. Just awesome.
When I told my friend Lindsay what happened, she made a good point. “Well, do you think if the executive producer of a production company sat in your section, he would have even noticed you? You, a five-foot-four, average-looking girl? Hello? Besides, he probably just wants to get laid.”
She was right. A little harsh, but right. I realized at that point that I would never get anywhere by hoping that some network exec would sit in my section, discover me, and instantly make me famous. I was also not ready to relax onto the well known world of the casting couch, so I’d have to do it the old-fashioned way with some good old blood, sweat, and tears. My only fear was turning thirty and still serving, but I guess I’ll cross that bridge when the time comes.
Fast forward two years. I’m on set for only the third time since graduating. It’s a feature film that promises to be a blockbuster hit and I’m trying not to hyperventilate in my trailer. This is the moment I’ve worked so hard for. I am once again going to be able to prove myself as an actor, to add to my growing list of IMDB credits, and really show the world what I’ve got.
I’ve been hired to play a girl standing in line in a shopping mall scene with Jessica Alba, and I am so excited I can hardly breathe. I’ve been sitting in my trailer rehearsing my line over and over again. And yes, I did say line. What people don’t tell you when you leave the very comfy doors of a theater program is that more often then not you won’t be the next breakout star. In fact, you will become very familiar with the words, “they decided to go another way” after auditions. That is, of course, if you get any feedback at all. So here I am as what you would call a “day player”.
Day players are the actors who have one or two days on set and only a few lines, if that. We are also known as “under fives”… lines, that is. We are not to be confused with the extras filling the background of a scene. No, we are integral to the story. After all, the lead character would never be able to find the bathroom if my character known as “Girl in Line” didn’t tell her it was “over there”.
Yes, that’s my line: “Over there.” I won this part against six other girls who were at the audition; six other girls who wait tables and when asked what else they do, say they are brain surgeons, tree climbers, and astronauts. This is our labor of love.
Stepping into the makeup trailer, I already feel insignificant. Ant-like, in fact. Jessica is stunning. And when I say stunning, I mean ridiculously beautiful - you want to touch her to make sure she’s real, where the word perfection came from - beautiful. I feel like a servant girl in the presence of royalty, like I’m supposed to kiss the back of her hand and not look her in the eye. If I work out twelve hours a day and eat nothing but lettuce, I wonder if I would be blessed to have her body. If I want to compete in this world of Jessicas I apparently need to step up my game, hit the gym, and stop eating so many tacos!
I introduce myself and we sit quietly getting our makeup done. I eavesdrop on the story she’s telling the makeup lady about a fantastic industry event and imagine that I’m there too… eating caviar, drinking Cristal, and giggling with the Hollywood elite. Everyone whispers, wondering who I am. “She’s the next ‘it’ girl,” I hear someone say from across the room. Suddenly and without warning the paparazzi cameras start flashing. I pivot my body, one foot in front of the other, hand on hip, and give them a million dollar smile. The seas part and everyone begins to clap for me.
Just as I take Johnny Depp’s hand--he has left his wife to be with me, by the way-- I’m rudely awakened from my daydream as the hair and makeup girl pulls on my bangs and puts an exceptionally ugly barrette into my mousey locks. Back to reality.
Jessica leaves the makeup chair before me with a glamorous up-do and long false lashes. She looks amazing, like a true Hollywood star. I glance at myself in the mirror after she’s gone. I look like a dowdy client service representative. Yup. Perfect for the role. I once heard that productions never want the cast to look better than the star, and trust me when I say the makeup artist didn’t need to do much to achieve that. I have been beautified perfectly into the movie’s shopping mall plain Jane.
On set, waiting for the director to call action, I try to take everything in: the bustle of the crew around me setting up the lights, the extras waiting for their big moment hoping to get on camera, and the film’s stars talking to the director about the important moments to hit in the scene. I’m ready. I’m prepared to be in the moment and poised for my cue.
“Over there.”
“Over there!”
“Over there…”
I say my line quietly a number of times with different inflections, so that I know I’ll say it perfectly when the camera pans to me telling Jessica where the bathroom is. I plan to be a one-take wonder.
And one-take wonder I am, or three takes to be exact. Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that the production was running behind schedule, and nothing really to do with my acting brilliance, but in the 15 minutes it takes to film my scene, I am a star!
I go quietly back to my trailer, hitting craft services on the way for another one of those fabulous chicken tacos. I know, I know, I’ll start the diet next week. I change back into my clothes, leaving “Girl in Line,” on the white plastic hanger. I take the barrettes out of my hair and add a touch of Mac lipstick back onto my lips. I sign out with the 2nd A.D. and head to my car. It’s all in a day’s work, really.
Who am I kidding? It’s all in a day’s work that comes few and far between, but I love it and wouldn’t give it up for the world. Tomorrow I know I’ll have to go back to my usual cast of characters at the new restaurant I work at: the man who always sends back his steak because when he asks for medium he really means medium rare, the lady who doesn’t like her cosmopolitan “too sweet” but then asks for Splenda on the side, and the old man who tries to pinch my butt while proposing marriage every time I bring him his coffee.
But right now, in this single moment, as the sun sets on the horizon and the crisp fall air guides me home, it’s this Day Player’s time to shine.